Brego vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off Brego’s own site. The first is the job we rank on: what the check does with the records. “No” means nothing on their site describes it, not that they can’t.
| Provider | Reads the advert | MOT advisory analysis | Known faults with costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car Advert CheckOur pick | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Brego | In part | No | No |
Prices and features checked on 17 September 2026, read off each provider's own site: “No” means nothing on their site describes it. Providers change them; tell us if one has.
| Provider | One full check | Free tier | Data guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car Advert CheckOur pick | See pricing | Free scan: reads the advert against the DVSA MOT history, verdict, risk score and biggest finding, no card and no password | None stated |
| Brego | Not shown on their site | Vehicle details, current MOT and tax status, a historical advert count when found, and an optional sense-check of the advertised price and mileage; no signup | None stated |
Prices and features checked on 17 September 2026, read off each provider's own site. Providers change them; tell us if one has.
Where Brego beats us
Shows every advert the car has had in one timeline and runs an AI review of the photos and description, neither of which we do. It’s the one to buy for the full listing history of a car: relists, price cuts and days on market.
Brego is the nearest anyone in the category gets to reading the advert, so we're careful about what we claim here. Its homepage describes an AI advert condition review that runs over the listing photos and the seller's description, and its full report shows the car's live and past adverts in one timeline, with price cuts, relists and mileage changes across adverts and MOTs. That timeline is a real product and we don't sell it. Its free tier gives you a historical advert count and an optional sense-check of the advertised price and mileage, with no signup. Its terms explicitly disclaim any data guarantee.
Where we differ is what the review is checked against. Brego's AI reads the advert on its own terms. Ours reads it against the car's full MOT advisory history and the known faults for that engine, so "full service history" gets tested against three years of the same advisory and "just needs a sensor" gets tested against what that engine is known for. If you want to know what the car was listed for last year, Brego. If you want to know whether this listing matches the car, us.
What Brego describes on its own site
Straight from the pages listed under Sources, with nothing filled in from anywhere else. Where the site didn’t show something, the row says so rather than guessing.
- Free tier
- Vehicle details, current MOT and tax status, a historical advert count when found, and an optional sense-check of the advertised price and mileage; no signup
- One full check
- Not shown on its site
- Multi-check or packs
- None advertised
- Data guarantee
- None stated
- Sources it names
- Experian (stolen, finance, write-off, salvage); Brego's own valuation models; government bodies, finance and insurance databases (terms)
What its pages describe beyond the lookup: Homepage describes an 'AI advert condition review' that runs ChatGPT over the photos and seller description, and the full report includes 'full MOT history with advisories' as a data item. Nothing describes a risk report built from the advert text against the MOT history and known faults, but this is the nearest claim in the category and articles must not say nobody else looks at the advert.
Read off Brego’s own site on 23 October 2026.
What Car Advert Check does with the same records
Start with what’s the same. Our outstanding finance, theft and write-off lookups come from the same places as everyone else’s: the lenders, the police and the insurers’ write-off register. Nobody holds a private source, and we’re not selling better records than Brego.
What’s different is what happens next. A plate lookup stops at the registration. Ours carries on and reads three things no lookup takes in: the advert you’re looking at, the car’s whole DVSA MOT advisory history, and our known-faults database for that model, with what each fault costs to put right. Then it gives you one verdict instead of a page of fields.
Where it earns its keep is a car that comes back clean on the registers. A standard check stops there and the car looks fine. Ours keeps going: if the advert says “full service history”, the MOT record shows the same suspension advisory three years running and the engine is one with a known fault at this age, the report says the description doesn’t match the car’s own record, what the fault would cost, and what to ask before you travel.
What it won’t do: we offer no data guarantee, we can’t see a car’s history from before it came to the UK, we don’t sell a car’s past adverts, and nothing we or anyone else sells can see accident damage that never became a claim or how well a repair was done. Those take your eyes and a ramp.
So which should you run?
You’ve got an advert open and you’re deciding whether it’s worth the drive. Run the free scan on that advert. It reads the wording against the car’s DVSA MOT history and tells you the biggest thing to worry about, with no card and no password.
You’re about to hand money over. Upgrade that report to the Provenance Check. It adds the outstanding finance, theft and write-off records, scores them in with everything else, and includes the Smart Check, so the seller questions and a figure to negotiate with come with it.
You need what Brego does that we don’t. Buy it. The section above says what that is, and we’d rather you had the right check than ours.
You lose nothing by starting free: the free report upgrades on the same link with no re-run, so you never paste the advert twice, and if the free scan already says walk away, you’ve saved yourself the rest.