Free CarVertical Alternative: Check Any UK Car’s MOT, Tax & DVLA History

CarVertical is a Lithuanian online service that builds vehicle history reports from a car's VIN. It compiles accident data, mileage readings and ownership changes from databases across Europe, which makes it strong for imported cars. Reports cost around £39.99 each.

Partly. The DVLA's MOT history and vehicle tax checks on GOV.UK are completely free and confirm the basics for any UK car. For a fuller picture, Automano gives you a free unlimited VIN decoder and free preview, and charges just £5.90 for the full report (history, recalls and valuation) — versus £39.99 at CarVertical. Genuinely free full history reports don't exist anywhere; the data has to be paid for.

No. CarVertical lets you decode a VIN for free, but the full report with history, accidents and mileage costs about £39.99 per car. There's no free version of the report itself. Automano's VIN decoder is free and unlimited with no signup, and the full report is £5.90.

Start with the free GOV.UK MOT and tax checks to confirm the basics, then use a free reg-plate check like TotalCarCheck or VehicleScore. To pull DVLA data, MOT history, recalls and a market value together in one place, Automano gives you a free VIN decoder and preview and a £5.90 full report — the most complete low-cost option for the everyday UK car.

No. The free GOV.UK MOT and tax checks are a solid first step — they confirm MOT history, mileage at each test and tax status for UK-registered cars. But they don't cover outstanding finance, write-off/theft markers or a market value. For finance and theft markers you need an HPI-style check; Automano bundles DVLA data, full MOT history, official recalls and a market value for £5.90.

CarVertical pulls from official sources and partners and is generally reliable, especially for imports. No service guarantees 100% coverage, though — what's available depends on the country and the databases that car appears in. It's always smart to cross-reference: the free GOV.UK checks for UK admin data, plus a paid report like Automano for history, recalls and valuation.

With Automano's free VIN decoder, just enter the 17-character VIN and instantly get the manufacturer, country of origin, model year and technical specifications. It's 100% free, no signup and no usage limits.

Automano aggregates official UK vehicle data, MOT history and manufacturer recall records, then flags discrepancies — mileage anomalies between MOT tests, open recalls, data that doesn't line up. Combined with a market-value estimate, that gives you one clear verdict on a car instead of five tabs of raw data.

It depends where the car comes from. For a European or UK used car, carVertical is usually the better pick: it pulls from European registries and UK DVLA/MOT records, and a single report lists at £39.99 (UK). For a US or Canadian car, Carfax wins — its North-American databases are the deepest, and a Carfax Europe report starts at €29.99. Match the service to the car's history, not just the price.

carVertical. It is a European service that reports on around 30 markets and includes UK DVLA/MOT history, so it covers the records that follow an EU or UK car through its life. Carfax Europe covers roughly 20 continental countries and the US/Canada, but it has no UK DVLA/MOT feed and several national registries do not share data with it — so for a typical European car, carVertical typically returns the fuller picture.

On carfax.eu a single report is €29.99, a 3-report bundle is €49.99 (€16.66 per report) and a 5-report bundle is €74.99 (€14.99 per report), with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee and no subscription. In the US, a single Carfax report is $44.99 and five reports cost $99.99.

Sometimes. A single carVertical report lists at £39.99 in the UK, €29.99 in Europe and $34.99 in the US, and multi-report bundles bring the per-report price down further. In Europe the single-report prices are near-identical (both €29.99), so the deciding factor is coverage rather than price: carVertical includes UK DVLA/MOT and more European registries, while Carfax is deeper on US/Canadian cars.