kbb.com

get-vehicle-value

Installation

Adds this website's skill for your agents

 

Summary

Look up a vehicle's Kelley Blue Book market values (Trade-In, Private Party, Typical Listing Price, Fair Purchase Price) plus original MSRP, 5-Year Cost to Own breakdown, and resolved trim specs, given year/make/model/trim or a full KBB URL plus mileage, ZIP, and condition. Read-only — never engages the Instant Cash Offer or dealer-lead funnels.

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SKILL.md
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KBB Get Vehicle Value

Purpose

Given a vehicle identification (year/make/model/trim, full KBB URL, VIN, or free-form description) plus mileage, ZIP, and condition, return Kelley Blue Book's market values as structured JSON. Surfaces all four KBB value contexts (Trade-In, Private Party, Typical Listing Price / Suggested Retail, Fair Purchase Price), the resolved canonical vehicle (body style, drivetrain, engine, transmission), original MSRP, the 5-Year Cost to Own breakdown when available, standard / optional equipment, and the canonical KBB value-page URL. Read-only — never engages the Instant Cash Offer / Sell My Car / dealer-lead funnels.

When to Use

  • Trade-in negotiations, private-party listings, dealer-asking-price sanity checks, and used-car shopping baselines.
  • Fleet valuation, insurance total-loss disputes, depreciation modelling, lease residual estimation.
  • Anywhere you'd otherwise scrape the KBB value page or pay for the KBB B2B Vehicle Pricing API — the public syndication endpoint described below returns the same FPP/Retail values the marketing pages display, and the public trim page JSON exposes the condition-banded Trade-In / Private Party values.
  • New-car shopping when you want KBB's Fair Purchase Price for a specific trim before stepping into a dealer.

Workflow

KBB has no documented public API — the official B2B pricing API requires a paid partnership. However, two undocumented surfaces back the marketing pages and require no auth: (a) upa.syndication.kbb.com/{usedcar,newcar}/?format=json (the Price Advisor widget endpoint, called with a hardcoded public API key embedded in every KBB page), and (b) the trim-page HTML itself, which inlines a pricing.{tradein,privateparty}.{fair,good,verygood,excellent} JSON blob when fetched with ?intent=trade-in-sell. Lead with this hybrid path — one API call + one page fetch — and fall back to scripted browsing only if both endpoints are blocked (no evidence of that in 4 verification fetches across 3 vehicles).

1. Resolve the canonical trim slug + vehicleId

KBB value URLs have the shape https://www.kbb.com/{make-slug}/{model-slug}/{year}/{trim-style-slug}/ where slugs are lowercase, hyphen-separated, and -style- is the body style (e.g. lx-sedan-4d, ex-coupe-2d, ex-l-hatchback-4d). If the user gave you:

  • A full KBB URL — use as-is. Skip to step 2.
  • A {year, make, model, trim} tuple or free-form description — fetch https://www.kbb.com/{make}/{model}/{year}/ and extract the matching trim URL from href="/{make}/{model}/{year}/{trim-style-slug}/" anchors. If multiple body styles share a trim (sedan vs coupe vs hatchback), append ?bodystyle={sedan|coupe|hatchback} or pick the most-specific slug (-sedan-4d, -coupe-2d, -hatchback-4d, -suv-4d, -pickup-truck).
  • A VIN — KBB resolves VIN via the value-picker UI; the canonical entry point is https://www.kbb.com/whats-my-car-worth/vin/ but the VIN-decode endpoint is gated behind a one-shot anonymous-session token. For VIN flows, fall back to the browser path (step 4). Once you've extracted {year, make, model, trim} from the VIN, return to step 1's tuple path.

Once on the trim page, the canonical vehicleId is the unique integer that appears in vehicleid=<int> query parameters within the page HTML (look in the embedded priceAdvisorQuery block or the tradeInSellPath link). Used vehicles and new vehicles use the same vehicleId namespace but route to different APIs in step 2.

2. Fetch Fair Purchase Price + Typical Listing Price via the syndication API

The KBB Price Advisor widget that renders on every value page is backed by upa.syndication.kbb.com. Append &format=json (instead of the page's &format=svg) to get a clean JSON response with no scraping.

