We exist to protect you from losing thousands on a bad car.
IsItAGoodCar was built by a team of car enthusiasts and data engineers. One of us bought a "perfect" used estate that turned out to have £8,400 of outstanding finance. The dealer vanished. The car was repossessed. The bank kept the money. We decided that should never happen to anyone else.
The seller had full service history, a clean MOT, and the car looked immaculate on the forecourt. Only when the finance company contacted the new keeper — not the dealer — did the truth come out. The hire-purchase agreement had never been settled. Under UK law, the finance company had every right to take the car back. The buyer was left with nothing: no car, no refund, and no way to chase a dealer who had already shut up shop.
That experience made us look at the tools available to ordinary buyers. Existing vehicle check services charged £19.99 or more per report, hid their best data behind confusing upsells, and often used databases weeks or months out of date. The information existed — DVLA registration data, DVSA MOT records, police stolen-vehicle markers — but it was scattered across government portals, trade-only systems, and expensive third-party aggregators. We built IsItAGoodCar to bring it all together in one place, at a price that doesn't make you wince.
The gap between what buyers need and what they're offered
The UK used-car market is worth over £50 billion a year. Most buyers spend weeks researching models and prices, then hand over thousands of pounds with nothing more than a seller's word and a clean MOT certificate.
Traditional vehicle history checks — the ones most people know — were built for the motor trade. They were designed to be sold at trade volume, with trade pricing and trade jargon. When consumers started buying them directly, the pricing barely changed. A single HPI check still costs £19.99 or more, and if you want finance, stolen, and write-off data together, you're pushed toward a subscription or a "bundle" that includes information you don't actually need.
Meanwhile, the UK government publishes a huge amount of vehicle data for free. The DVLA's Vehicle Enquiry Service tells you tax status, MOT expiry, first registration date, engine size, fuel type, and emissions. The DVSA publishes full MOT history going back to 2005, including pass and fail results, advisory items, and recorded mileage at each test. What the free tools don't tell you is whether the car has outstanding finance, whether it's been reported stolen, or whether it was written off and categorised as Cat A, Cat B, Cat S, or Cat N.
Those are exactly the checks that cost people the most money. According to the Motor Insurers' Anti-Fraud and Theft Register (MIAFTR), nearly 390,000 vehicles are written off by UK insurers every year. The police record thousands of stolen vehicles on the Police National Computer. And the finance industry holds millions of active hire-purchase and lease agreements against registered vehicles. The data exists — it just wasn't being offered to consumers at a price that made sense.
We built IsItAGoodCar to close that gap. We combine the free DVLA and DVSA data that everyone should be checking with the premium datasets — stolen, finance, and write-off — that can save you from a five-figure mistake. Every data point in our reports comes from an official or licensed source. We don't scrape, we don't crowdsource, and we don't guess.
Three steps to a clear picture
No account required. No phone calls. No waiting for a callback from a sales team.
Type in any UK registration number. We query the DVLA database to confirm the make, model, colour, engine size, fuel type, and tax status. If the registration isn't recognised, we'll tell you straight away.
We pull full MOT history from the DVSA — every pass, fail, advisory item, and recorded mileage going back to 2005. We also check SORN status, first registration date, and CO₂ emissions.
For a small fee, we cross-reference the vehicle against Experian's licensed databases for outstanding finance, insurance write-off categories (Cat A, B, S, N), and stolen-vehicle markers from the Police National Computer.
Most reports are delivered in under 30 seconds. You'll see a clear, plain-English summary before you commit to the full report — no surprises.
Where every data point comes from
We use official government APIs and licensed commercial databases. Nothing is scraped, crowd-sourced or approximated.
DVLA — Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
- Vehicle registration details: make, model, colour, body type, engine size, fuel type
- Tax status, rate and expiry date
- SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) status
- First registration date and year of manufacture
- CO₂ emissions and Euro status
- MOT expiry date and export status
The DVLA maintains the register of over 40 million UK vehicles. We access their data through the official DVLA Vehicle Enquiry API.
