MOT history questions

No. MOT Check History is independent. It is not operated by DVSA, DVLA or any other part of government. The official MOT history check is on GOV.UK.

Yes. There is no account and no payment. The operator pays for the hosting and uses a DVSA API key, which has its own usage limits. If those limits are hit, the check pauses rather than inventing a result.

From the DVSA MOT History API, which covers vehicles tested in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. DVSA documents the API at documentation.history.mot.api.gov.uk. We send the registration you type, and we show the vehicle, tests, mileage, expiry, advisories and failure items that come back.

Current, prefix, suffix and older dateless styles used in Great Britain, and the usual Northern Ireland formats. Enter the plate without a badge or a flag symbol. Spaces do not matter. If DVSA rejects the characters, the page says so.

The plate may be mistyped, the vehicle may be too new for the feed, or DVSA may have no MOT record for it. Imported vehicles can have a thin history. Check O against 0, and I against 1, then try the official service, which is the one to rely on if the two disagree.

The API is not always instant. This site also keeps a successful result in memory for a short time, by default about 10 minutes, so a repeat search can be a copy of the earlier reply. Search again later, or use GOV.UK.

No. GOV.UK explains when a Great Britain certificate can be downloaded from the official service. Northern Ireland certificates are not downloaded from that service. We cannot produce either.

It means the tested items met the standard on that day. Read any advisories. A pass is silent on the engine, the clutch, finance, and whether the mileage was wound back. See what an MOT checks.

Not necessarily. A replaced odometer, a miles/kilometres mix-up, or a typing error can do the same thing. The mileage guide lists the ordinary explanations. Ask for service history if you are buying.

The DVA Northern Ireland records in this API do not include the defect text. You still get the result, the date and, usually, the mileage. An empty advisory list is a gap in the feed.

DVSA returns one of four values. Yes means at least one recall is not marked as fixed. No means the recalls it knows about are marked as fixed. Unknown means nothing outstanding was found in the data, which is not proof a vehicle was never recalled. Unavailable means the recalls feed did not answer. We cannot book the repair.

The registration and the DVSA reply are held in server memory for a short time so the same plate is not fetched on every refresh, and so a repeat "not found" does not hammer the API. IP addresses are held in memory only for the rate limit window. There is no account and no advertising tracker. Details are on the privacy notice.

No. We cannot edit DVSA's data. Follow the correction route on the official GOV.UK MOT history service. Use the contact page only for a fault with this website.