Open datasets
The reference tables behind this site, published as files you can download, reuse, and cite. Same numbers as the pages — no signup, no API key, no scraping required.
- Owner's manual first
- The exact vehicle manual is the final authority.
- Grade and specification
- Both requirements are checked separately.
- Sources and corrections
- Primary evidence, checked dates, and a public correction path.
Two things make a reference useful to someone else: the data has to be machine-readable, and the license has to be unambiguous. Both files below are released under CC BY 4.0 — use them in a classroom, a spreadsheet, an app, or an article, as long as you credit the source. If you need something that is on the site but not here, say so through the contact form and it can be added.
SAE viscosity grade summary
Every viscosity grade published on Oil Manual, with its winter (W) number, hot-viscosity number, and the plain-English cold-start and hot-film descriptions shown on the viscosity chart.
Fields
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grade - SAE grade label as written on a bottle, e.g. 5W-30.
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w - The winter number parsed from the grade. Lower means the oil is classified for colder starting, not that it is better.
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hot - The second number parsed from the grade — the SAE hot-viscosity category, not a measured viscosity value.
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coldStart - Plain-English description of cold-start behavior for that W category.
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hotFilm - Plain-English description of film thickness at operating temperature.
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url - Canonical page explaining that grade.
Where it comes from
Derived from the grades Oil Manual publishes an explainer for. It is an educational summary keyed to published SAE J300 grade names; it does not reproduce the J300 standard or its test limits. The same data is rendered for readers on /oil-viscosity-chart/, and both are generated from one source at build time, so the file and the page cannot disagree.
Motor oil glossary
The English motor-oil glossary: term, plain-English definition, and the canonical page that explains it in full.
Fields
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term - The glossary term.
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definition - Plain-English definition, as shown on the glossary page.
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url - Canonical explainer page, where one exists. Absent for terms with no own page.
Where it comes from
Written by the Oil Manual editorial system and maintained with the rest of the site. English only — localized glossaries are machine-drafted translations and are not exported. The same data is rendered for readers on /glossary/, and both are generated from one source at build time, so the file and the page cannot disagree.
License
Everything on this page is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. You may copy, redistribute, adapt, and build on it, including commercially, provided you credit Oil Manual and indicate whether you changed anything.
This license covers these files. It does not extend to the standards they refer to: SAE J300, the API categories, ACEA sequences, and OEM approvals are published by their own issuing bodies under their own terms, and nothing here reproduces a standard document.
How to cite
Copy this line, or adapt it to your citation style:
Oil Manual (oilmanual.com) — CC BY 4.0
When you quote a specific value rather than the whole file, link the canonical page for that
row — every export carries a url field for exactly that purpose. If you find an error
in the data, the corrections page is the fastest way to get it fixed
for everyone.
Content review dates in these exports run through . That is when the underlying pages were last reviewed, not a guarantee that a standard has not changed since.
Looking for the chart image?
The viscosity chart is a separate, ready-to-embed asset with its own attribution snippet — see the viscosity chart page for the PNG, the SVG, and the embed kit.