How much of a car check is actually free?
"Free car check" is one of the most searched things by anyone about to buy a used car, and it's a fair question; nobody wants to pay to find out a car isn't worth looking at. The honest answer is that a good chunk of the useful stuff genuinely is free. Whether a car has a valid MOT, when it expires and how its last test went is public information, and our free MOT check pulls it straight up from the reg. The tester's notes from every test in Great Britain since 2005 are public too, on GOV.UK's MOT history service, and they tell you a lot: a car that's just sailed through with no advisories is a very different prospect from one that keeps failing on the same corroded brake line.
Where "free" starts to stretch the truth is on the deeper record. The MOT history itself is free on GOV.UK, but the keeper count, plate and colour changes and the full registered spec come from licensed data that costs money, and so does putting it all together with the mileage readings checked for a clocked car. Any site promising all of that for nothing is either showing you a teaser and asking for payment at the last step, or harvesting your email to sell you something. We'd rather just be straight: the quick checks are free, the paid report is £5.00, and there's a sample report so you can see exactly what that buys before you decide.
One thing worth saying plainly: nobody gives away outstanding finance or write-off category data for free, because it is not cheap to license. Be sceptical of anyone who claims otherwise. The free tools here cover the DVLA and MOT side of a car's life, which is the part most buyers sensibly look at first. When you need the finance, write-off and theft records too, that is our £14.99 full history check.
If you're partway through weighing up a car, the sensible order is: run the free MOT check to sanity-test the advert, read the used-car buying checklist, then pull the vehicle report once you're serious enough to go and view it. That way you've spent nothing ruling out the obvious duds and only £5.00 on the one you actually care about.