encar-api-client — Encar API client for Python

encar-api-client gives you South Korean used-car listings from Encar as clean JSON through the apiauto.space REST API, without writing or maintaining a scraper. Search by make, model, year, price and mileage, page through the whole catalog, fetch one listing by its number and follow a feed of new cars, cars taken off sale and price changes.

It is a thin layer over the general apiauto-space client with the market preset to kr, plus types for the Encar-only fields. It comes from the apiauto.space team; the project is not affiliated with Encar or SK Encar.

• Sync Client and AsyncClient, retries on 429 and 5xx, one exception class per API error
• car("42793038") takes the Encar listing number as well as the record id
• EncarRaw types for the Encar-only fields in car["raw"]
• Python 3.10+, py.typed, checked with mypy --strict

Install

pip install encar-api-client

The module you import is encar_api.

Get a key

Open the Telegram bot @apiautospace_bot and take a free demo key: one day, 100 data requests, up to 20 cars per request. Paid plans are on the pricing page.

Save the key in the APIAUTO_KEY environment variable — the client reads it from there:

export APIAUTO_KEY="your-key"

Keep the key on your server: the API does not accept browser requests.

Quick start

import encar_api

with encar_api.Client() as client:  # reads APIAUTO_KEY
    page = client.cars(brand="Hyundai", year_min=2020, limit=20)
    for car in page["items"]:
        print(car["id"], car["title"], car["price"]["amount"], car["price"]["currency"])

    one = client.car("42793038")  # a listing number or "encar:42793038"
    print(one["listing_url"], one["photos"][:1])

A record looks like this (shortened; real values from the catalog):

{
  "id": "encar:42793038",
  "market": "kr",
  "source": "encar",
  "source_id": "42793038",
  "title": "2021 BMW 1 Series (F40) 118d M Sport",
  "brand": "BMW",
  "model": "1 Series (F40)",
  "year": 2021,
  "mileage_km": 122866,
  "fuel": "diesel",
  "transmission": null,
  "body_type": null,
  "price": {
    "amount": "17990000.00",
    "currency": "KRW"
  },
  "price_usd": "13265.53",
  "location": {
    "country": "KR",
    "region": "Gyeonggi",
    "city": null
  },
  "listing_url": "https://fem.encar.com/cars/detail/42793038",
  "is_active": true,
  "first_seen_at": "2026-09-23T11:36:05.145090Z",
  "photos": [
    "https://api.apiauto.space/img/encar:42793038/1.jpg?exp=...&sig=..."
  ],
  "raw": {
    "badge": "118d M 스포츠",
    "sell_type": "normal",
    "office_city": "경기",
    "form_year": "202110"
  }
}

Every record has the same keys as in the other apiauto.space markets; a value the source does not provide is None. Prices are decimal strings in KRW, price_usd is converted at the ECB daily rate.

Methods

The general client is at client.core for anything else. Errors are the apiauto exceptions, re-exported here: QuotaExceededError, RateLimitError, NotFoundError, AuthenticationError and the rest.

Encar-only fields

from encar_api import raw

extra = raw(car)  # typed as EncarRaw
print(extra.get("source_values"))

EncarRaw lists the keys with comments; every key is optional, so read them with .get.

Links

• Encar API on apiauto.space and the API documentation
• apiauto-space: the general client for all markets
• Clients for the other sources: che168-api, copart-api, iaai-api
• Examples in curl, Python, JavaScript and PHP
• The JavaScript version of this client: encar-api-client on npm

License

MIT. Encar is a trademark of its owner; it is named here only to say which listings the client returns.