How to Check a Car's Mileage in the UK: Free & Paid (2026)

If you want to check a car's mileage in the UK right now, here is the fastest legitimate way to do it: go to the free GOV.UK MOT history service, type in the registration number, and you will see the mileage recorded at every MOT test the car has had since 2005 — no login, no V5C, no payment, results in under a minute.

That single check catches a large share of clocked (mileage-tampered) cars, because it is very difficult to fake mileage on a public DVSA record without leaving an obvious drop that anyone can spot.

But it is not the whole story. The GOV.UK check only tells you what a tester recorded once a year, and only from the car's third birthday onwards.

A three-year-old car has no MOT history at all. A ten-year-old car's mileage could have jumped by 40,000 miles in the eleven months since its last test and you would have no way to know from that record alone.

This guide covers every method for checking a car's genuine mileage in 2026 — what is genuinely free, what needs paying for, how to read what you find, and how to physically check a car's wear against its odometer when the paperwork runs out.

Key takeaways

• The free method: GOV.UK's MOT history service (check-mot.service.gov.uk) shows mileage at every MOT since 2005, using only the registration number. It is completely free and takes under a minute.
• The gap: Cars under three years old have no MOT history, and mileage between MOTs — up to 12 months of driving — is never recorded anywhere free.
• The paid layer: A full vehicle history check cross-references the National Mileage Register (NMR), a database of over 265 million mileage readings from finance houses, insurers, fleets and dealers, going back further and updating more often than MOT records alone.
• Physical checks still matter: wear on the steering wheel, pedals, gearknob, driver's seat bolster and keys should roughly match the indicated mileage. A pristine interior on a "high-mileage" car, or the reverse, is a red flag no database will catch.
• Clocking itself sits in a legal grey area, but selling a car with a false mileage reading is illegal under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and can constitute fraud under the Fraud Act 2006.

Before you view a car, run both checks. The free GOV.UK MOT history takes a minute and flags obvious mileage drops. A full Carhealth vehicle history check goes further — cross-referencing the National Mileage Register alongside outstanding finance, write-off markers, stolen records and plate changes — from £14.99 for a single report, or as little as £8 per report on a multi-car bundle if you are comparing more than one car.

How to check a car's mileage for free: the GOV.UK MOT history check, step by step

The official, free way to check mileage history on any UK car is the DVSA's MOT history service, accessed via gov.uk/check-mot-history, which hands you off to the checking tool itself at check-mot.service.gov.uk.

It is run by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency and pulls directly from the same database MOT testers write to on test day, so the mileage figures are as close to a primary source as a free UK service gets.

What you need

• The car's registration number (number plate) — that is the only thing you need.
• You do not need the V5C logbook, the owner's name, or any payment details.
• The tool works for cars, motorcycles and vans back to 2005; heavy goods vehicles, trailers, buses and coaches are covered from 2018; Northern Ireland records run from 2017.

Step-by-step

1. Go to www.gov.uk/check-mot-history and click "Start now" (or go directly to check-mot.service.gov.uk).
2. Type in the registration number exactly as it appears on the plate — no spaces are required, the tool strips them automatically.
3. Submit the search. The results load instantly; there is no waiting period and no account to create.
4. Check the summary at the top of the page: current MOT status, the expiry date, and the mileage recorded at the most recent test.
5. Open the full test history. Every MOT the car has had is listed — date, result (pass, fail, or pass with advisories), the mileage recorded on that day, and the specific defects noted.
6. Read down the mileage column, oldest to newest. This is the single most useful thing this free tool does for a buyer: it lets you see the car's mileage progression across its entire tested life at a glance.
7. Download the certificate if you need it. Current and past MOT certificates can be downloaded as PDFs directly from the results page.

What the results actually show you

• Pass or fail result for every test since 2005 (2018 for HGVs, 2017 for Northern Ireland)
• The mileage recorded by the tester at each test
• The date of each test and when the next one is due
• Every defect: advisories (minor, monitor it), majors and dangerous faults (must be fixed)
• For vehicles tested in England, Scotland and Wales, the test location is also shown

What it will not show you

• Anything before the car's first MOT (registration date to age three)
• Mileage covered between MOT tests — the biggest blind spot, covered below
• Outstanding finance, theft markers, insurance write-off history or number plate changes
• Anything about the car if it was recently imported and has not yet had a UK-registered MOT

Why the free MOT check alone is not enough

The GOV.UK service is genuinely excellent for what it does, and every buyer should use it before viewing a car.

But it has structural gaps that a determined seller — or an honest one with a genuinely patchy history — can fall into.

