An independent record of every federal vehicle recall.

Why this exists

Roughly 900 federal recall campaigns are issued every year, affecting 25 to 35 million vehicles. About a third of those vehicles are never repaired — not because the owner refused, but because the manufacturer's notification letter was returned, addressed to a previous owner, or buried in junk mail.

Used-vehicle buyers almost never receive notifications at all. Safety recalls don't expire, but the awareness window does, and a recall on the third owner of a ten-year-old car is a recall that effectively no longer exists.

RecallNotify exists to close that gap. Free editorial coverage of every active campaign, free new-recall alerts for your vehicle (rolling out now), and a direct path to NHTSA's official, free per-VIN recall lookup. We pay for it with disclosed affiliate links on the free tier and a $20-a-year family plan that opens the slower-burn signals: TSBs, complaint clusters, and active investigations.

One thing we state plainly: RecallNotify doesn't run the per-VIN check — NHTSA's official tool does. When you enter your VIN, we capture your email for monitoring and forward you directly to NHTSA's free lookup at nhtsa.gov/recalls.

Editorial standards

Every recall page on RecallNotify is reviewed by a named editor with disclosed credentials. We apply five rules:

1. The federal record is the source of truth. Numbers, dates, and consequence statements come from NHTSA. We don't paraphrase NHTSA's safety risk; we reproduce it verbatim.
2. Risk is paired with remediation. Every claim about what could go wrong is accompanied by the exact path to fix it. Recall repairs are free at any franchised dealer, and we say so on every page.
3. No scare framing disconnected from the recall. "Your brakes could fail" is acceptable when it's literally what NHTSA's consequence statement says. "Your car might kill you" is not.
4. One CTA per page. The only call to action on a recall page is a link to check your VIN via NHTSA's official lookup. We don't sell warranties or insurance from inside the explainer.
5. Updates are dated and visible. Every page footer carries the last-updated timestamp. Substantive changes are logged in a changelog at the bottom of the article.

Read our full editorial standards →

How we make money

The free tier is funded by clearly-disclosed affiliate partnerships with extended-warranty providers, auto-insurance comparison sites, and mobile mechanics. Affiliate offers appear on free-tier results pages and are removed entirely for family-plan members. We do not take payment from manufacturers, dealer groups, or insurers in exchange for editorial decisions.

The paid tier is a $20-a-year family plan that covers up to five vehicles. Subscription revenue funds editorial review, the validation pipeline, and the email infrastructure.

Contact

For corrections, tips, or press: editorial@recallnotify.com.
For partnerships: partners@recallnotify.com.
For privacy or data requests: privacy@recallnotify.com.

Editors