Check Car Details vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off Check Car Details’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 |
| Check Car Details | 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 |
| Check Car Details | Not shown on their site | MOT check and history, tax, DVLA registration details, make and model, current keeper start date, fuel type, emissions, insurance group, export check, last V5C issue date, age, registration place, engine size | 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 Check Car Details beats us
Shows a listing history and salvage auction photos in its sample report; its paid price was not visible on any public page, so do not quote one. It’s the one to buy for salvage photos and listing history in one report.
Check Car Details' free tier is wide: MOT history, tax, the DVLA fields, keeper start date, export check, V5C date and more. Its sample report is where it gets interesting, with salvage auction photos and an "Internet Listing History" section showing past listings with their price drops and mileage, which means advert history isn't unique to the specialists. What we couldn't find is a price. The FAQ names basic, gold and full tiers without figures, and the only number anywhere was an add-on inside the sample, so the table says not shown rather than guessing.
The sample report also shows the MOT advisories as raw text with defect codes and no grading, and nothing on the site describes reading the advert. That's where ours goes further: every advisory read for patterns, the advert checked against the car's own record and the known faults for the engine, one verdict. We show salvage auction photos too, where there are any. If you want listing history and salvage photos in one report, Check Car Details has both; look at its live checkout for the price.
What Check Car Details 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
- MOT check and history, tax, DVLA registration details, make and model, current keeper start date, fuel type, emissions, insurance group, export check, last V5C issue date, age, registration place, engine size
- One full check
- Not shown on its site
- Multi-check or packs
- None advertised
- Data guarantee
- None stated
- Sources it names
- DVLA; DVSA; insurance databases; finance providers; auction networks; valuation services; Police National Computer (sample report)
What its pages describe beyond the lookup: Sample report shows raw MOT advisory text with defect codes, no grading, and an 'Internet Listing History' section with two past listings, their price drops and mileage, so previous-advert history is not unique to Brego and MotorCheck.
Read off Check Car Details’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 Check Car Details.
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 Check Car Details 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.