Updated August 2026

MOT Checkup vs VehicleScore: two similar free checks, two very different checkouts

The free tiers are close. The difference shows up at the payment step: VehicleScore publishes no price anywhere on its website, and charges £7.95 again for service history after you have already paid £11.95 for a "full" report. Every MOT Checkup price is on one page.

The honest comparison: on the free tier these two services do broadly the same job. Both decode the DVLA record, show MOT and tax status, a mileage timeline and ULEZ/CO2 running costs, and both attach a score to the vehicle. Where they part company is the paid side. VehicleScore runs four price points — £4.95, £11.95, £14.95, plus £7.95 for service history on top — none of which appear on their website; we read them from their own checkout on 26 August 2026. MOT Checkup runs three, all printed on /pricing, with nothing added at the payment step.

Side-by-side comparison

VehicleScore figures captured 26 August 2026 — prices from their own checkout (they publish none on their marketing pages), rating from their public Trustpilot profile. We earn no commission from any provider on this page. Verify current prices before you pay.

The price you cannot see until you are paying

On 26 August 2026 we went looking for VehicleScore's prices the way a buyer would. There are none on the homepage, none on the product pages, none on a pricing page — because there is no pricing page. The numbers appear for the first time on the payment step. To find out what a VehicleScore report costs, you have to begin buying one.

We are not going to speculate about why. The practical consequence is the part that matters to a buyer: you cannot line VehicleScore up against another provider before committing, and the £7.95 service-history charge is not something you can factor in while you are still deciding. For contrast, MOT Checkup's four numbers — £0, £2.99, £3.99 and £5.99 — are on one page, and that is the whole list.

The second charge for service history

VehicleScore's £11.95 tier is called the Full History Check. Dealer service history is not in it. That is a separate £7.95, charged on top of whichever report you already bought — so a buyer who wants the finance check and the service record is spending £19.90, arrived at in two steps rather than one.

This is the dominant theme in their public reviews rather than an isolated grumble: their Trustpilot profile sits at 2.9 out of 5 from 182 reviews with 27% at one star, and the recurring complaint is paying for something labelled "full" and then meeting another charge for the part they came for. It is a structural complaint about how the product is packaged, not about the accuracy of the data.

What VehicleScore genuinely has that we do not

• Licensed finance, stolen and write-off data inside the £11.95 Full History Check. MOT Checkup does not currently license those layers at any price. If that is the check you need, our Premium report is not a substitute and we will not pretend it is.
• An Experian-backed £10,000 data guarantee on that report. We do not offer a data guarantee.
• Dealer service history as a product at all, albeit at a further £7.95. We do not offer it in any tier.
• A trade rate of £2.49 per check for dealers. We have no trade tier — our free check is unlimited, but our paid tiers are per-plate at the same price for everyone.

What MOT Checkup adds instead

• An AI reliability score and common-fault context for the specific make, model and mileage, free on every report, alongside insurance group, VED estimate, safety rating and an open-recall lookup.
• A £2.99 Basic tier that unlocks the newest odometer reading, the full advisory and defect detail on the most recent tests and a branded PDF — £2 under VehicleScore's cheapest paid tier.
• A £3.99 Premium tier whose only addition over Basic is an AI Q&A chat about that specific car. We say that plainly on the pricing page rather than dressing it up.
• A 30-day no-questions money-back guarantee on every paid tier. We found no published refund policy on VehicleScore and have not assumed one either way.

Where we hold something back too

In fairness: our free tier is not unconditionally more generous than theirs. We show every MOT test with its date, result and the earlier mileage readings for free, but the newest odometer figure and the full defect detail on the most recent tests sit behind the £2.99 Basic tier. VehicleScore's free mileage timeline may not hold that back. If the single thing you want is the latest recorded mileage at zero cost, check both — that is a fair reason to prefer theirs, and we would rather tell you than let you find out at our own paywall.

Which to use

• Free triage before a viewing: either works. MOT Checkup if you want the AI reliability and common-faults layer on top of the record.
• You need finance, write-off or stolen data: VehicleScore's £11.95 report, or another licensed provider — Total Car Check is £7.95 and HPI is £19.99. MOT Checkup cannot help here.
• You want a full service history: budget £19.90 at VehicleScore (£11.95 + £7.95), and know that before you start rather than after.
• You want to know the cost before committing: MOT Checkup. Every price is on /pricing and there is nothing added at the payment step.

The honest summary

VehicleScore is a real product with a real free tier and a licensed data layer we do not have. The criticism it earns is not about its data — it is about the shape of the transaction: a price you cannot see until you are paying, and a "full" report that turns out to need a second £7.95 for the service history most buyers assumed was in it. MOT Checkup is smaller in scope and says so. What we will not do is hide a number until you are at the till.

Frequently asked questions