Used vehicles (model year ≤ current year - 1):

GET https://upa.syndication.kbb.com/usedcar/
    ?apikey=76a9532b-fa54-4d02-8e6a-91c3fb85376c
    &zipcode={zip}
    &vehicleid={vehicleId}
    &pricetype=retail
    &condition={excellent|verygood|good|fair}
    &mileage={miles}
    &format=json

New vehicles (current or future model year):

GET https://upa.syndication.kbb.com/newcar/
    ?apikey=76a9532b-fa54-4d02-8e6a-91c3fb85376c
    &zipcode={zip}
    &vehicleid={vehicleId}
    &pricetype=retail
    &format=json

The apikey is hardcoded across every KBB page (search the page HTML for apikey= to confirm) and is not user-keyed — it's the public-web syndication key, distinct from the paid B2B Vehicle Pricing API key. Treat it as a published constant.

Response shape (relevant portion):

{
  "Data": {
    "APIData": {
      "vehicle": {
        "dataVersion": { "requestDate": "2026-05-15T00:00:00Z", "versionNumber": 12345 },
        "values": [
          { "type": "FPP",    "source": "VRS",  "low": 15290, "high": 17290, "value": 16290 },
          { "type": "Retail", "source": "VRS",  "low": 15930, "high": 17930, "value": 16930 },
          { "type": "MSRP",   "source": "VRS",  "low": null,  "high": null,  "value": 25400 },
          { "type": "Asking", "source": "None", "error": "value.notAvailable" }
        ]
      }
    },
    "overlay": { "infoAndDefinitions": { "footer": "© 2026 Kelley Blue Book ... 05/15/2026 Edition for GA 30307." } }
  }
}
  • type: "FPP" → Fair Purchase Price (mid-point + low/high = Fair Market Range) — what a consumer can reasonably expect to pay this week buying from a dealer.
  • type: "Retail" → Typical Listing Price (formerly Suggested Retail Price) — dealer asking price with reconditioning + dealer profit baked in.
  • type: "MSRP" → original Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (new-car endpoint only; null for used).
  • type: "Asking" → individual seller's asking price; populated only when query was made with &askingPrice=.

Data-freshness timestamp = Data.APIData.vehicle.dataVersion.requestDate (weekly cadence — KBB publishes Mondays). The footer string also surfaces the human-readable edition (05/15/2026 Edition for GA 30307).

3. Fetch Trade-In + Private Party values via the trim page

The syndication API only returns dealer-context values (FPP, Retail, MSRP). For the individual-seller-context values (Trade-In and Private Party), the kbb.com trim page itself embeds them as JSON — but only when navigated with ?intent=trade-in-sell.

GET https://www.kbb.com/{make}/{model}/{year}/{trim-style-slug}/
    ?intent=trade-in-sell
    &mileage={miles}
    &zipcode={zip}

Grep the response body for "pricing":{:

"pricing": {
  "privateparty": { "fair": 11990, "good": 13240, "verygood": 13740, "excellent": 14190 },
  "tradein":      { "fair": 10020, "good": 11120, "verygood": 11520, "excellent": 11920 }
}

Each band is a single dollar value per condition, not a low/mid/high range. Pick the value for the user's attested condition. If the user gave a range or didn't specify, default to good (KBB's documented default: "Has some repairable cosmetic defects, free of major mechanical problems, ~50% of all cars we value").

The same fetch also exposes:

  • info.bodyStyle (Sedan, Coupe, Hatchback, SUV, Pickup Truck, Convertible, Wagon, Van/Minivan).
  • info.driveTrain (FWD, RWD, AWD, 4WD).
  • info.fuelType, info.transmission, info.engineType.
  • info.chromeStyleId and info.trimId (KBB internal identifiers — preserve if you'll re-query later, since they're sticky across editions).
  • selectedOptionsData.groups[].sections[].options[] — the full standard + optional equipment list with isTypical, isSelected, isConfigurable flags.
  • JSON-LD block (<script type="application/ld+json">) with name, model, brand, image, dimensions (width, height), offers.price, and an expert-review excerpt.

4. (Optional) Fetch 5-Year Cost to Own — new vehicles only

For current-and-future model years (2025+), KBB publishes a cost-to-own page:

GET https://www.kbb.com/{make}/{model}/{year}/cost-to-own/

Grep for each category — each is a {year1,year2,year3,year4,year5,total} block:

depreciation, fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs, financing, stateFees, costtoown

The aggregate totalCostToOwn value also appears at the top. Used-vehicle pages (year ≤ current - 1) do NOT have a /cost-to-own/ subroute — KBB only publishes 5-year forward projections for new cars. For used vehicles, surface depreciation.totalThreeYearDepreciation and depreciation.historicalValues[] (annual resaleValue + tradeInValue back-history) from the trim page instead.

