Updated September 2026
What does a free car check actually show?
The short answer
Every free car check in the UK is built on the same two public records: the DVLA vehicle record and the DVSA MOT history. That gives you tax status, vehicle details, CO2 and Euro status, every MOT since 2005 with recorded mileage, defects and advisories, and open safety recalls. Everything else — finance, write-off, stolen, servicing — is either paid or does not exist.
Here is our free check — no email, no sign-up:
Free · Official DVLA & DVSA data · Instant · No sign-up
What MOT Checkup checks for free
MOT Checkup's free check uses the same two public records as every other free check, and adds the analysis on top: a mileage-drop warning, an AI reliability score and the DVLA log book date, in one lookup with no email or sign-up.
- Every MOT test since 2005 — date and pass/fail result for each, from the official DVSA record. The advisories, failure defects and odometer reading behind each test are free in full on cars with up to five MOT tests, and for the earlier tests on longer histories.
- Mileage-drop warning — the report flags any fall in recorded mileage between MOT tests, the classic sign of a wound-back odometer.
- AI reliability analysis — a score out of 100 with plain-English strengths and concerns, worked out from that car’s own MOT record.
- Tax and MOT status — current DVLA tax status and MOT expiry date.
- Safety recalls — DVSA manufacturer recalls issued for the make and model (whether the fix was done on this car is a question for a franchised dealer).
- Date the V5C log book was last issued — straight from DVLA. We show this date, not the number of previous keepers.
- Export marker — whether DVLA has the car marked for export.
- Identity cross-check: DVLA vs MOT record — whether make, colour, fuel type and engine size agree across both official records. A mismatch can point to a cloned plate or an undeclared respray.
- Recent V5C reissue flag — a log book reissued shortly before a sale is worth a question.
- Long MOT-history gaps — years with no test, which usually mean the car was off the road or in for a long repair.
- Import signal — first UK registration much later than the year of manufacture.
Free tip: compare the issue date on the seller’s V5C log book with the date DVLA holds for the last V5C issued — a mismatch means the document in front of you isn’t the current one.
Not held, at any tier: outstanding finance, insurance write-off records (MIAFTR), police stolen markers (PNC) and the number of previous keepers. For those, use a provider that licenses the registers — see our honest price comparison. Paid tiers here (Basic £2.99, Premium £3.99, two-report bundle £5.99) add the newest tests’ full detail, a branded PDF and an AI vehicle Q&A chat over the same official data.
There are dozens of free car check sites and they are all drawing on the same two wells. That is not a criticism — the data is public and free, and presenting it well is a genuine service — but it does mean the differences between them are about presentation and about how much they hold back, not about access to secret information.
This page is a straight inventory: what is genuinely in a free check, what is not, and how to recognise the difference between a free check and a paid one wearing free clothing.
The two records everything is built on
The first is the DVLA vehicle record, exposed free through the Vehicle Enquiry Service and keyed on the registration mark alone. It returns tax status and due date, MOT status and expiry, make, colour, year of manufacture, month of first registration, engine capacity, fuel type, CO2 emissions, Euro status, wheelplan, revenue weight, type approval, whether the vehicle is marked for export, and the date the V5C was last issued.
The second is the DVSA MOT history, also free and also keyed on the registration. It covers tests since 2005 for cars, motorcycles and vans, and returns for each test the result, the date, the odometer reading the tester recorded, the defects that caused a failure, the minor defects and advisories, and the testing location. GOV.UK also surfaces possible vehicle recall information alongside it.
That is the complete raw material. Any free check offering something outside those two lists is either inferring it, buying it, or not actually providing it.
What is deliberately not in a free check
Four categories of information sit outside the free records, and understanding why is more useful than a list.
Outstanding finance is on a private register that lenders pay into and that resells lookups commercially — there is no government copy. Insurance write-off categories are recorded by insurers on MIAFTR, run by the Motor Insurers' Bureau, which is an industry database rather than a public one. Stolen markers come from police and industry sources with the same commercial structure. And service history is not a free-versus-paid question at all: there is no national service-history database in the UK, so nothing returns one from a registration.
