DotLookup API
Free, open REST API for FMCSA carrier data. No API key required for basic lookups.Base URL
Quick Start
Look up any carrier by DOT number — no signup needed:What’s Available
Carrier Profiles
Full carrier details, fleet, authority, safety summary, insurance, and a composite risk score.
Search
Text search with filters, geo/radius, and pagination across 1.6M+ carriers.
Safety Data
Inspections, OOS rates vs national average, crash statistics, BASIC violations.
Insurance
Active insurance policies with coverage details and per-policy status.
Risk Score History
Per-ETL snapshots of every carrier’s composite trust score — see how a carrier’s risk profile has moved over time.
Policy-Aware Scoring
Compute a fresh score against your own broker/shipper underwriting thresholds. Stateless; nothing is persisted about your policy.
Point-in-Time
GET /v1/carriers/{dot}?as_of=2026-04-15 reconstructs the carrier as it appeared on a given date. Anchors evidence packets to historical state.Watchlist + Webhooks
Subscribe to specific carriers and receive HMAC-signed webhook deliveries after every nightly ETL when their status changes.
Authentication
Most endpoints work without authentication. Sign up for an API key to unlock the bulk lookup, policy-aware risk score, watchlist, and webhook endpoints, plus higher rate limits on the public ones.Authentication Guide
Learn how to authenticate your requests
Data freshness
DotLookup re-runs the FMCSA ETL pipeline daily.GET /v1/meta exposes data_freshness (the timestamp of the most recent run), plus risk_history_horizon and etl_changes_horizon for the time-anchored endpoints.