My Car Check vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off My Car Check’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 |
| My Car Check | 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 |
| My Car Check | £4.99 (Basic) or £8.49 (Comprehensive) | Make, model and colour, MOT status and history, valuation, AI insights and performance data; excludes stolen, write-off and finance | 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 My Car Check beats us
Publishes the fullest data-sources page in the set, and its comprehensive check is cheaper than our Provenance Check. It’s the one to buy for the most thorough published list of data sources.
If you want to know where a provenance check's records actually come from, My Car Check's sources page is the one to read: the police computer, the insurers' write-off register, the ABI, the MIB, the DVSA, Thatcham and more, and its example report cites HPI for the finance records. It sells packs from two checks up to dozens, so it scales for a trader as well as a private buyer, and the comprehensive single is cheaper than ours. The "sample" it links to is a live report on a real car rather than a marked sample, which is worth knowing when you read it.
Everything on that sources page is a register we read too, because everyone does. What My Car Check's pages don't describe is anything after the lookup: no advert reading, no advisory analysis, no model fault data. Ours reads all three. If you want the records cheaply and a published account of where they come from, My Car Check. If you want the advert read against them, start with our free scan.
What My Car Check 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, MOT status and history, valuation, AI insights and performance data; excludes stolen, write-off and finance
- One full check
- £4.99 (Basic) or £8.49 (Comprehensive)
- Multi-check or packs
- Two checks £9.99; three £12.49; five £19.99; ten £34.99; twenty £59.99 (a second twenty-pack listed at £49.99); 35 for £99.99; 80 for £200; trade packs from £1.40 a check
- Data guarantee
- None stated
- Sources it names
- DVLA; Police National Computer; ABI; MIB; SMMT; MIAFTR; DVSA; Thatcham; MARS; VRA; FLA; CCTA; FleetNet; HPI for finance records (cited on the example report)
Read off My Car Check’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 My Car Check.
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 My Car Check 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.