Vehicle Rc Lite Search Api

RC Lite Search

Introduction

The RC Lite Search API returns a lightweight subset of an Indian vehicle's Registration Certificate details against its registration number. For a single registration number you receive four fields: the registered manufacturer, the model and variant, the date the vehicle was first registered, and its fuel type.

This is a lite response by design. It carries vehicle attributes only — there are no owner details, no address, no chassis or engine number, and no insurance, fitness or permit data. If your use case requires any of those, use the full RC verification API instead.

A registration number that is correctly formatted but has no retrievable record returns 409, not an empty result. You are required to treat this as a lookup miss rather than a transport failure. The same 409 also covers a registry that is momentarily unable to serve the record, so the two cases are not distinguishable from the response alone.

Dates are returned in DD/MM/YYYY format. All values in result are strings, and manufacturer, model and fuel type are passed through in uppercase exactly as the registry holds them rather than mapped onto a fixed vocabulary. The API is a stateless lookup — there is no request id to retain, no idempotency key, and no expiry window on anything returned to you.

How to call the API

You are required to pass your API key in the Authorization header and set Content-Type to application/json. The API accepts POST requests only.

A successful lookup returns HTTP 200 with the payload wrapped in a result object.

{
  "result": { }
}

Any failure returns the payload wrapped in an error object carrying a machine-readable reason and a human-readable message. Branch your handling on reason, not on message, as message text may be refined over time.

{
  "error": {
    "name": "error",
    "message": "Vehicle Number is not valid",
    "status": 400,
    "reason": "BAD_REQUEST",
    "type": "Bad Request",
    "statusCode": 400
  }
}

Authentication failures return HTTP 401 before the request reaches the API and are not wrapped in the error object. They carry a message field only.

API Input Guidelines

You are required to pass the vehicle registration number in vehicleNumber. This field is mandatory and must be a string.

The registration number is case-insensitive. dl13st9134 and DL13ST9134 are treated identically.

Leading and trailing whitespace is removed before the number is processed. DL13ST9134 resolves to the same vehicle.

Whitespace inside the number is not accepted. DL 13 ST 9134 is rejected as invalid.

Separator characters are not accepted. DL-13-ST-9134 is rejected as invalid.

Only letters and digits are permitted. Any other character causes the request to be rejected.

After whitespace is removed, the registration number must be between 8 and 10 characters and must contain at least one digit.

Standard Indian formats are accepted, including the state-series form (DL13ST9134), the shorter form (DL011234), and Bharat series numbers (22BH1234AB).

One vehicle per request. The API does not accept arrays or batch input.

Any additional fields in the request body are ignored.

Sample Curl

Preproduction

curl --location 'https://api-preproduction.signzy.app/api/v3/vehicle/rc-lite-search' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Auth Token>' \
--data '{
    "vehicleNumber": "DL13ST9134"
}'

Production

curl --location 'https://api.signzy.app/api/v3/vehicle/rc-lite-search' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Auth Token>' \
--data '{
    "vehicleNumber": "DL13ST9134"
}'

Input Parameters

Parameter	Description	Required
Authorization	Your API key, passed as a header.	Yes
Content-Type	Must be set to application/json.	Yes
vehicleNumber	Vehicle registration number to look up. Case-insensitive; surrounding whitespace is ignored.	Yes

Sample Response

Two-wheeler

{
  "result": {
    "regNo": "DL13ST9134",
    "make": "TVS MOTOR COMPANY LTD",
    "model": "TVS JUPITER (BS IV)",
    "registrationDate": "21/07/2017",
    "fuelType": "PETROL"
  }
}

Four-wheeler

{
  "result": {
    "regNo": "KA01MJ2938",
    "make": "TOYOTA KIRLOSKAR MOTOR PVT LTD",
    "model": "TOYOTA INNOVA 2.5/V (E4)",
    "registrationDate": "30/07/2012",
    "fuelType": "DIESEL"
  }
}

Response Parameters

PARAMETER NAME	REQUIRED/OPTIONAL	DATA TYPE	DESCRIPTION
result	Required	Object	Container for the lookup result. Present on every successful response.
result.regNo	Required	String	Registration number of the vehicle, normalised to uppercase and trimmed. Use this rather than your input as the reconciliation key.
result.make	Required	String	Registered manufacturer as recorded in the national vehicle registry. Returned in uppercase and often the full legal entity name rather than the consumer brand.
result.model	Required	String	Registered model and variant as recorded in the national vehicle registry. May include variant or emission-standard suffixes. Free text; formatting is not standardised across manufacturers.
result.registrationDate	Required	String	Date the vehicle was first registered, in DD/MM/YYYY format.
result.fuelType	Required	String	Fuel type recorded against the vehicle, returned in uppercase, for example PETROL or DIESEL. Passed through rather than mapped to a fixed list; treat it as an open string.

Status Codes

CODE	REASON	MESSAGE
400	VALIDATION_ERROR	"vehicleNumber" is required
400	VALIDATION_ERROR	"vehicleNumber" is not allowed to be empty
400	VALIDATION_ERROR	"vehicleNumber" must be a string
400	BAD_REQUEST	Vehicle Number is not valid
401	—	No API key found in request
401	—	Invalid authentication credentials
409	UPSTREAM_ERROR	Error in getting data from upstream

A 400 is raised before any lookup is performed — VALIDATION_ERROR covers presence and type checks on the field, and BAD_REQUEST covers the format check. A 409 means the registration number was well formed but no record could be retrieved; the request itself was valid and the same request may succeed on a later attempt.

Getting help

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, require clarification, or have ideas for how to make the documents or any of our services better. You can reach out to us at [email protected].