Carhealth vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off Carhealth’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 |
| Carhealth | No | In part | In part |
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 |
| Carhealth | £14.99 (one full report) | Make, model and colour, full MOT history, tax status and due date, recorded mileage readings | 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 Carhealth beats us
The closest report to ours in shape: AI analysis, model faults with cost ranges and a buyer's guide, generated from the registration. It’s the one to buy for an AI-written plate report with a buyer's guide and common-faults section.
Give Carhealth its due: its sample report has sections called AI Analysis, Maintenance, Buyers Guide and Common Car Faults, the AI text comments on a tyre-wear advisory and a Cat N marker, and the faults carry cost ranges. If you'd shown us that sample without a name on it we'd have guessed it was ours. It names "CarhealthAI" as the engine, gives a refund window on unused reports, and its blog runs to long model buying guides. The homepage's "from" price didn't match any figure on its pricing page when we read them, so the table carries the pricing page.
So what's different? The input. Every section Carhealth describes is generated from the plate. Ours is generated from the plate and the advert, so the AI isn't just commenting on the Cat N marker, it's telling you the advert never mentioned it, and that "full service history" sits beside three years of the same advisory. If you want an AI-written plate report with a buyer's guide, Carhealth is the nearest thing to ours. If you want the seller's words read against it, that's us.
What Carhealth 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
- Make, model and colour, full MOT history, tax status and due date, recorded mileage readings
- One full check
- £14.99 (one full report)
- Multi-check or packs
- Two reports £24.99; five reports £54.99. The weekly subscription read on 2026-09-17 is no longer shown
- Data guarantee
- None stated
- Sources it names
- DVLA; DVSA; Police National Computer; insurance databases; finance institutions; salvage auction registers; EUI Insurance Services (sample report); EVOX images; Euro NCAP
What its pages describe beyond the lookup: Sample report has AI Analysis, Maintenance, Buyers Guide and Common Car Faults sections: the AI text comments on a tyre-wear advisory and a Cat N marker, and the faults section names model issues with £90 to £750 cost estimates. All of it from the plate; nothing describes reading an advert. 2026-10-23: the full report now lists an 'Advert check', 'Previous adverts, with price, mileage and photos' and a 'Negotiation brief'; not read in detail, so readsAdvert stays as recorded until someone does (BACKLOG row 151 f).
Read off Carhealth’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 Carhealth.
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, and outstanding finance, a theft marker or a write-off sends that verdict straight to its highest risk rating, because none of those is something you negotiate around.
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 Carhealth 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.