Free car check

What you get

• Every MOT test on record: passes, failures, and the exact defects recorded
• Every mileage reading, plotted, with any drop or implausible jump flagged
• Current tax status and when it runs out
• MOT expiry, and how many days are left
• Make, colour, fuel, engine size, year, CO₂ and Euro status
• Faults that keep coming back rather than being fixed

What a free check can and cannot tell you

The free check runs on open government data: the DVLA vehicle register and the DVSA MOT record. That data is genuinely useful, and it is the same data the paid sites start from, which is why we do not charge for it.

It does not cover the private registers. Outstanding finance, insurance write-offs and police stolen markers are held by the finance industry, insurers and the police, and every lookup against them costs money. Nothing in the free check should be read as telling you a vehicle is finance-free or has never been written off. It cannot tell you that, and the report says so rather than leaving you to assume.

What we do with the data that other sites do not

Most check sites show you the MOT history as a list and leave you to interpret it. The list is where the information is, but it is not where the meaning is.

• Mileage is analysed rather than listed. A reading that goes backwards is tested against the ordinary explanations first, such as a retest after a failure, a reading in kilometres, or an obvious typing error, and reported as unexplained only when none of them fit.
• Defects are grouped by the part of the vehicle they relate to, so a car that has failed on the same corroded subframe three times reads as one escalating problem rather than three unrelated events.
• Corrosion is tracked as a progression. Surface corrosion becoming corroded, then seriously weakened over three tests, is a different vehicle from one with a single surface note.
• Where a check could not be completed, the report says so. It never shows a green tick for something it did not manage to look at.

Checking a car you are thinking of buying

Run the check before you travel, not after. The MOT history tells you how a car has been looked after in a way that a clean advert never does, and it takes seconds.

Two things are worth more than everything else on the report. The first is whether advisories were acted on. An advisory for a worn tyre at one test, with the same advisory at the next, tells you the owner defers maintenance. The second is whether the mileage pattern is consistent. A car that covered 15,000 miles a year for five years and then 2,000 in the last two either changed hands or stopped being used, and both are worth asking about.

Common questions

Is the car check really free?

Yes. The MOT history, mileage analysis, tax status and vehicle details are free with no account and no card. We charge only for the private register checks, meaning finance, stolen and write-off, because each of those costs us money per lookup.

Do I need to create an account?

No. You can run a check and read the full free report without signing up. An account is only useful if you want to save vehicles to a garage and get MOT and tax reminders.

Where does the data come from?

Vehicle details and tax status come from the DVLA vehicle register. MOT history comes from the DVSA. Both are official sources, used under the Open Government Licence. Finance, stolen and write-off records come from the industry registers and are the paid part of the report.

How current is the information?

It reflects what the DVLA and DVSA registers held at the moment of the check. MOT results appear within a day or two of the test. Tax status updates when the DVLA record updates. The report shows the time it was run, so you know what it is current as of.

Can I check a car that is not mine?

Yes. Vehicle details, MOT history and tax status are public information tied to the registration, not to a person. We do not show, hold or publish the names or addresses of keepers.

Other free checks