5. (Optional) Fetch original MSRP for used vehicles

The /newcar/ syndication endpoint returns null MSRP for used vehicles. To recover the original MSRP of a used vehicle, hit the matching new-vehicle endpoint with the same vehicleId but using /usedcar/ — the Retail value approximates current dealer asking, not historical MSRP. For true original MSRP on a used vehicle, scrape the trim page's <script type="application/ld+json"> block (offers.price) — the JSON-LD offers.price field carries the historical sticker price for the model year.

Browser fallback

If both the syndication API and the trim-page HTML are blocked (Akamai 403 — not observed in our testing, but the site does sit behind Akamai Bot Manager and _abck/bm_sz cookies are set on every response), drive the value-picker form via browse cloud browse with --verified --proxies:

SID=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --verified --proxies | jq -r '.id')
browse cloud browse --connect "$SID" open "https://www.kbb.com/whats-my-car-worth/"
# Pick year → make → model → style; type mileage + ZIP; choose condition.
# Each step is a click on a typeahead/select. Use `browse cloud browse snapshot` between steps.
browse cloud browse --connect "$SID" snapshot
# Final value page URL will be /{make}/{model}/{year}/{trim-style-slug}/?vehicleid=...&intent=trade-in-sell
browse cloud browse --connect "$SID" get url     # capture canonical URL
browse cloud browse --connect "$SID" get html body > value-page.html  # then parse as in step 3
browse cloud sessions update "$SID" --status REQUEST_RELEASE

Do NOT click "Get My Cash Offer", "Sell My Car to a Dealer", "Connect with Dealer", "Get Pre-Qualified", "Apply for Financing", or any control that opens a lead-gen form. Submitting a real VIN to the Instant Cash Offer flow lands the user on a dealer-lead funnel that captures name/email/phone — read the offer range from the displayed widget and stop. ZIP is the only PII allowed in the anonymous valuation form.

