CPSC Recall API Guide for Developers
The official CPSC feed is an authoritative starting point for U.S. consumer-product recall screening. It is a notice feed, not a product clearance database.
What is the CPSC Recall API?
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission publishes machine-readable recall notices covering records from 1973 onward. A notice can include products, brands, models, hazards, remedies, images and UPC values when those identifiers are available.
The feed is useful for retrieving official notices. Your application still has to decide whether a specific catalog item belongs inside the scope described by a notice.
- Keep the official recall number and URL with every result.
- Store the time your system checked the source.
- Treat missing model or UPC data as missing identity, not as evidence of no recall.
- Recheck stored inventory because notices and remedies can change.
Why a keyword search is not an identity match
CPSC documents its public search behavior as case-insensitive wildcard matching. That is good for discovery, but a substring hit can be broader than the product you meant to identify.
A production matcher should rank deterministic identifiers first. LookTwice calls a match exact only when a normalized UPC matches. Brand and model must both match for likely. Brand or text similarity alone stays possible and should be reviewed.
A safe integration pattern
Send the product name plus at least one identity field such as brand, model or UPC. Preserve the returned evidence and official link with the item record. If the source is stale, the service should fail closed instead of returning a fresh-looking none result.
A none response should always be read as: no match was found in the named sources at the stated time using the supplied identifiers. It does not establish that an item is fit for sale or compliant with every applicable rule.
Frequently asked questions
Is the CPSC Recall API free?
CPSC provides public recall data. A commercial matching layer charges for normalization, catalog matching, continuous rechecks, evidence records and webhook delivery—not ownership of the source notices.
Does a no-match result mean a product can be sold?
No. It only means the supplied identifiers did not match the scoped recall and warning sources at the check time.
Should I check once or monitor continuously?
Check at intake and continue monitoring active inventory because new notices and updates can appear after the first check.