Total Car Check vs Car Advert Check at a glance
Two tables, both read off Total 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 |
| Total 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 |
| Total Car Check | £9.99 (Gold); £3.99 (Silver, excludes finance, valuation and salvage) | Full MOT history, stolen vehicle status, road tax status and 20+ data fields including indicative fuel and tax costs | £30,000 (Gold); £10,000 (Silver) |
Prices and features checked on 17 September 2026, read off each provider's own site. Providers change them; tell us if one has.
Where Total Car Check beats us
Silver at £1.99 a car in a pack, Gold at £9.99 with a £30,000 guarantee, and a free tier that includes the full MOT history and a stolen check. Never argue price against this row. It’s the one to buy for the cheapest full check with a guarantee.
Total Car Check wins on price and it isn't close. Its Gold tier includes finance and a guarantee at a price several rivals charge without either, its Silver tier is cheaper still, and its five-packs bring the per-car figure down to loose change. The catch on Silver is that it leaves out finance, valuation and salvage records, and at a private sale finance is the one that costs you the car, so make sure you're on the tier that includes it. Its free tier gives away the full MOT history and a stolen check, which is more than a lot of paid checks show.
Its sample report prints the MOT advisory text word for word, "nearside rear nail in tyre" and so on, and that's where it stops. Nothing on the site describes what those advisories add up to, and nothing describes the advert. That's the whole of our case: we don't hold better records, we read more of the car. If the budget is tight, run Total Car Check for the records and our free scan on the advert, which costs nothing either.
What Total 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
- Full MOT history, stolen vehicle status, road tax status and 20+ data fields including indicative fuel and tax costs
- One full check
- £9.99 (Gold); £3.99 (Silver, excludes finance, valuation and salvage)
- Multi-check or packs
- Gold three for £14.99, five for £19.99; Silver five for £9.99 (£1.99 each); trade packs from £1.75 plus VAT
- Data guarantee
- £30,000 (Gold); £10,000 (Silver)
- Sources it names
- VS&TD (formerly MIAFTR); police stolen database; DVLA; SMMT; MOT history data
What its pages describe beyond the lookup: The sample report prints MOT advisory text verbatim ('nearside rear nail in tyre'); nothing describes analysing it.
Read off Total 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 Total 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 Total 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.