Dealer.com API
Dealer.com's documented inventory API points at a base host that no longer resolves. Live access is partner-only: a browser JavaScript API keyed after Integrated Partner Program enrollment, and lead data on Cox Automotive's approval-gated platform. No sandbox or SDK.
Frequently asked questions
Dealer.com scores F on Supergood's API Report Card. Dealer.com's documented inventory API points at a base host that no longer resolves. Live access is partner-only: a browser JavaScript API keyed after Integrated Partner Program enrollment, and lead data on Cox Automotive's approval-gated platform. No sandbox or SDK.
Without a usable official API, teams fall back on manual exports, file drops, or one-off vendor integrations. The other option is an unofficial API layer like Supergood that automates the authenticated web app directly. Site terms may apply to any integration approach, and how they apply is a determination each team makes for itself.
Dealer.com is the dealership website, digital advertising, digital retailing and managed marketing platform inside Cox Automotive.
Automotive retail: franchise and independent new and used car dealerships and OEM dealer programs in the United States and Canada. Internet managers and marketing staff log into the Dealer.com backend to edit pages and specials, manage inventory display and pricing fields fed from the dealer's inventory system, configure lead forms and chat, review nVision traffic and lead reports, and coordinate paid search and SEO with a Cox performance manager.
Dealer.com is the largest dealer website provider in North America, with press reports of about 10,000 dealership clients and a 60 percent share of franchised dealer websites (Burlington Free Press, 2019), backed by OEM co-op approval across the major brands.
Dealership inventory (VIN, stock number, pricing fields including internet and e-price, incentives, photos), website lead submissions (consumer name, email, phone, vehicle of interest, trade-in details, in some cases soft-pull credit prequalification through partners), chat and call tracking data, and nVision web analytics.
Founded 1998; the website platform has been rebuilt several times but dealers still describe the backend as dated.
A third-party API index notes the documented base host api.dealer.com no longer resolves and the portal's five Swagger documents have contained an AWS API Gateway error string since February 2020. A dealer set up the vAuto pricing feed and reported price changes not appearing on the site, an example of how inventory data flows through vendor-managed feeds rather than an API the dealer controls. Full sourced list under Sources below.
Common alternatives include Dealer Inspire, DealerOn, Dealer eProcess, CDK, DealerFire. Graded alternatives appear under "More from the report card" below.
Supergood's grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? Supergood checks six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and rolls them into a letter grade. Supergood re-verifies grades, and they only move on evidence.
Not that we could find. There is no official Dealer.com MCP server in any public registry, and no maintained community server we're aware of. We re-verify this periodically — report an inaccuracy below if we missed one.
Not natively. Dealer.com doesn't publish an MCP server, so MCP clients like Claude, Cursor, and Codex have nothing to connect to out of the box. If that changes, this page will reflect it.