Every price on this site comes from counting the Japanese market rather than estimating it. This page is where you can check my work.
The current dataset
Download: kei truck and kei van prices, August 2026 (CSV, 449 vehicles)
One row per vehicle. Columns: model, body type, year, price in yen, price in USD, drivetrain, the date measured, the source, the exchange rate used, and the listing ID so you can look up the individual vehicle.
| Model | Listings | Median | 4WD share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suzuki Carry | 99 | ¥399,000 ($2,509) | 48% |
| Honda Acty | 80 | ¥398,000 ($2,503) | 70% |
| Subaru Sambar | 78 | ¥364,000 ($2,289) | 67% |
| Mitsubishi Minicab | 64 | ¥394,000 ($2,478) | 64% |
| Daihatsu Hijet | 60 | ¥453,000 ($2,849) | 65% |
| Subaru Sambar Dias (van) | 14 | ¥790,000 ($4,969) | 36% |
| Suzuki Every (van) | 13 | ¥500,000 ($3,145) | 54% |
| Mitsubishi Minicab Van | 12 | ¥525,000 ($3,302) | 8% |
| Daihatsu Atrai (van) | 10 | ¥424,000 ($2,667) | 20% |
| Daihatsu Hijet Van | 7 | ¥474,000 ($2,981) | 29% |
| Daihatsu Hijet Cargo | 7 | ¥281,000 ($1,767) | 43% |
| Honda Acty Van | 5 | ¥270,000 ($1,698) | 20% |
How the numbers are produced
- Query Carsensor, Japan’s largest used vehicle marketplace, for each model with the year filter set to 2001 and earlier — the vehicles that are 25 years old or will be within the year.
- Walk every results page and record each listing’s year, total asking price, drivetrain and listing ID.
- De-duplicate by listing ID. Carsensor repeats inventory across later pages, and counting those repeats inflates a model’s apparent supply by more than two to one — an error I made and caught while building this.
- Drop anything outside the eligible year range and anything without a total price (lease listings quote a monthly figure instead).
- Convert at the exchange rate recorded in the file.
Prices are dealer asking prices including the total payable, not auction results. Public retail listings skew toward higher-mileage stock, so treat these medians as conservative rather than optimistic.
The unlock pipeline
The same method applied to vehicles that are not yet eligible, measured August 19, 2026. These are the trucks and vans waiting for their 25th birthday:
| Model year | Unlocks in | Listed in Japan today | Median asking |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 2027 | 128 | ¥380,000–450,000 by model |
| 2003 | 2028 | 142 | |
| 2004 | 2029 | 197 | |
| 2005 | 2030 | 165 | |
| Total waiting | 632 | ||
632 vehicles waiting against 449 currently eligible: the supply of importable kei trucks grows for at least the next four years. What that means for buyers is covered in the 25-year rule guide.
Why publish it
Anyone can write “kei trucks cost about $2,500 in Japan.” The number is only worth something if you can check it. Publishing the raw file means you can recompute the medians, disagree with my filtering, or look up an individual vehicle. If you find an error, tell me and I will correct it on the page with a note.
Charts you can reuse
Three figures built from this dataset, free to republish under the same CC BY 4.0 terms — credit and a link back is all the licence asks. Right-click to save, or ask me for a higher-resolution or differently-cropped version.
- Where a kei truck can be registered — all 50 states, colour-coded (PNG)
- The same truck, both sides of the ocean — Japan medians vs US completed sales (PNG)
- Supply is growing, not running out — what becomes eligible 2027–2030 (PNG)
Licence and how to cite
This dataset is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may republish, reanalyse or build on it — including commercially — provided you credit the source.
Suggested citation:
Narita, F. (2026). Kei Truck and Kei Van Price Index, Japan, August 2026 edition. Kei Truck Japan. https://keitruckjapan.com/data/
If you are writing about kei truck prices and want a figure you can stand behind, use these. They are complete counts rather than samples, the date is on every row, and the method is described above so a reader can check your work as well as mine. If you publish something using this data, tell me — I will link to it from here.
What this data can answer
- What a specific kei truck model actually costs in Japan today, and how that compares to US asking prices
- How common 4WD really is in the eligible supply (it is far more common than US coverage assumes)
- How many vehicles are waiting to become eligible, and when
- Whether prices are moving — the monthly series makes that visible from the second month onward
Also reusable: how states define a kei truck
Separate from the price series, this site publishes a comparison of how US states define a kei truck in statute — and the finding that several of them use a 130-inch length limit, which is the Japanese kei standard replaced in October 1998. Every kei truck built since measures 133.7 inches.
The comparison table, the statutory citations and the manufacturers’ own dimension figures are on How US States Define a Kei Truck, under the same CC BY 4.0 licence. If you are a journalist or a legislative staffer and need a specific state checked or a model not listed, write to info@keitruckjapan.com and I will pull it.
Updates
This is measured monthly. Each month’s file stays online, so the series becomes a record of what kei trucks actually cost in Japan over time — including what a moving exchange rate does to the price Americans pay. Earlier snapshots referenced in the guides were taken on August 17 and 18, 2026.