Frequently Asked Questions

Open Labor Project (OLP) is a free automotive data platform providing labor times, torque specifications, fluid specs, OBD-II diagnostic trouble codes, battery specs, and NHTSA recall data for thousands of vehicles spanning 1955 to the present. The website is free for all end users; a developer API funds operations via paid tiers starting at $49 per month.

Yes. Every vehicle data page on openlaborproject.com is free to view — no paywall, no signup, no ads. The free Hobbyist API tier provides 50 requests per day with attribution required. Paid tiers exist only for high-volume API integrations.

OLP is built and operated by an independent automotive-tech team. It is not owned by Mitchell, ALLDATA, Identifix, AutoZone, RockAuto, NAPA, or any major OE manufacturer. We operate independently and fund operations exclusively through paid developer API subscriptions.

OLP launched publicly in late 2025. We crossed 14 million visitors and 117 million API requests in our first five months.

Email [email protected] for press, developer support, partnership inquiries, or general questions. We typically respond within one business day.

Over 700,000 labor time entries, hundreds of thousands of torque specifications, fluid capacities, OBD-II DTC code definitions, battery specs, and NHTSA recall records. Coverage spans thousands of vehicle/engine/year combinations from 1955 to the current model year.

OLP covers passenger cars, light trucks, SUVs, vans, and select medium-duty vehicles from major makes including Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chevrolet, GMC, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volkswagen, Subaru, Nissan, Infiniti, Acura, Lexus, Mazda, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo, Porsche, Tesla, Rivian, and many more — including vintage American iron from the 1960s–1980s.

Three sources. First, AI-generated baseline data graded by Claude Opus 4.7 with explicit confidence ratings. Second, expert review by ASE-certified mechanics for high-risk procedures (brakes, fuel system, suspension, hybrid HV systems, anything where wrong = injury). Third, community submissions from professional shops that we manually verify before publishing.

Every data point carries a visible confidence rating: high, medium, low, expert-verified, or OEM-verified. AI-graded data is clearly badged as AI-generated. We audit existing data on a recurring schedule (most recently a $200 Opus 4.7 sweep that touched 9,000+ rows). Where we don't know with high confidence, we say so on the page.

Both. AI provides the baseline, expert mechanics review high-risk content, and shops submit verified data we manually check. The confidence rating on each row tells you which path it came through.

Yes. We have dedicated coverage for Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, Hyundai/Kia EVs, Polestar, Ford F-150 Lightning, Honda and Toyota hybrids. EV-specific procedures gate behind a high-voltage safety acknowledgement before display.

Every engine in the database has its timing system explicitly tagged (belt, chain, or gear) after a comprehensive Claude Opus 4.7 audit. Hand-curated overrides exist for canonical engine families (Toyota 2GR, Honda K-series, BMW M50/52/54/N52, Subaru EJ/FA/FB, etc.). The portal page shows only the timing components that actually apply to each engine — older OHV pushrod V8s aren't shown chain-tensioner data they don't have.

Yes. The OLP API is a public REST API at openlaborproject.com/developers with six endpoints covering vehicles, labor times, torque specs, fluid specs, DTC codes, and battery specs. Authentication is via the x-api-key header. Responses are JSON. Live X-RateLimit-* headers are returned on every response.

Hobbyist (free) tier: fill out the form on /developers — we manually review and email you a key, usually within one business day. Builder, Business, or Enterprise: enter your email on /developers, complete Stripe Checkout, and your key + a curl example arrive in your inbox automatically.

50 API requests per day with a 30 requests/minute burst limit. Full access to all six public endpoints. Attribution to openlaborproject.com is required if data appears in your app.

Hobbyist: 50/day, 30/min. Builder ($49/mo): 1,000/day, 120/min. Business ($149/mo): 10,000/day, 500/min. Enterprise ($499/mo): 50,000+/day, 5,000/min. Annual billing on paid tiers includes two months free.

The API returns a 429 status with a clear error message and a Retry-After header. You can self-throttle preemptively by reading X-RateLimit-Remaining-Daily and X-RateLimit-Remaining-Minute on every response.

Webhooks are a Business+ feature. Subscribe to events like data.updated, vehicle.added, recall.published. Coming online progressively over 2026.

The free Hobbyist tier serves the same data as paid tiers, against the live database. There is no separate sandbox — your test key works against production data. We recommend wrapping your integration in retries and respecting rate-limit headers.

