The free Encar API key
100 requests a day, no card, no expiry date and no sales call. Here is exactly what that covers, and the honest answer on where it stops.
What free actually includes
It is a tier, not a trial. There is no clock running and nothing to cancel — a key issued today still works next year at the same allowance.
- 100 requests a day, resetting at midnight UTC
- All three endpoints, with no field held back and no sampled or delayed data
- The same English and German translations the paid tiers get
- Live availability checking on single-vehicle lookups
- The full documentation, public and unauthenticated
How to get one
Type an email into the form on this page. The key is minted and mailed immediately — no card, no call, no approval step. Asking twice from the same address returns the same key rather than issuing a second one, so a key cannot really be lost.
Where 100 a day stops being enough
100 requests at up to 500 listings each is 50,000 listings a day, which is plenty to build and test against. It stops being enough when calls are driven by visitors rather than by you.
The honest rule: if a page view triggers a request, you will exhaust a free key with a few dozen visitors, and the fix is caching on your side rather than a bigger plan. If you are refreshing a whole catalogue on a schedule, that is when Pro earns its keep.
- Free — 100/day. Building, testing, a nightly sync of a narrow slice.
- Pro, €49/mo — 150,000/month. A live stock page, queried straight from the catalogue.
- Business, €199/mo — 750,000/month. Several sites, or a busy one querying per visitor.
- Enterprise, €499/mo — uncapped under fair use. Per-visitor querying at any volume.
Questions people ask about this
Is the Encar API really free?
There is a genuinely free tier: 100 requests a day, no credit card, no expiry. It is not a time-limited trial — the allowance resets every day and the key keeps working.
Do I need a credit card for the free tier?
No. You enter an email address and the key is issued immediately. No card, no billing details and no sales step.
What happens when I hit 100 requests?
Further calls return 429 until midnight UTC, when the allowance resets. Every successful response carries X-RateLimit-Remaining so you can see it coming rather than finding out from an error.
Get your API key
Free tier, 100 requests a day. Enter your email and the key arrives immediately, with everything you need to make the first call.
- 100 requests a day
- No credit card
- Your key never expires
Questions, or Pro and Enterprise volume? Reply straight to the key email — it reaches a person, not a form. Or message us on WhatsApp if that is quicker: +383 49 644 168
Take the free key now
One email, no card. It arrives in under a minute with everything needed for the first call.
Keep reading
One number a month, no per-call billing to forecast and no setup fee. The free tier is a real tier, not a trial that expires.
Three endpoints, one header, JSON out. Everything below is the complete reference — there is no second, paid tier of documentation.
If something is not here, message us — the number at the bottom reaches a person.