1. Cars under three years old have no MOT history at all

The first MOT is due three years after a vehicle's first registration date. A nearly-new car being sold with 40,000 miles on the clock after two years of heavy motorway use has zero MOT records to check it against.

You are relying entirely on the seller's word, the service book, and — if the original supplying dealer is contactable — their records.

2. Mileage between tests is never recorded anywhere free

MOT tests happen once a year. A car could show 45,000 miles at its MOT in March and be sold in November having "only" done another 3,000 miles — or the odometer could have been wound back by 20,000 miles in the meantime and there would be no free record of it until the next MOT catches the discrepancy, by which point you already own the car.

This is the single biggest reason clocking often goes undetected until it is too late: fraudsters roll the mileage back after the last recorded test, sell quickly, and the buyer has no free way to catch it until 12 months later.

3. Private sales, imports and exports break the paper trail

• Private sales are not required to be logged anywhere beyond the V5C keeper change, so there is no independent mileage checkpoint between owners outside the annual MOT.
• Imported vehicles often arrive with no UK MOT history at all, and their overseas service or MOT-equivalent records (if any) are not linked into the DVSA database.
• Exported and re-imported cars can effectively "reset" a mileage paper trail in the UK system, since the DVLA record shows the vehicle as new to the register again.

Northern Ireland MOT (technically the MOT test) records were only brought into the same online history service from 2017, so a car that has spent time registered in Northern Ireland before crossing to GB, or vice versa, can show a shorter online history than its true age would suggest.

Treat a thin record on an older car as a prompt to ask for paperwork, not proof of anything sinister on its own.

4. Pre-2005 cars have no digital MOT record

If a car was first registered before the DVSA's records began, its early mileage history simply is not there to check, free or otherwise.

Method-by-method comparison: what each source of mileage data actually gives you

The National Mileage Register: how paid checks see further than the free tool

The National Mileage Register (NMR) is a database run by HPI, aggregating more than 265 million mileage readings from over 20 industry sources — finance houses, insurers, fleet managers, auction houses, dealer networks and the DVSA's own MOT data.

When a car changes hands through a finance agreement, gets serviced at a franchised dealer, goes through an auction, or is assessed for an insurance claim, the mileage recorded at that point can end up in the NMR.

This matters for exactly the gap the free MOT check cannot fill: a car under three years old with no MOT history might still have a mileage reading logged when the original owner took out a PCP or HP agreement, or when the supplying dealer serviced it.

A car sold privately eight months after its last MOT might have a mileage reading logged when the seller's insurer processed a routine renewal or a minor claim.

When you run a paid vehicle history check, the provider queries the NMR alongside MOT data and flags one of two outcomes:

• No discrepancy currently indicated — the mileage you have been quoted is broadly consistent with everything else on record for that vehicle.
• A discrepancy is indicated — one or more of the mileage readings held on file conflicts with the figure currently on the odometer, which is the clearest signal of clocking a UK buyer can get without physically pulling service records themselves.

A Carhealth mileage check runs this NMR cross-check automatically alongside outstanding finance, stolen vehicle records, insurance write-off category and number plate change history, and flags mileage anomalies in plain English rather than leaving you to interpret a raw data dump.

How to check mileage with just a registration number

Every method that matters for a UK buyer in 2026 starts with the same single piece of information: the registration number.

You do not need the V5C, the chassis number, or the owner's permission to run either the free or the paid checks described above.

1. Free first pass: Enter the registration into the GOV.UK MOT history service and read the mileage column across every test.
2. Paid full pass: Enter the same registration into a provider that cross-references the National Mileage Register — this pulls in mileage data the free tool cannot see, plus finance, theft and write-off status.
3. Cross-check against the advert and the seller's word: The mileage the seller states, the mileage on the V5C, and the mileage on the dashboard should all match. Any inconsistency between these three is worth asking about before you even book a viewing.

A "mileage checker" in the sense most people search for — a single tool where you type in a reg plate and get a definitive mileage history — does not exist as one free government service.

It is really two layers: the free DVSA MOT record, and the paid NMR-backed check that fills in the gaps. Providers advertising a "free mileage check" by registration number are, in nearly every case, just running the same free MOT history lookup and presenting it with their own branding.

Reading MOT mileage records: what normal, gaps and anomalies look like

Once you have the mileage column from the MOT history, the analysis is straightforward. UK cars covered an average of around 7,100 miles a year in 2024 (Department for Transport National Travel Survey data).

This varies significantly by fuel type and use — diesel-engined cars still average higher annual mileage than petrol, largely because diesel remains the default choice for higher-mileage motorway drivers.

