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CDK Global

CDK Global is the dominant U.S. dealer management system (DMS) provider, serving roughly 15,000 automotive dealerships with software covering sales, F&I, fixed operations, parts, CRM, and digital retail. CDK was spun out of ADP in 2014 and acquired by Brookfield Business Partners in July 2022 for $8.3B (taken private). The company operates the Fortellis platform — a developer marketplace and integration hub with 135+ published APIs, 425+ marketplace apps, 82,000+ dealer integrations, and 6.7B+ API transactions per year — exposing CDK DMS data to ISVs, OEMs, and third-party automotive systems. CDK suffered a major BlackSuit ransomware attack on June 19, 2024, paying ~$25M in bitcoin to restore service over roughly two weeks; the outage caused an estimated $605M in dealer losses and triggered numerous lawsuits.

agent ready

Solid contracts, transparent operations, and an easy start — typically complete on four or five facets with one clear soft spot.

Kin Score

API Evangelist profiles CDK Global the way a machine reads it — 61 machine-readable artifacts across 13 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.

Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — CDK Global scores 61.4/100 (strong), with a separate agent-readiness read of 54/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.

Kin Score

This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 61.4/100 · strong
Contract Quality 17.0 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 13.5 / 20
Commercial Clarity 7.9 / 20
Operational Transparency 4.8 / 13
Governance 9.5 / 12
Discoverability 8.8 / 10
Agent readiness — 54/100 · agent ready
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 6 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

How we profile CDK Global

Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for CDK Global. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.

APIs 13

Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Fortellis Platform

Fortellis is CDK Global's open automotive commerce platform — an API gateway, app marketplace, and developer community that brokers data flow between dealerships, ISVs, OEMs, he...

Fortellis Event Relay Data Plane Proxy (AsyncAPI)

AsyncAPI specification for the Fortellis Event Relay data-plane proxy used by event sources to publish events into Fortellis for fan-out to subscribers.

Fortellis AsyncAPI Hello World Reference

Hello World AsyncAPI reference distributed by Fortellis to teach the asynchronous API pattern, channel topology, and message envelope conventions used across Fortellis event APIs.

CDK Global adopt API

The adopt API from CDK Global — 2 operation(s) for adopt.

CDK Global adopt delete API

The adopt delete API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for adopt delete.

CDK Global adopt update API

The adopt update API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for adopt update.

CDK Global cancel API

The cancel API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for cancel.

CDK Global create API

The create API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for create.

CDK Global events API

The events API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for events.

CDK Global manage API

The manage API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for manage.

CDK Global query API

The query API from CDK Global — 6 operation(s) for query.

CDK Global Service Booking API

The Service Booking API from CDK Global — 6 operation(s) for service booking.

CDK Global update API

The update API from CDK Global — 1 operation(s) for update.

Scroll within the panel for all 13 ·

Postman Collections 5

A runnable collection turns the contract into something a developer can execute in seconds. We profile them because the fastest way to trust an API is to make a real call against it.

Ready-to-run Postman collections for exercising this provider's APIs.

Open Collections 5

Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

appointments

OPEN COLLECTION

Pet Adoption

OPEN COLLECTION

Booking Sessions

OPEN COLLECTION

Arazzo Workflows 13

Real integrations are rarely a single call. Arazzo describes the multi-step sequences — auth, then create, then confirm — so both a human and an agent can follow the choreography, not just the endpoints.

Multi-step API workflows described with the Arazzo specification.

CDK Global Add Service Session Item

Create a booking session, add a requested service item, and read it back.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Book Service Session

Create a booking session, discover an available store and slot, and book it.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Cancel Service Appointment

Find a customer's appointment, confirm it exists, then cancel it with a reason.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Create Data Record

Add a record to the data domain store and read it back by its identifier.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Inspect Available Slot

List a store's open slots and pull the full detail of the first slot.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Parts Availability Check

Health-check the parts store, then look up a product only when it is up.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Parts Inventory Lookup

List parts inventory, pull a product's detail, then read its size.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Relay Appointment Event

Read a service appointment, then relay it as an event to an event sink.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Remove Service Session Item

Confirm a booking session item exists, then remove it from the session.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Reschedule Service Appointment

Read an existing appointment, update its date/time, then confirm the change.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Schedule Service Appointment

Create a service appointment for a vehicle and read it back to confirm.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Update Data Record

Read a data-domain record, branch on whether it exists, then update it.

ARAZZO

CDK Global Update Service Session Item

Create a booking session, query a requested item, and update its details.

ARAZZO

Scroll within the panel for all 13 ·

Pricing Plans 1

Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Rate Limits 1

Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Cdk Global Rate Limits

4 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Event Specifications 2

Not every API is request/response. AsyncAPI describes the event-driven and streaming side — the webhooks and channels — so the asynchronous half of the interface is documented the same way the synchronous half is.

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

Fortellis Event Relay Data API

Provides an Event Source (Publisher) the ability to post event through Fortellis Event Relay.

ASYNCAPI

Hello World

This is the example hellos world asynchronous API.

ASYNCAPI

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Cdk Global Context

0 classes · 9 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 3

Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.

CDK Global API Rules

3 rules · 3 warnings

SPECTRAL

CDK Global API Rules

5 rules · 3 warnings

SPECTRAL

CDK Global API Rules

10 rules · 2 errors · 5 warnings

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 5

Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Fortellis Booking Session

7 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Fortellis Event

6 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Fortellis Marketplace App

8 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Fortellis Part

8 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Fortellis Service Appointment

10 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 2

JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Fortellis Event Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Fortellis Service Appointment Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 5

Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Cdk Global Authentication

oauth2 · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Cdk Global Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Scopes 1

OAuth scopes are the vocabulary of least-privilege access. Profiling them shows exactly what an integration — or an agent acting on a user's behalf — is allowed to do.

OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.

Cdk Global Scopes

3 scopes · implicit

3 scopes

SCOPES

Agentic Access 1

An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Cdk Global Agentic Access

25 operations · 12 acting

25 operations · 12 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Every other property we hold for CDK Global — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/cdk-global · machine-readable index on apis.io