Buying and prices

Can I buy a part from you?

No. Plenty.Parts is a catalog, not a shop. We hold no stock, take no payments and ship nothing. When you find the part you need, you follow a link to a seller and buy it there.

Why is the price here different from the seller's price?

Prices on this site are collected automatically from sellers and can be out of date by the time you see them. The price on the seller's own page is the one that applies. If the two differ, trust theirs.

Where is my order? Can I return a part?

We cannot help with either — we were not a party to your purchase. Order status, delivery, warranty and returns are handled by the seller you bought from, under their terms. Their order confirmation email is the place to start.

Do you earn money when I buy?

Sometimes, yes: some links earn us a commission, and you never pay more because of it. That is how the site is funded. The full explanation is on the Affiliate Disclosure page.

Finding the right part

How do I know a part will fit my car?

Search by your vehicle — make, year, model — or enter your VIN, and the catalog will show parts linked to that vehicle. Treat that as a strong starting point, not a guarantee: always compare against the part you are replacing or check with a mechanic. Manufacturers change specifications mid-model-year, and the same part number can mean different things in different markets.

I have the old part with a number on it. What now?

Search for that number directly. This is the most precise way into the catalog, and it will also show you cross-references — equivalent parts from other brands, which are often the same component at a very different price.

What is a cross-reference?

Manufacturers rarely make everything themselves. The same filter can be sold as an original part by a carmaker and as an aftermarket part by the company that actually made it, under different numbers. A cross-reference links those numbers together, so you can choose between them knowingly.

Genuine, OEM, aftermarket — what is the difference?

Genuine is a part sold under the vehicle manufacturer's own brand and part number — a Toyota part in a Toyota box.

OEM is a part from the company that actually made it for the carmaker, sold under that company's own brand and number. Very often it is the identical component from the same production line, without the carmaker's markup on top.

Aftermarket is a part made by an independent supplier — sometimes the very same factory, sometimes a different one, with quality ranging from better than the original to considerably worse.

The catalog labels brands accordingly, so the choice is yours rather than the shop's. Tools, chemicals and consumables carry no label at all: these three grades describe car parts and do not apply to them.

The catalog says a part fits, but it does not. What do I do?

Tell us. Email [email protected] with the subject Catalog data, and include the part number and your vehicle. Reports from people who actually fitted the part are the fastest way this catalog gets better.

Vehicle identification

Why do you ask for a VIN?

A VIN identifies the exact version of your vehicle — engine, body, market, production period — which is what turns "parts for this model" into "parts for this car". You can use the catalog without it.

What do you do with my VIN?

We send it to vehicle data providers so it can be decoded, and we keep it in protected form for 30 days so a repeated lookup does not have to be made again. After that the record is erased. Details are in the Privacy Policy.

The site itself

Do I need an account?

No. There is no registration and no login — the whole catalog is open.

Do you use cookies or track me?

Cookies — only if you say yes. We use Google Analytics to see which parts of the catalog are useful, and nothing is loaded from Google until you accept the banner — if you decline, no request is made at all. There is no advertising on this site and no ad tracking. You can change your answer at any time from the Cookie Policy page.

Two things happen regardless of your answer, and neither sets a cookie or tracks you: the icon font used across the site is loaded from Cloudflare, and product images on offer listings come from Amazon's and AliExpress's image servers. Loading a file from another company means that company sees your IP address — both are listed in the Privacy Policy.

Where does your data come from?

From commercial automotive data providers, manufacturers' published references and our own cross-reference processing. More about that on the About Us page.

My question is not here.

Write to [email protected]. We answer within 5 business days.