Coverage

Only the live categories below are checked. Anything else is refused before payment and never charged. Machine-readable: /api/v1/coverage.

United States	Authority	Sources	Live
Consumer products	CPSC	us-cpsc-recalls	yes
Motor vehicles	NHTSA	us-nhtsa-recalls	yes
Food (FDA-regulated)	FDA	us-fda-food-enforcement	yes
Drugs (human and animal)	FDA	us-fda-drug-enforcement	yes
Medical devices	FDA	us-fda-device-enforcement	yes
Meat, poultry and processed egg products (USDA FSIS)	Not covered: USDA FSIS recalls are not queried: the FSIS recall API refuses automated requests (HTTP 403), and scraping around that is not done.		no
Vehicle equipment, tires and child car seats (NHTSA equipment campaigns)	Not covered: Only NHTSA vehicle campaigns (make/model/model year) are queried.		no
Cosmetics	Not covered: No structured official cosmetics recall source is queried yet.		no
Recreational boats (USCG)	Not covered: US Coast Guard boat recalls are not queried.		no

Sources and known limitations

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission us-cpsc-recalls

Source: CPSC Recalls REST API (saferproducts.gov) — https://www.saferproducts.gov/RestWebServices/Recall
Authority site: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls
Freshness: Queried live on every check (no cache). CPSC publishes recalls on business days.
Source language: en
Last checked against the live source: 2026-09-30

Search is by brand, model and product wording in CPSC recall text; CPSC does not support UPC search, so a UPC is compared against the UPCs each candidate recall publishes.
Most CPSC recalls publish model numbers, date codes and serial ranges only as prose; when an affected serial or lot list is published only on the official web page or by the firm, the result is POSSIBLE_MATCH with that restriction marked unverified.
Covers consumer products under CPSC jurisdiction; vehicles, food, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics and boats are other authorities.
Recalls announced only by other countries or only by the manufacturer are not included.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration us-nhtsa-recalls

Source: NHTSA Recalls API (api.nhtsa.gov) + vPIC VIN decoder — https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle
Authority site: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls
Freshness: Queried live on every check (no cache).
Source language: en
Last checked against the live source: 2026-09-30

Matching is by make, model and model year as NHTSA maps each campaign. NHTSA’s public API has no VIN-level recall status, so every vehicle campaign is POSSIBLE_MATCH: confirm the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls or with the manufacturer.
A VIN is used only to decode make/model/year (vPIC); it is not stored in clear and no owner or history data exists or is requested.
Vehicle equipment, tire and child-seat campaigns are not queried.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration us-fda-food-enforcement

Source: openFDA Food Enforcement Reports — https://api.fda.gov/food/enforcement.json
Authority site: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts
Freshness: Queried live on every check (no cache). openFDA refreshes enforcement reports weekly; the dataset date is returned as source_version.
Source language: en
Last checked against the live source: 2026-09-30

openFDA enforcement reports list recalls after FDA classifies them; a very recent firm press release may appear in the enforcement report only weeks later.
Lot numbers, expiry dates and UPCs are free text in FDA reports; when they cannot be read unambiguously the result is POSSIBLE_MATCH.
FDA enforcement reports contain no consumer-action text; consumer_action is null rather than invented.
FDA-regulated foods, beverages, dietary supplements and pet food only. Meat, poultry and processed egg products are USDA FSIS jurisdiction and are NOT checked.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration us-fda-drug-enforcement

Source: openFDA Drug Enforcement Reports — https://api.fda.gov/drug/enforcement.json
Authority site: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts
Freshness: Queried live on every check (no cache). openFDA refreshes enforcement reports weekly; the dataset date is returned as source_version.
Source language: en
Last checked against the live source: 2026-09-30

openFDA enforcement reports list recalls after FDA classifies them; a very recent firm press release may appear in the enforcement report only weeks later.
Lot numbers, expiry dates and UPCs are free text in FDA reports; when they cannot be read unambiguously the result is POSSIBLE_MATCH.
FDA enforcement reports contain no consumer-action text; consumer_action is null rather than invented.
Human and animal drugs. An unhyphenated 10-digit NDC has three possible readings; all are checked and the ambiguity is reported.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration us-fda-device-enforcement

Source: openFDA Medical Device Enforcement Reports — https://api.fda.gov/device/enforcement.json
Authority site: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts
Freshness: Queried live on every check (no cache). openFDA refreshes enforcement reports weekly; the dataset date is returned as source_version.
Source language: en
Last checked against the live source: 2026-09-30

openFDA enforcement reports list recalls after FDA classifies them; a very recent firm press release may appear in the enforcement report only weeks later.
Lot numbers, expiry dates and UPCs are free text in FDA reports; when they cannot be read unambiguously the result is POSSIBLE_MATCH.
FDA enforcement reports contain no consumer-action text; consumer_action is null rather than invented.
UDI device identifiers are matched only when printed in the recall text.

Only categories marked live are checked. Other jurisdictions and the not_covered categories are refused before payment (HTTP 422) and never charged. NO_MATCH_FOUND never means a product is safe: it means no matching recall was found in the listed sources under the supplied identifiers.