Site-Specific Gotchas

  • The syndication apikey is public, not user-keyed. 76a9532b-fa54-4d02-8e6a-91c3fb85376c appears verbatim in every KBB page's HTML and is unchanged across regions, makes, and years (verified 2026-05-15 across Civic 2018 / Camry 2020 / Civic 2025). It's the "Price Advisor widget" syndication key — distinct from the paid B2B Vehicle Pricing API key (which requires partnership). Don't request a key from KBB; just use this one.
  • Condition does NOT affect FPP / Retail values from the syndication API. Verified 2026-05-15: the same vehicleId + ZIP + mileage with condition= cycled through excellent/verygood/good/fair returns identical FPP and Retail values. FPP and Retail are mileage-and-region-banded, not condition-banded — they represent dealer-reconditioned asking prices. The condition= parameter only changes the SVG widget's prose footer ("Good (50% of all cars we value)" vs. "Excellent (3% of all cars)"). Trade-In and Private Party (from the trim page, step 3) ARE condition-banded — those are the values that vary with the user's attested condition.
  • Trade-In / Private Party live in the trim page, NOT the syndication API. Only the usedcar/ endpoint's FPP and Retail are exposed via syndication. To get TradeIn/PrivateParty you MUST fetch the trim page with ?intent=trade-in-sell. Without that query param, the page renders the buy-used context and the pricing.tradein / pricing.privateparty JSON is omitted.
  • ?intent=trade-in-sell flips the page context but does NOT trigger a dealer-lead form. It's safe to read — the lead form only opens when the user clicks "Get Cash Offer" or "Find a Dealer". The URL alone is read-only.
  • Used vs. new endpoint routing. Use /usedcar/?... for prior model years and /newcar/?... for the current and future model years. Hitting the wrong endpoint returns 404 or null values. Heuristic: if year >= currentYear use /newcar/, else /usedcar/. For the most-recent model year that's still being sold new alongside the next model year (e.g. 2025 in May 2026), try /newcar/ first; if values are null, retry with /usedcar/.
  • 5-Year Cost to Own only for new-and-future model years. The /cost-to-own/ subroute exists only when KBB still publishes a forward-looking 5-year projection. Used vehicles (year ≤ currentYear - 1) return 404 on /cost-to-own/ — surface 3-year historical depreciation from the trim page instead (depreciation.totalThreeYearDepreciation + historicalValues[]).
  • bodyStyle disambiguation on multi-style trims. Some models (Honda Civic LX, Toyota RAV4 LE, BMW 3-Series) have a trim available in multiple body styles (sedan/coupe/hatchback). The trim slug already encodes the style (lx-sedan-4d vs lx-coupe-2d vs lx-hatchback-4d), but the model page lists both href="/honda/civic/2018/lx-sedan-4d/" AND href="/honda/civic/2018/lx-coupe-2d/" for the same trim name. Disambiguate via the user-supplied body style; if absent, default to the most popular style for that model (sedan for cars, suv-4d for SUVs, pickup-truck for trucks).
  • Akamai is in front of kbb.com, but the syndication subdomain is permissive. _abck, bm_sz, bm_mi, ak_bmsc cookies are set on every kbb.com response. In 4 verification fetches across Civic / Camry / 2 years / 2 ZIPs (97818 OR, 30307 GA), we got clean 200s with no challenge interstitials. The site does have a "200 OK with redirect to anti-bot challenge page" failure mode that other reports cite — if you see HTML starting with <html lang="en"><head><title>kbb.com</title> and no value JSON, fall back to step 4 (browser with Verified + proxy). upa.syndication.kbb.com is served by a different infra stack and has not exhibited bot challenges in any test.
  • ZIP geolocation: query param wins over cookie wins over IP. KBB respects &zipcode= on both the syndication API and the trim page URL; without it, the page sticks the request-IP's edgescape ZIP into a ZipCode cookie (we saw OR 97818 defaulted to Boardman, Oregon — likely a Browserbase or upstream proxy egress). Always pass &zipcode= explicitly; trust the response's infoAndDefinitions.footer string (Edition for GA 30307) to confirm scope.
  • vehicleid is not stable across model-year editions. Civic LX Sedan 4D was vehicleid=431246 for the 2018 model year and a different ID for 2019+. Re-resolve from the trim page each time; don't cache the vehicleId without also pinning the year.
  • Mileage = 0 returns "typical mileage" values. The syndication API treats &mileage=0 (or omitted) as "use the typical mileage for this year". KBB's published "typical mileage" is roughly 12,000 mi/yr × age, e.g. ~96,000 mi for an 8-year-old vehicle. Pass real mileage when known; pass 0 explicitly when you want the "average car of this vintage" baseline.
  • The KBB Instant Cash Offer (ICO) flow is a lead-capture funnel — success: true does not mean "you got an offer". ICO requires a real VIN, ZIP, and email/phone before showing the cash offer number. The skill is read-only; do not progress past the ZIP-and-VIN screen. The "Cash Offer range" that the value page sometimes shows in a small widget ($X,XXX – $Y,YYY) is a non-binding estimate and is safe to read without engaging the funnel.
  • Browser-connect via Browserbase WebSocket from this generator sandbox is currently DNS-restricted. During iter-1, connect.usw2.browserbase.com was not resolvable from the generator's egress (only api.browserbase.com is on the allow-list), so live-browser screenshots could not be captured. The API-led workflow above completed end-to-end without ever needing the live-browser path. Consumers of this skill running in a normal Browserbase environment will have full browse cloud browse available; the fallback in step 4 is written assuming they do.
  • 5-Year Cost to Own categories cover everything task.md requested except "opportunity cost". KBB's current breakdown is depreciation + fuel + insurance + maintenance + repairs + financing + stateFees + (sum) costtoown. They retired the explicit "opportunity cost" line item in a 2024 rework — it's folded into financing (assumed APR 5.09% / 60 mo / typical down payment, per financingDescription). Surface financing as the line item; note that opportunity cost is no longer reported separately.