This is why a genuinely free check cannot tell you a car is clean. It can tell you what two government registers contain. Absence of an adverse record in those registers is not evidence about registers they do not cover.
| Data | Source | Free? |
|---|---|---|
| Tax status, SORN, tax due date | DVLA | Yes |
| Make, colour, year, engine, fuel | DVLA | Yes |
| CO2 emissions, Euro status | DVLA | Yes |
| Marked for export, V5C last-issue date | DVLA | Yes |
| MOT status and expiry | DVLA / DVSA | Yes |
| MOT results since 2005 | DVSA | Yes |
| Mileage recorded at each test | DVSA | Yes |
| Defects and advisories | DVSA | Yes |
| Open safety recalls | DVSA | Yes |
| Outstanding finance | Private lender register | No |
| Insurance write-off category | MIAFTR (MIB) | No |
| Stolen marker | Police / industry register | No |
| Insurance in force | Motor Insurance Database | Own vehicle only |
| Service history | No such database exists | Not available at any price |
Sources: DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service field schema; GOV.UK MOT history service; Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIAFTR and the Motor Insurance Database). Checked August 2026.
How to tell a real free check from a teaser
The commercial model of most "free check" sites is to show you enough of the free data to establish that they have data, then present the paid fields as blurred, padlocked or colour-coded so that the shape of an answer is visible without the answer.
That is legitimate marketing, but it changes what you should do next. A red icon next to "Finance" does not mean finance was found; nothing has been queried yet.
The tell is simple. Ask what happens when you never pay. If the free tier gives you the full MOT timeline including per-test mileage, the defects and the advisories, it is a real free check. If the MOT history itself is truncated or gated, the free tier is a shop window.
- Real free tier: full MOT timeline, every test, per-test mileage, defects and advisories, all visible
- Teaser: MOT history truncated to the latest test, or mileage hidden behind a sign-up
- Teaser: status icons for finance, write-off or stolen with no result behind them
- Email wall: a results page that requires an address is selling your contact details, not data
- Honest wording: a good check says "no record was returned", never "this car is clear"
What we show for free, stated exactly
Our free check returns the DVLA vehicle record and the complete DVSA MOT history for any UK registration on one page: tax status and due date, MOT status and expiry, make, colour, year, engine, fuel type, CO2 and Euro status, every MOT test since 2005 with the mileage the tester recorded, the defects and the advisories, and any open DVSA safety recall for that make and model. No card, no account, no email address.
We do not hold outstanding finance, insurance write-off records, stolen markers, insurance status or service history. We do not blur them or put an icon next to them, because we do not have them.
And the caveat we would want if we were the buyer: nothing here is a certificate. A clean result means nothing adverse appeared in the two government registers we can see. A car can have a spotless record and outstanding finance, an unrecorded accident repair, or no servicing at all.
HPI is a registered trade mark of HPI Limited. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to HPI Limited; the term appears only because it is what people search for when they mean a paid provenance report.
When to pay for more
The honest threshold is the value of the car against the cost of being wrong. Below a couple of thousand pounds, the free records plus a careful inspection and a look at the V5C are a defensible place to stop.
Above that, the three things you cannot get free — finance, write-off category, stolen markers — start to outweigh the price of a report, because any one of them can cost you the entire purchase.
If you do pay, read the wording on what a negative result means. Finance registration is voluntary and MIAFTR depends on insurers reporting, so any provider claiming certainty is overselling a probabilistic answer.
If a car still has finance on it, the lender can repossess it from you — and you lose both the car and the money.
See exactly what we show, free
Two minutes and a registration number is the cheapest due diligence there is.
- Every MOT failure and the exact defect that caused it
- Every odometer reading on record — clocking shows up as a drop
- Open DVSA safety recalls that have never been fixed
Free · Official DVLA & DVSA data · No sign-up