Pricing and FTC compliance

AAP v0.1 standardizes four explicit pricing fields on every vehicle. The single most important rule:

price is the FTC-final out-the-door amount. It is the total amount the buyer would pay for this specific vehicle, including all required fees, mandatory add-ons, and any conditions on dealer financing. Anything less is a violation of FTC enforcement policy.

This rule is non-negotiable. Dealers MUST keep price accurate; buyer agents and aggregators rely on it to compare offers honestly across dealers.

Why the FTC rule exists

In March 2026 the FTC sent warning letters to 97 auto dealership groups about deceptive pricing practices. The letters specifically called out the practice of advertising a price that excludes mandatory fees, conditions on dealer-arranged financing, or required dealer add-ons.

• FTC press release (March 2026): FTC warns 97 auto dealership groups about deceptive pricing
• FTC CARS Rule: the underlying federal rule that requires "offering price" to reflect the full price minus only required government charges and optional add-ons.

AAP's price field is the protocol-level expression of that rule. Buyer agents — including LLM-driven shopping assistants — sort, filter, and compare dealers on price. If a dealer publishes a price that is not the final amount, the buyer agent will surface that vehicle as artificially cheap and the dealer will be advertising a deceptive price across every agent that touches the API.

The four pricing fields

Every Vehicle object in AAP MAY carry four Money values. Each has a precise meaning.

Field	Required?	Meaning	Includes regional taxes?	Includes mandatory fees / add-ons?	Notes
msrp	optional	Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (sticker price).	no	no	Set by the OEM, not the dealer.
list_price	optional	Dealer's advertised base list price BEFORE incentives, taxes, and fees.	no	no	The number the dealer would put on a window sticker as their asking price, separate from required fees.
offered_price	optional, conditional	Regional price equal to list_price plus applicable taxes for the buyer's zip_code.	yes (for the supplied zip_code)	no	Present only if zip_code is supplied AND the dealer enables desking.
price	RECOMMENDED	FTC-final out-the-door price after all incentives, mandatory fees, and required add-ons.	yes	yes	The single number a buyer agent uses for comparison and the only one used by inventory.search price_min / price_max filters and sort.field: "price".

All four are Money objects:

{ "amount": 26780, "currency": "USD" }

How the fields relate

msrp is informational only. list_price is the base advertised number. offered_price is the regional intermediate (what the dealer would offer in a region with given tax rate). price is the final number — the only one a buyer agent should use to make comparisons or run price_min / price_max filters.

Concrete worked example

A 2022 Honda Civic listed by a California dealer:

{
  "vehicle_id": "vehicle_demo_civic",
  "vin": "1HGCV1F30KA000001",
  "year": 2022,
  "make": "Honda",
  "model": "Civic",
  "condition": "certified",
  "msrp":          { "amount": 26500, "currency": "USD" },
  "list_price":    { "amount": 24990, "currency": "USD" },
  "offered_price": { "amount": 26615, "currency": "USD" },
  "price":         { "amount": 26780, "currency": "USD" },
  "zip_code": "94105",
  "status": "In Stock",
  "last_verified_at": "2026-04-30T10:15:00Z"
}

What the buyer is actually being asked to pay: $26,780. That is the FTC-final out-the-door figure. The other three fields are descriptive context. A buyer agent shopping for a Civic at "under $27,000" should match this listing on price, not list_price.

If the same dealer lists the same VIN with price: { amount: 24990 } while charging the customer $26,780 at the dealership, that is the exact pattern the FTC's 2026 warnings target.

How zip_code and desking work

offered_price is regional. It is list_price plus applicable taxes for a specific buyer location. AAP exposes the buyer location in two ways:

• In inventory.vehicle, the request carries an OPTIONAL zip_code. When supplied AND the dealer supports desking, the response MAY include offered_price. When zip_code is absent, the dealer MUST omit offered_price.
• In inventory.search, the response vehicles do NOT carry offered_price for arbitrary buyer locations. Buyers should follow up with inventory.vehicle + zip_code to receive the regional price.

price (the FTC-final out-the-door amount) does NOT depend on zip_code for its presence — the dealer SHOULD always compute and publish it for advertised inventory.

What dealers MUST and MUST NOT do

These are normative; they are also restated in the Behavior rules page.

• Dealers MUST publish price as the final out-the-door amount including all mandatory fees, conditions on financing, and required add-ons.
• Dealers MUST NOT advertise a price that omits required fees, conditions on dealer financing, or required add-ons.
• Dealers SHOULD publish list_price and msrp for transparency, but the buyer agent will compare on price.
• Dealers MAY publish offered_price only when zip_code is supplied and the dealer supports desking.
• Buyer agents MUST use price (not list_price) for filters and sort by default. AAP defines inventory.search's price_min / price_max filters and sort.field: "price" against the price field for exactly this reason.

How price is used elsewhere in AAP

• inventory.search — filters.price_min and filters.price_max apply to price. sort.field accepts "price" (default sort comparator) and also "list_price", "offered_price", "msrp" for those who want to sort on a specific field.
• inventory.vehicle — the response always carries price; offered_price is included only with a supplied zip_code.
• inventory.facets — price_range aggregates min/max price values across the matching set.

For full request/response shapes see the skills reference.