Bulk export is a Business+ feature: full snapshots of labor times, torque specs, fluid specs, etc. for the make/model ranges you care about, delivered as JSON or CSV. Hobbyist and Builder tiers are throttled to per-request lookups.

Yes, on Business+ tiers. Hobbyist and Builder require attribution back to openlaborproject.com when data appears in user-facing apps.

The API is plain REST + JSON, so any HTTP client works. We don't currently maintain official SDKs — community-contributed Python and Node packages are recommended for production. Pull requests welcome.

Hobbyist: free (50 req/day). Builder: $49/month (1,000 req/day). Business: $149/month (10,000 req/day). Enterprise: $499/month (50,000+ req/day, custom integrations, 99.9% SLA). Annual plans receive two months free.

Yes, anytime from your developer dashboard. Upgrades take effect immediately; downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period. We don't charge proration penalties or lock-in fees.

We don't offer refunds, but you can cancel anytime and you keep access through the end of your paid period. If something is genuinely broken on our end, email us — we'll make it right.

No formal trial — but the free Hobbyist tier is permanently free and uses the same endpoints/data, so you can build and test against it before committing to a paid plan.

All major credit and debit cards via Stripe Checkout. Annual contract enterprise customers can pay by invoice/wire.

Sign up for the free Hobbyist tier — you'll get a real key within a day and can hit any endpoint. The website itself (openlaborproject.com) is the API powering its own pages, so what you see on the site is what you can pull from the API.

Separate from the developer API. For $99 you can sponsor any specific vehicle in the database — your name appears on every page for that vehicle, and the funds go directly toward generating full step-by-step repair procedures, expert-verified by a second AI pass before they publish. The data stays free for everyone else.

Mitchell 1 is a paid shop-management product (~$2,000-$3,000/year per shop) with DRM-protected manuals and license-locked workstations. OLP is free to view on the web, has a public API, and is open to anyone. Most independent shops use both — Mitchell 1 for shop management, OLP for quick lookups, second opinions, and customer-facing data.

ALLDATA is a subscription-based shop and DIY product ($30-$200+/month depending on tier) with strong OEM TSB and wiring diagram coverage. OLP is permanently free for end users and offers a public API that ALLDATA does not. They serve different needs.

OLP is not a replacement for Identifix's expert-network or Mitchell's DRM-protected wiring diagrams. It complements them as the open, free, programmatically-accessible data layer. If you need real-time tech-line support or factory wiring, you still want a paid product. If you need fast lookups, an API for an app, or data for a side project, OLP is the right tool.

Different shape. RepairPal aggregates labor estimates with a markup model and shop-finder integration. AutoZone Repair Help is consumer-targeted with limited depth. OLP is broader (every spec, not just labor), goes deeper (confidence-graded, OEM-cross-referenced), and is API-accessible — designed for both end users and developers.

There isn't one. The site is free because the API is paid. You get good data, clearly labeled with confidence ratings. If something isn't accurate, we audit it — we ran a $200 Claude Opus 4.7 sweep across timing data this week alone. We don't sell user data, don't run ads, and don't paywall fundamental information.

No. We never sell user data. We don't track individual users beyond standard server logs (IP, user-agent, request path) which are kept for 30 days for security/abuse purposes. We have no advertising relationships.

No. OLP is independent. We are not owned by, partnered with, or financially aligned with any OEM, parts retailer, or shop chain. The Stripe payment processor handles all card payments — we never see your card data.

AI is used for two things: (1) generating baseline labor and torque data, which is then graded with explicit confidence ratings and shown to users with a clear 'AI-generated' badge; (2) auditing existing data on a recurring schedule via Claude Opus 4.7 batch jobs. AI is never used for high-risk procedure content (brakes, fuel, hybrid HV systems) without subsequent expert mechanic review.

Email [email protected] with the vehicle, the data point you saw, and what you believe is correct. We typically reproduce, fix, and audit the surrounding data within one business day. Submitters of corrected data get credit on the page.

OLP explicitly welcomes AI crawlers. GPTBot, Claude-Web, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, cohere-ai, and CCBot are all allowed in our robots.txt. We want our data accurately represented in AI assistants — that's why we maintain comprehensive structured data, FAQPage schema, and AI-readable summary blocks site-wide.