Pricing and fee disclosure

AAP separates a vehicle's base pricing context from the price a dealer actually advertises, and makes mandatory dealer charges explicit.

price is the authoritative advertised vehicle price. It includes every mandatory, non-government dealer charge and dealer-required add-on. An optional fees array can itemize charges already included in price; never add them to price again.

price is deliberately not called an out-the-door price. Sales tax, title, registration, and other required government charges vary by buyer and jurisdiction and are excluded. A true out-the-door quote requires buyer-specific context.

This page defines protocol behavior, not legal advice. Dealers remain responsible for federal, state, and local requirements.

Current FTC context

In March 2026, the FTC warned 97 auto dealership groups that advertised prices must include all mandatory fees. The agency also identified advertisements that use rebates unavailable to all consumers, require an extra down payment, condition price on dealer financing, or omit required add-ons as potentially illegal pricing practices under Section 5 of the FTC Act.

• FTC announcement about deceptive auto pricing (March 2026)
• FTC sample warning letter

The FTC's separate CARS Rule is not in force. The Fifth Circuit vacated it on January 27, 2025, and the FTC later withdrew the vacated rule. AAP therefore does not claim that the CARS Rule is the source of these contract requirements. The contract instead adopts a transparent pricing model that aligns with the FTC's current enforcement statements and makes safer comparison possible.

The FTC's current automotive materials require the truthful total, but do not establish a general federal requirement to itemize every mandatory dealer fee in the advertisement. AAP therefore permits an authoritative price without fees. The optional breakdown supports transparency, state-specific implementations, and systems that already carry itemized charges without making federal compliance depend on it.

Pricing fields

Every amount is an integer in whole US dollars.

Field	Required?	Meaning	Buyer-agent treatment
msrp	optional	Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price.	Context only.
list_price	optional	Dealer's base list price before discounts, rebates, mandatory dealer charges, and required add-ons.	Context only; never present it as the payable price.
price	optional	Authoritative advertised vehicle price after universally available discounts and including all mandatory dealer charges and required add-ons. Excludes government charges.	Use for price filters, sorting, and comparisons. It may stand alone.
fees	optional	When present, the complete effective itemization of mandatory, non-government dealer charges and required add-ons for the vehicle.	With price, display as an included breakdown; do not add the amounts again. Without price, treat as informational only.

price may reflect only discounts or rebates available to every consumer. A discount that depends on military service, recent graduation, loyalty, conquest, financing choice, trade-in, or another eligibility condition must not reduce price.

AAP does not add a second final_price field. price is the one authoritative advertised total; two competing totals would invite ambiguity and stale data. A buyer-specific out-the-door quote is a later calculation outside this inventory contract.

Fee states

fees has three intentionally different states:

Representation	Meaning
field omitted	An itemized breakdown was not provided. An otherwise authoritative price remains valid.
"fees": []	The publisher affirmatively reports no mandatory dealer charges or required add-ons for this vehicle.
non-empty fees	The array is the complete effective fee snapshot for this vehicle.

Each fee is { "name": string, "amount": integer }. It covers mandatory, non-government dealer charges and dealer-required add-ons. It excludes optional products and government charges such as tax, title, and registration.

{
  "name": "Documentation fee",
  "amount": 500
}

Rooftop defaults versus vehicle snapshots

A rooftop MAY publish fees in dealer.information as its complete default schedule. This avoids repeating configuration inside a dealer's own source system, but it does not create a consumer-side join.

The resolution rule is simple:

1. The inventory publisher MAY start with the rooftop defaults.
2. It resolves any vehicle-specific differences before returning inventory.
3. When the publisher supplies vehicle fees, it emits the complete effective itemization rather than a delta.
4. Buyer agents use only Vehicle.fees for itemized vehicle charges. They MUST NOT fetch dealer.information to complete a breakdown, join by the mutable rooftop name, or merge rooftop and vehicle fee arrays.

When vehicle fees differ from rooftop defaults, Vehicle.fees replaces the rooftop array in full. It is never a delta. This keeps inventory responses self-contained, deterministic, and safe when dealer information is missing or cached at a different time.

Arithmetic and discounts

The protocol does not require list_price + sum(fees) == price. For example, a universally available discount can make the values differ:

{
  "vehicle_id": "vehicle_demo_civic",
  "year": 2022,
  "make": "Honda",
  "model": "Civic",
  "condition": "cpo",
  "msrp": 26500,
  "list_price": 24990,
  "price": 26280,
  "fees": [
    { "name": "Documentation fee", "amount": 500 },
    { "name": "Pre-installed theft protection", "amount": 1000 }
  ],
  "status": "available",
  "updated_at": "2026-04-30T10:15:00Z"
}

Here, the dealer applied a $210 discount available to every buyer: $24,990 - $210 + $1,500 = $26,280. price remains authoritative. Buyer agents display $26,280 and the two included fees; they do not derive a replacement price from list_price.

If the relationship is not explained or cannot be reconstructed, consumers still use price and SHOULD treat any fees as its included breakdown. They SHOULD suppress or de-emphasize list_price rather than inventing a discount. Future protocol work may add a structured incentives model; fees must not be overloaded for discounts.

When list_price and fees are supplied without price, both are informational. A buyer agent may label them separately as a base/list amount and known mandatory fee itemization, but it MUST NOT present either value—or their sum—as the purchasable price. If the publisher can certify that their sum is the complete advertised amount, it publishes that amount as price.

Provider mapping

Provider data	AAP mapping
Complete advertised price, fee breakdown unavailable	Publish price; omit fees.
Complete advertised price plus complete fee itemization	Publish price and fees ([] when there are affirmatively no mandatory dealer charges).
Base or list amount only	Publish list_price; omit price.
Base/list amount plus known mandatory fees, authoritative total unavailable	Publish list_price and fees; omit price. Consumer agents treat both as informational and do not derive a price.
Amount reduced by a conditional rebate	Do not publish it as price. Publish the non-conditional advertised amount, or omit price if that amount is unavailable.
Rooftop defaults plus vehicle exceptions	If publishing vehicle fees, resolve the defaults inside the publisher and emit one complete Vehicle.fees array.

Normative behavior

• Publishers MUST include all mandatory, non-government dealer charges and required add-ons in price.
• Publishers MAY omit fees when an itemized breakdown is unavailable; omission does not invalidate an otherwise authoritative price.
• When publishers include fees, the array MUST be the complete effective vehicle itemization, and every amount MUST already be included in price when price is present.
• Publishers MUST NOT reduce price with a rebate or discount unavailable to every consumer.
• Publishers MUST NOT reduce price by an additional required down payment or condition it on dealer financing.
• Publishers MUST NOT include optional products or government charges in fees.
• Buyer agents MUST NOT add fees[].amount to price.
• Buyer agents MUST NOT derive an advertised price from list_price, fees, or their sum when price is absent.
• Buyer agents MUST use price, not list_price, for price_min, price_max, sort.field: "price", and cross-dealer comparisons.
• Buyer agents MUST NOT infer missing fees from a rooftop or another vehicle.

inventory.facets.price_range likewise aggregates available price values. Vehicles without price remain valid inventory results, but they cannot safely participate in price-based comparisons without provider-specific behavior that the protocol does not standardize.