# Introduction

AutoUncle Data Services gives your product professional used-car valuations for European markets, with an honest account of how precise each one is. Use it from your backend over REST, from an AI agent over MCP, or try it by hand in the console playground.

> **Beta.** AutoUncle Data Services is in beta. Until version 1.0 the API, MCP tools and agent skill may change often, and some changes may break existing integrations. Every change is announced in the [changelog](/docs/changelog). Read it before you upgrade, and keep your client tolerant of new fields and codes.

## About AutoUncle

AutoUncle has valued used cars independently since 2010. We were the first to put a price rating on every listed car, and we showed that a car's market value can be set by independent algorithms rather than by hand. Data Services distils more than fifteen years of that market intelligence, our AI valuation models and our vehicle intelligence into one API for developers, professionals and AI agents.

## What you can build

- **Pricing and stock tools** for dealers and marketplaces: value a listing, rate an asking price, flag outliers.
- **Lending, leasing and insurance flows** that need a defensible market reference with uncertainty, not a single number.
- **Fleet and remarketing dashboards** that value many vehicles within clear rate and concurrency limits.
- **Agents and assistants** that answer "what is this car worth?" with the market, currency, price basis and precision spelled out.

## How it fits together

| Part | What it does | Where |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Valuations API | Resolves a vehicle and estimates its asking price in one market, with intervals, a precision grade, price-rating bands and hints to improve precision. | `POST /v1/valuations` |
| Selling-time forecasts | Values a vehicle and forecasts how long it takes to sell at each price-rating band and at your asking price. | `POST /v1/selling-times` |
| Vehicle catalogue | A car specifications database: brands, models, generations, drivetrains and equipment variants, with stable IDs you can send back to pin a vehicle exactly. | `GET /v1/catalogue/...` |
| Vehicle identification | A VIN decoder, German HSN/TSN lookup, Danish licence plate lookup and vehicle data normalization, each returning one catalogue-identified vehicle as an [AutoUncle Vehicle Schema (AVS)](https://github.com/AutoUncle/avs) document. | `POST /v1/vehicles/...` |
| Account | Checks a key's mode, scopes, markets, rate limit and credits. Free. | `GET /v1/account` |
| MCP server | The same operations as tools for agents, with OAuth or an API key. | `https://data-services.autouncle.com/mcp` |
| Console | Workspace, team, API keys, playground, request logs, usage and billing. | [/console](/console) |
| Agent skill | Instructions that teach a coding agent to integrate safely. | [/skill/SKILL.md](/skill/SKILL.md) |

REST, MCP and the playground run the same operations, with the same scopes, limits and billing. A result looks the same whichever way you ask for it.

## Key ideas in one minute

- **One market per valuation.** Every request names a `country`, such as `DK`, `SE`, `DE` or `GB`. The result is in that market's currency and only applies there. See [markets](/docs/concepts/markets).
- **Test keys are free and simulated.** Keys starting with `au_test_` return deterministic, synthetic results so you can build and test without spending credits. Live keys (`au_live_`) return real market valuations. See [testing](/docs/guides/testing).
- **You pay only for success.** A live valuation uses one credit only when it returns `status: "valued"`, plus one when requested comparables are returned and one when sent photos are used. A selling-time forecast uses two. VIN decoding, HSN/TSN and plate lookups and normalization use one each when they return vehicle data. Test keys, refusals, failures, replays, catalogue and account calls are free. See [credits](/docs/credits).
- **Precision is part of the answer.** Read the price together with its `price_basis`, `intervals`, `precision.grade`, `warnings` and `improve_precision` hints. See [precision](/docs/precision).
- **Pin the vehicle when you can.** Catalogue IDs remove ambiguity and raise precision. See [the catalogue picker guide](/docs/guides/catalogue-picker).
- **Retries are safe.** Send an `Idempotency-Key` and you can repeat a request after a network failure without being charged twice. See [idempotency](/docs/concepts/idempotency).
- **Notes and attributions travel with the result.** Every result carries `notes` and `attributions`; keep them with the price when you show or store it. See [notes and data sources](/docs/notices).

## Where to start

| If you want to... | Start here |
| --- | --- |
| Make your first valuation in five minutes | [Quickstart](/docs/quickstart) |
| Value listings from your own system | [Value a listing](/docs/guides/value-a-listing) |
| Let users choose the exact vehicle | [Build a catalogue picker](/docs/guides/catalogue-picker) |
| Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or another agent | [Connect an agent](/docs/mcp) |
| Look up a field or an endpoint | [API overview](/docs/api-reference) |
| Understand an error | [Errors & retries](/docs/errors) |
| Go to production | [Production checklist](/docs/production-checklist) |

## For AI agents

This documentation is also available as plain Markdown. Append `.md` to any page URL, read the [agent index](/llms.txt), or fetch [every page in one file](/llms-full.txt). The [OpenAPI contract](/openapi.yaml) is the canonical description of the REST API.