DVSA — Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency
- Full MOT test history from 2005 onwards
- Pass and fail results with detailed failure and advisory reasons
- Recorded mileage at each MOT test
- Advisory items that may become failures at the next test
- Dangerous, major and minor defect classifications
The DVSA manages MOT testing standards across the UK. Their MOT history API gives you the complete test record for any vehicle over three years old.
Experian — Licensed commercial vehicle data
- Outstanding finance: hire purchase, PCP, lease agreements and logbook loans
- Insurance write-off categories: Cat A (scrap), Cat B (break), Cat S (structural), Cat N (non-structural)
- Stolen vehicle markers sourced from the Police National Computer
- Vehicle identity verification and VIN cross-referencing
Experian is one of the UK's three major credit reference agencies and holds one of the most comprehensive vehicle finance and insurance databases. Their data is used by most UK motor dealers and finance companies.
We are a licensed DVLA data recipient. All premium data (finance, stolen, write-off) is sourced through Experian's authorised UK vehicle data services. We never use scraped databases, unlicensed aggregators, or user-submitted data.
Make professional-grade vehicle data affordable for every UK buyer
HPI charges £19.99. Garages charge £30+. We price our focused UK buyer report at £8.99 because access to solid vehicle history data shouldn't be a luxury.
We combine DVLA, DVSA and licensed third-party datasets to build a report aimed at the checks UK buyers usually need most.
Eligible premium reports include an Experian Data Guarantee with cover up to £20,000.
One transparent price. No subscriptions. No hidden tiers. No fake countdowns.
How we use AI to create helpful vehicle content
Transparency about our use of AI-generated content, the data it's based on, and our editorial review process.
What we generate with AI
We use AI to create two types of content on IsItAGoodCar:
- Buyer's Guides — Found on every vehicle registration page (below the MOT History section). These provide vehicle-specific buying advice, running cost estimates, inspection checklists, and a buying confidence score. Each guide is generated fresh using the specific vehicle's MOT history, mileage pattern, specifications, and model-level reliability data.
- Brand Overviews — Found on our brand service history pages. These provide a data-grounded overview of each brand's reliability reputation, common MOT failure patterns, and buying recommendations — all derived from our database of millions of real MOT records.
What data the AI uses
Our AI content is grounded in real vehicle data, not generic knowledge:
- DVSA MOT test history — pass/fail results, defect details, advisory items, mileage records
- DVLA vehicle specifications — make, model, engine size, fuel type, colour, first registration date, Euro status
- Aggregate model data — MOT pass rates, common failure reasons, average annual mileage drawn from our database of millions of records
The AI does not have access to personal information, previous keeper details, or V5C document data. It works only with the anonymised vehicle and MOT data available through official UK government APIs.
Editorial review process
Every piece of AI-generated content on IsItAGoodCar is:
- Data-grounded — The AI only writes about facts supported by the vehicle data we hold. It cannot invent MOT failures, change mileage figures, or fabricate vehicle history.
- Schema-validated — AI output is returned as structured data (JSON) with specific required fields. Content that doesn't meet our quality gates — minimum lengths, required sections, score ranges — is automatically rejected and regenerated.
- Uniqueness-checked — Every buyer's guide is compared against existing content for the same vehicle model. Content that is too similar to another guide (above 85% similarity) is rejected and regenerated to ensure genuine per-vehicle uniqueness.
- Human-monitored — Our editorial team regularly samples and reviews AI-generated content for accuracy, tone, and usefulness. We update our AI prompts and quality standards based on these reviews.
Limitations of AI-generated content
- AI-generated buyer's guides are informational only — they do not replace a professional vehicle inspection or mechanical assessment.
- Buying score and risk assessments are based on MOT history and vehicle data, not on physical inspection of the vehicle.
- Running cost estimates are indicative ranges based on publicly available data for the vehicle type — actual costs will vary.
- We cannot guarantee that every AI-generated statement is factually perfect. Always verify critical information independently before making a purchase decision.
If you spot an error in our content, please let us know.
What we stand behind
Every report we ship is backed by a simple set of commitments. If we ever fall short, we want to hear about it.
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