What normal progression looks like:

That is a car doing broadly average miles with normal year-to-year variation. Nothing to worry about.

What to treat as a red flag:

• A mileage drop between two tests — the clearest, hardest-to-explain sign of clocking. There is essentially no legitimate reason for a car's recorded mileage to fall.
• Implausibly low year-on-year mileage for a car's age and type — a five-year-old car showing only 8,000 total miles is possible (a genuine low-mileage second car) but should be treated as unusual and verified against service history and physical wear, not taken at face value.
• A long gap with almost no mileage increase, e.g. two years passing between tests with only 500 miles added — this can be a legitimate SORN period, but ask for evidence (the SORN certificate, insurance documents showing the car was declared off-road) rather than accepting it on trust.

A worked example of what a drop actually looks like on the page:

A car in this state should never reach a viewing.

If you spot a table like this on any registration you're considering, walk away — the 2022 mileage is not the car's real mileage, and neither is whatever figure the seller quotes you today.

This section is intentionally brief — for a deeper breakdown of clocking methods, the scale of the problem in the UK, and detailed case studies, see our dedicated guides on spotting a clocked car and the UK clocking fraud epidemic. For a wider walkthrough of everything else an MOT record can tell you beyond mileage — advisories, failure patterns, negotiation leverage — see our full MOT history check guide.

How to spot a clocked car by physical inspection

No database, free or paid, catches every clocked car. Mileage altered in the days or weeks before a sale — after the last MOT, before any finance or insurance record was updated — will not show up anywhere.

This is where a physical inspection against the indicated mileage earns its place in your checklist.

The principle is simple: wear is honest even when a digital display is not. A car's touchpoints — the parts a driver's body contacts thousands of times a week — wear at a fairly predictable rate.

If the number on the dial does not match what your eyes and hands are telling you, trust the wear.

None of these are conclusive on their own — a genuinely low-mileage car driven mostly by an anxious motorway commuter can still show a shiny steering wheel, and a carefully detailed high-mileage car can look better than its number suggests.

Use the table as a sense check, not a verdict: if two or three touchpoints disagree with the odometer in the same direction, that is worth walking away from or demanding an explanation for.

What to do if you suspect a car has been clocked before you buy

1. Do not pay a deposit or hand over money. Once cash changes hands, your position weakens considerably.
2. Re-run the free MOT history check on the spot using your phone, in front of the seller if it feels appropriate — a genuine seller has nothing to hide from this.
3. Ask directly for the service history and V5C, and check the mileage recorded in the service book against both the MOT figures and the current odometer reading.
4. Get a full paid history check before committing, so the National Mileage Register cross-check has a chance to catch anything the MOT record missed.
5. Ask who owned it before and why. A high number of keepers in a short period, or an unexplained gap in ownership, often accompanies mileage fraud.
6. Walk away if the numbers don't add up. There is no negotiation that makes a clocked car a good deal — you are not just losing money on the price, you are buying a car with genuinely unknown wear on brakes, suspension, cambelt and engine internals.
7. Report it. Suspected clocking can be reported to Trading Standards via Citizens Advice and to the DVSA, even if you don't go ahead with the purchase — it may protect the next buyer.

Your legal position if you've already bought a clocked car

Altering an odometer is not, by itself, a specific standalone criminal offence in the UK — but selling a car with a mileage you know to be false is.

Depending on the circumstances, this can fall under:

• The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which makes it an offence for a trader to give false or misleading information about a product's characteristics, including mileage.
• The Fraud Act 2006, where clocking with intent to sell at an inflated price can constitute fraud by false representation, carrying penalties of up to ten years' imprisonment.
• The Consumer Rights Act 2015, if you bought from a trader (not a genuine private seller) — goods must be "as described," and a car sold with a false mileage clearly is not. This can support a claim for a refund, repair, or price reduction.
• The Misrepresentation Act 1967, which can apply even in some private sales if the seller made a false statement of fact about the mileage that induced you to buy.

Practically, if you believe you've bought a clocked car:

1. Gather your evidence first — the free MOT history printout, the original advert (screenshot it if it's still live), any messages with the seller, and ideally a paid history check showing an NMR discrepancy.
2. Contact Citizens Advice for guidance on your consumer rights — they can direct genuine cases to Trading Standards for investigation.
3. If you bought from a dealer, raise it with them directly first and in writing, referencing the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
4. For private sales, small claims court is a realistic route for claims typically under £10,000, on the basis of misrepresentation.
5. Report it to the DVSA and Trading Standards regardless of whether you pursue your own claim — clocking is a pattern crime, and one report can help stop the same seller doing it again.

