MotorCheck vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off MotorCheck’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 |
| MotorCheck | 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 |
| MotorCheck | £9.99 (single check) | A free car identity check (homepage); contents not itemised on the pages fetched | £30,000 on every report, non-trade users only |
Prices and features checked on 17 September 2026, read off each provider's own site. Providers change them; tell us if one has.
Where MotorCheck beats us
Its Previous Ads Check is a real product we do not sell, and it carries a guarantee we do not. It’s the one to buy for previous-advert history with a £30,000 guarantee.
Two things to say up front. The first is that MotorCheck is a supplier as well as a rival: its data is one of the options our own Provenance Check can run on, so this page describes a feature, not a fight. The second is that the feature is good. Its help centre describes a database of past UK adverts going back years, with the listing date, how long the car was for sale, the asking price, the odometer reading and the seller, and says a large share of its reports return at least one. If a car has been relisted four times at a dropping price, that's where you'd see it.
What a previous-ads lookup can't do is read the advert that's live now, because it has never seen it. That's our job: the seller's description, checked against the car's own MOT record and the known faults for that engine. Nothing on MotorCheck's site describes doing that. If you want the car's advert history, MotorCheck sells it. If you want the live advert read, start with our free scan, and we've a guide on finding past adverts yourself for free.
What MotorCheck 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 car identity check (homepage); contents not itemised on the pages fetched
- One full check
- £9.99 (single check)
- Multi-check or packs
- Three checks £14.99; five checks £19.99
- Data guarantee
- £30,000 on every report, non-trade users only
- Sources it names
- official DVLA and MOT records (their wording; no commercial supplier named)
What its pages describe beyond the lookup: Sells a Previous Ads Check (help centre article 9806535, read 2026-09-09): over a billion UK adverts from twelve years, with listing date, days on sale, asking price, odometer and seller. That is advert history, not the live advert.
Read off MotorCheck’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 MotorCheck.
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 MotorCheck 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.