Every major car market publishes recalls. Almost none of them lets you see what a recall said before it was changed. This page is the map: for each market above roughly half a million passenger cars sold a year, who publishes, what they publish, and whether a revision is visible to anyone outside the agency.
We publish it because the gaps are the point. A recall that is quietly amended in a market where only a VIN search exists cannot be checked by anyone, not by an owner, not by a journalist, not by us. Naming those markets is more useful than pretending to worldwide coverage we do not have.
The map
| Market | Authority | What is published | Can a revision be seen? | Our coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | NHTSA | Full database, documented API, bulk files | Yes: we read every campaign and re-read it for amendments | Live |
| United Kingdom | DVSA | Every recall since 1992, downloadable as CSV | Only by keeping our own copy: DVSA replaces the file in place and publishes no update date | Live |
| Canada | Transport Canada | Searchable database, RSS feed, open-data API | Yes: the record carries its own last-update date | Live |
| European Union (30 markets) | European Commission: Safety Gate | Weekly alerts, open data listing, motor vehicle category | Not published as a revision history | Being added |
| China | SAMR | National recall portal with VIN and keyword search | Not published: only the current text | Engine written |
| Australia | Dept. of Infrastructure / ACCC | Browse-all recall listing | Assessed as the best revision field of any candidate | Next |
| Germany | KBA | Own recall database, plus Safety Gate | Not as a history | Via Safety Gate |
| France | DGEC: RappelConso | Open dataset on data.gouv.fr, RSS feed, filterable to vehicles | Not as a history | Live: baseline 17 Aug 2026 |
| Brazil | Senacon / PROCON | Open dataset on dados.mj.gov.br, plus PROCON search | Not as a history | Candidate: machine readable |
| Poland | TDT | Part of the recall database downloadable as CSV | Not as a history | Live: baseline 17 Aug 2026 |
| Saudi Arabia | Defective Products Recall Center | Search by VIN, make, model and reference | Not as a history | Candidate |
| Japan | MLIT | HTML tables and PDF summaries; Japanese portal has search | Not as a history | Candidate: needs parsing |
| South Korea | KATRI / KOTSA | English portal publishes aggregate statistics only; Korean portal has search | Not as a history | Candidate: needs parsing |
| Mexico | PROFECO | Consumer alerts as text and PDF | Not as a history | Candidate: needs parsing |
| Argentina | Secretariat of Industry and Commerce | Alerts portal, filterable to vehicles | Not as a history | Candidate: needs parsing |
| Italy | UNRAE | VIN-only search. No list, no export | No: you cannot see a recall you do not already have the VIN for | Not coverable |
| Spain | DGT | VIN or plate only, and for authorised users | No | Not coverable |
| Russia | Rosstandart | VIN-only search; portal unreachable from some countries | No | Not coverable |
| India | MoRTH / SIAM | Manufacturer-submitted voluntary recall listing | No | Not coverable as a record |
| Türkiye | Ministry of Industry and Technology | Annual statistics as PDF only | No | Not coverable |
| Malaysia | JPJ | No central government recall portal; ASEAN alerts only | No | Not coverable |
| Indonesia | Ministry of Transportation | No central government recall portal; ASEAN alerts only | No | Not coverable |
| Thailand | Dept. of Land Transport | No central government recall portal; ASEAN alerts only | No | Not coverable |
What the map shows
- Five markets are fully covered here today (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Poland), and in one of them, the United Kingdom, a revision is only visible because we keep our own dated copy. DVSA replaces its file in place and publishes no update date at all.
- Six more are machine-readable and reachable, in order of how quickly they could be added: the European Union through Safety Gate, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, China, then Japan and South Korea with more parsing work. Australia is reachable in principle but this server cannot connect to it: measured, not assumed, sixty-second timeouts on both the site root and a content page.
- Eight are effectively closed. Italy, Spain and Russia publish a VIN search and nothing else: you cannot discover a recall you do not already know about. Türkiye publishes annual PDF statistics. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand have no central government portal. India relies on manufacturers submitting to an industry body.
A VIN-only portal is not transparency. It answers “is this car affected” and refuses the question “what is happening in this market”, and it makes an amendment invisible by construction.
How this page is made
The list of authorities and portals is derived from a published, openly licensed dataset of vehicle recall agencies for markets selling more than 500,000 passenger cars in 2024 (recall-agencies-overview v1.0, CC BY 4.0, links verified February 2026). The columns about what can be seen, and about our own coverage, are our assessment, and we will correct them here when we are shown to be wrong: see corrections.
This is a live judgement about live systems. If you cite it, cite the date you read it.
See the change register: what has actually been altered after publication, in the markets we can see.
How we grade a market
Only one column here is a judgement, and it is the one that matters: can a revision be seen? We answer it the same way every time, by asking what a person outside the agency could actually do.
- Yes: the authority publishes a list you can read without knowing a VIN, and either states when a record was last updated or lets you hold a dated copy to compare against. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom qualify, and the United Kingdom only on the second half of that test.
- Not as a history: the current text is public and listable, but the previous text is gone the moment it is replaced. Most of Europe sits here. It is a gap anyone could close, including the authority.
- No: the only route in is a VIN, a plate, or a login. You cannot ask what is happening in the market at all, so an amendment is invisible by construction. Italy, Spain and Russia sit here.
Two things we deliberately do not grade on: how good the authority is at enforcement, and how well designed the website is. A plain HTML table that lists everything scores better here than a polished portal that answers only about the car you already own.
If you think a market is graded wrongly, say so: corrections go on the corrections page with the date, not into a silent edit.
Take the data
The table above is published as a file, under the same licence as the source it builds on. Use it, check it, correct us.
- recall-transparency-by-market-2026-08-17b.csv (23 markets, five columns) reissued the same day when France and Poland went live, so the file and the table always agree
How to cite it. CarsMultiverse, Which countries let you see recall changes, read . This is a live judgement about live systems: a citation needs the date it was read, because a market that opens up (or closes) changes the answer.
Licensed CC BY 4.0, derived from recall-agencies-overview v1.0 under the same licence. The assessment columns are ours.