This is a summary of your options, not legal advice for your specific situation — for a full walkthrough of your rights and the reporting process, see our guide on spotting and reporting mileage fraud.

The bottom line

Checking a car's mileage in the UK starts free and takes a minute: the GOV.UK MOT history service, registration number only, no account needed. Every buyer should do this before booking a viewing, full stop.

But it is a snapshot taken once a year, starting only from a car's third birthday — it cannot see mileage covered since the last test, and it says nothing about finance, theft or write-off history.

A paid vehicle history check closes those gaps by cross-referencing the National Mileage Register against the same MOT data, and layering in the checks that protect your money as well as your mileage figure.

Pair either with a proper physical inspection — steering wheel, pedals, gearknob, seat bolster, keys — and you have covered every angle a private buyer realistically can.

Ready to check a specific car? Run a full Carhealth history check — MOT history, National Mileage Register cross-check, outstanding finance, stolen markers, write-off category and plate changes, all from a registration number, from £14.99. It takes about the same two minutes as the free MOT lookup, and it tells you what that lookup can't.

Related reading

• How to check MOT history online: complete guide — a full walkthrough of everything else an MOT record reveals: advisories, failure patterns, and how to use them to negotiate.
• Mileage fraud and clocking in 2026: how to spot it — the warning signs, how clocking devices work, and what to do if you've been caught out.
• UK car clocking fraud: the epidemic exposed — the scale of the problem, the most commonly clocked models, and real case studies.
• What does a car history check show? UK guide — everything a full paid report covers beyond mileage, including finance and write-off status.

Frequently asked questions

Can I check a car's mileage for free?

Yes. The GOV.UK MOT history service (accessed via gov.uk/check-mot-history) shows the mileage recorded at every MOT test since 2005, free of charge, using only the registration number.

It won't show mileage for cars under three years old or anything that happened between MOT tests, but it is a genuinely free and official first check every buyer should run.

How do I check mileage with a registration number?

Enter the registration into the GOV.UK MOT history service for a free view of mileage at every MOT test. For fuller coverage — including cars too young to have an MOT, and mileage data from finance houses, insurers and dealers via the National Mileage Register — use a paid vehicle history check, which also only needs the registration number to run.

Is clocking illegal in the UK?

Altering an odometer isn't a specific standalone crime in itself, but selling a car with a mileage you know to be false is illegal under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and can amount to fraud under the Fraud Act 2006, with penalties of up to ten years in prison.

If you bought from a trader, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 also gives you grounds to demand a refund or repair.

Does the MOT history show a car's full mileage history?

No — only what was recorded at each MOT test, and only from age three onwards. Mileage covered between tests, and anything before the first MOT, isn't captured anywhere in the free record.

A paid check cross-referencing the National Mileage Register fills in some of these gaps using data from finance agreements, insurance records and dealer services.

What is a mileage checker and how accurate is it?

There's no single official "mileage checker" tool separate from the services above — in practice it means either the free GOV.UK MOT history lookup, or a paid provider cross-referencing that MOT data against the National Mileage Register.

Accuracy depends entirely on how many independent mileage readings exist for that specific car; a car with a thin paper trail (private sales only, few services) will show fewer data points to check against than one serviced at franchised dealers throughout its life.

Is 70,000 miles a lot for a used car?

It depends entirely on the car's age. UK cars covered roughly 7,100 miles a year on average in 2024 (DfT data), so 70,000 miles on a nine-to-ten-year-old car is broadly typical, not high.

The same 70,000 miles on a three-year-old car would be well above average and worth checking service history for — heavier motorway use isn't necessarily a problem if it's been well maintained, but it changes what you should budget for tyres, brakes and timing components sooner rather than later.

What if there's no MOT history for the car I'm checking?

The most common reason is that the car is under three years old and hasn't needed its first MOT yet. Other reasons include a recent import that hasn't built up UK MOT records, or a registration change that has broken the link to older records.

Ask for proof of age (the V5C first registration date), any overseas service records for imports, and treat the mileage claim with extra caution since there's no independent free record to check it against yet.

What should I do if I've already bought a car that turns out to be clocked?

Gather evidence (MOT history printout, the original advert, any messages with the seller, and ideally a paid history check flagging an NMR discrepancy), then contact Citizens Advice for guidance on your consumer rights.

If you bought from a dealer, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you a claim for refund or repair; for private sales, misrepresentation and small claims court are the usual routes. Report it to the DVSA and Trading Standards regardless, to help stop the same seller doing it again.