Expected Output

{
  "success": true,
  "query": {
    "year": 2018,
    "make": "Honda",
    "model": "Civic",
    "trim": "LX",
    "bodyStyle": "Sedan",
    "mileage": 65000,
    "zipcode": "30307",
    "condition": "good"
  },
  "resolved": {
    "year": 2018,
    "make": "Honda",
    "model": "Civic",
    "trim": "LX Sedan 4D",
    "trimSlug": "lx-sedan-4d",
    "vehicleId": 431246,
    "chromeStyleId": "397407",
    "bodyStyle": "Sedan",
    "drivetrain": "FWD",
    "engine": "4-Cyl, i-VTEC, 2.0 Liter",
    "transmission": "Automatic, CVT",
    "fuelType": "gasoline",
    "originalMSRP": { "value": 19150, "currency": "USD", "source": "json-ld" },
    "kbbUrl": "https://www.kbb.com/honda/civic/2018/lx-sedan-4d/"
  },
  "values": {
    "tradeIn": {
      "currency": "USD",
      "byCondition": { "fair": 10020, "good": 11120, "verygood": 11520, "excellent": 11920 },
      "selected": { "condition": "good", "value": 11120 }
    },
    "privateParty": {
      "currency": "USD",
      "byCondition": { "fair": 11990, "good": 13240, "verygood": 13740, "excellent": 14190 },
      "selected": { "condition": "good", "value": 13240 }
    },
    "typicalListingPrice": {
      "currency": "USD",
      "low": 15930,
      "mid": 16930,
      "high": 17930,
      "label": "Typical Listing Price (formerly Suggested Retail)"
    },
    "fairPurchasePrice": {
      "currency": "USD",
      "low": 15290,
      "mid": 16290,
      "high": 17290,
      "label": "Kelley Blue Book Fair Purchase Price"
    },
    "instantCashOffer": null
  },
  "fiveYearCostToOwn": null,
  "depreciation": {
    "totalThreeYearDepreciation": 2454,
    "currentResaleValue": 13150,
    "currentTradeInValue": 11050,
    "historicalValues": [
      { "year": 2023, "resaleValue": 15604, "tradeInValue": 13811, "annualDepreciation": 3119 }
    ]
  },
  "features": {
    "standard": [
      { "category": "Entertainment", "items": ["MP3 Player", "Bluetooth Streaming Audio"] },
      { "category": "Safety", "items": ["..."] }
    ],
    "optional": []
  },
  "dataFreshness": {
    "requestDate": "2026-05-15T00:00:00Z",
    "edition": "05/15/2026 Edition for GA 30307",
    "versionNumber": 12345
  }
}

Outcome shapes for non-happy paths

// Trim could not be resolved from year/make/model (no matching slug in the model page)
{ "success": false, "reason": "trim_not_found", "candidates": ["lx-sedan-4d", "lx-coupe-2d", "lx-hatchback-4d"] }

// Vehicle is too new — no FPP/MSRP yet (next-year model not yet priced)
{ "success": false, "reason": "values_not_published", "year": 2027, "make": "Honda", "model": "Civic" }

// Akamai challenge on the trim page (browser fallback required)
{ "success": false, "reason": "anti_bot_challenge", "remediation": "Retry with --verified --proxies via browser path" }

New-vehicle response (current/future model year, includes 5-Year Cost to Own)

{
  "success": true,
  "resolved": {
    "year": 2025, "make": "Honda", "model": "Civic", "trim": "LX",
    "vehicleId": 474112,
    "kbbUrl": "https://www.kbb.com/honda/civic/2025/lx/"
  },
  "values": {
    "msrp":              { "currency": "USD", "value": 25400 },
    "fairPurchasePrice": { "currency": "USD", "low": 23600, "mid": 24300, "high": 24900 },
    "typicalListingPrice": null,
    "invoice":           null
  },
  "fiveYearCostToOwn": {
    "currency": "USD",
    "total": 43351,
    "byCategory": {
      "depreciation": { "year1": 5294, "year2": 1404, "year3": 1765, "year4": 2146, "year5": 2547, "total": 13156 },
      "fuel":         { "year1": 1021, "year2":  872, "year3":  863, "year4":  866, "year5":  857, "total":  4479 },
      "insurance":    { "year1": 3293, "year2": 3293, "year3": 3293, "year4": 3293, "year5": 3293, "total": 16465 },
      "maintenance":  { "year1":    0, "year2": 1034, "year3":  519, "year4": 2051, "year5":  519, "total":  4123 },
      "repairs":      { "year1":    0, "year2":    0, "year3":  385, "year4":  641, "year5":  641, "total":  1667 },
      "financing":    { "year1": 1022, "year2":  817, "year3":  601, "year4":  373, "year5":  134, "total":  2947 },
      "stateFees":    { "year1":  242, "year2":    0, "year3":  136, "year4":    0, "year5":  136, "total":   514 }
    },
    "notes": "Opportunity cost was retired from KBB's breakdown in 2024 — it's now folded into the 'financing' line item (assumed APR 5.09% / 60-mo term)."
  }
}