Updated August 2026 · By Bertram Sargla, founder of MOT Checkup

Cheapest car history check UK 2026

Only paid tier with AI analysis: MOT Checkup Premium at £3.99 (cheaper than HPI, AA and CarCheck). Cheapest full HPI-style report with finance + write-off + stolen: Total Car Check at £7.95. HPI is £19.99 for the same underlying licensed data — paying 2.5x for the brand on the cover. This page ranks eight UK providers by price and breaks down exactly what each one buys you — including one, VehicleScore, that publishes no price at all until you reach its payment step.

The price comparison

How we ranked these

Ranked by what the price actually buys, then by price. MOT Checkup Premium (£3.99) leads for the AI reliability and mileage-anomaly layer that no other provider in this list offers, and undercuts HPI, AA and CarCheck. Total Car Check leads on price for the licensed HPI-style layer (finance + write-off + stolen) that MOT Checkup does not currently bundle. The two are complementary, not substitutes — many serious buyers run both.

The ranking

When cheapest is false economy

Four patterns where the cheapest headline price is the wrong choice. First, MyCarCheck Basic at £4.99 — cheaper than Total Car Check but excludes finance data, which is the most common single risk on a used car. The £3 saved doesn't survive one undisclosed outstanding finance balance. Second, any provider who heavily downsells you in checkout (MyCarCheck's £9.99 two-pack offered as a back-out save is the textbook example) — the unit price drops on volume you don't need. Third, a free 'HPI check' that turns out to be a free MOT check labelled aggressively — the licensed layer is never genuinely free. Fourth, and hardest to price-compare at all, a provider that will not show you the number until you are already at the payment step. VehicleScore publishes no price on any of its marketing pages — we read £4.95 / £11.95 / £14.95 from its own checkout on 26 August 2026 — and the £11.95 tier it calls a “Full History Check” needs a further £7.95 for dealer service history, taking the real cost of both to £19.90.

The honest decision tree: start with the free MOT history layer (MOT Checkup or GOV.UK), use it to triage whether the vehicle warrants a paid licensed check, then pay the lowest price for the exact layer you need. For most buyers under £5,000 vehicle value, that's a free MOT check followed by a £7.95 Total Car Check. For buyers who want the AI reliability layer in addition, that's MOT Checkup Premium at £3.99 plus the £7.95 Total Car Check for the licensed layers.

The free layer everyone hides

The MOT history record on a UK car is open DVSA data and free at multiple providers — MOT Checkup, GOV.UK, Carwow, Check Car Details and Vehicle Score all return it at £0. Any provider charging for the MOT layer alone is reselling free data. The DVLA Vehicle Enquiry (tax, MOT expiry, SORN, basic spec) is similarly free at gov.uk and at MOT Checkup. We lead with that honesty because the rest of the industry doesn't. If you do need the licensed finance / write-off / stolen layer, see the ranking above — the cheapest is Total Car Check at £7.95.

What MOT Checkup does and does not currently license

MOT Checkup's free tier covers DVSA MOT history, mileage timeline with anomaly detection, AI reliability scoring against the same make and model, will-it-pass MOT prediction, DVLA Vehicle Enquiry and the open-recall lookup. The Premium tier (£3.99) adds the full PDF report and AI vehicle Q&A on top of the same official data. What we do not currently bundle is the licensed HPI-style data layer (outstanding finance, MIAFTR write-off categories, full PNC stolen feed). For those, the honest answer is a £7.95 Total Car Check. See /pricing for the full tier breakdown and /methodology for the data-source disclosure.

Frequently asked questions