carVertical vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off carVertical’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 |
| carVertical | No | 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 |
| carVertical | Not shown on their site | A free VIN decoder only (manufacturer, model, year, basic equipment). Their blog states there is no free trial of the report | 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 carVertical beats us
Non-UK history across 45+ countries and damage imagery beyond our salvage-auction photos. We cannot match either. It’s the one to buy for imported cars and damage history from outside the UK.
carVertical's strength is the part of a car's life that happened somewhere else. A UK check, ours included, starts the story the day the car was registered here, so if it spent its first years in Germany or Japan, a write-off, a rolled-back odometer or a flood there isn't on any UK register we read. carVertical also advertises damage history with recorded photographs across many countries, and ours are narrower: salvage auction photos, which only exist if the car was written off and sold through a lot. If the V5C or the advert says import, that's carVertical's ground, and our report says so whenever it flags one.
What we couldn't do is read its price. Its pricing page hands straight to a checkout, and the figures comparison blogs quote for it disagree with each other, so the table below says not shown rather than guessing. Its guarantee is a report credit back when key sections come back empty, not money. For a UK car you've found in an advert, run our free scan on the advert first: it reads the wording against the car's MOT history before you've spent anything.
What carVertical 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
- A free VIN decoder only (manufacturer, model, year, basic equipment). Their blog states there is no free trial of the report
- One full check
- Not shown on its site
- Multi-check or packs
- None advertised
- Data guarantee
- None stated
- Sources it names
- insurance, police and registration data (their wording); over 900 sources including state registries, law enforcement agencies and service records (their wording); no UK body named
What its pages describe beyond the lookup: Help page lists 13 report sections including damage with recorded photographs, mileage rollbacks, ownership changes, theft, financial restrictions, safety and recalls, and a timeline.
Read off carVertical’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 carVertical.
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 carVertical 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.