Free MOT History Check by Registration

What we found in 14 million MOT tests

More than 1.18 million vehicles checked through VehicleScore, snapshotted on 27 September 2026. Exact counts sit under each figure. The full method is further down the page.

What else stood out

1. Pass rates fall as cars get older. At ages 0–2, 87.4% of 987,040 tests passed. At 15 or over, 71.3% of 1,731,755 did. Those are broad bands, not single years. The age table has the steps in between.
2. Petrol and diesel are almost level: 78.4% of 8,422,150 petrol tests passed, and 78.2% of 5,304,467 diesel tests. Hybrids passed 85.6% of 318,203 tests. That gap is not adjusted for age, so it is not a reliability ranking.
3. A drop of more than 1,000 miles is uncommon at ages 3–5 and much more common at 15 or over: 0.6% of vehicles aged 3–5 at their latest reading (626 of 111,404), against 7.8% (23,714 of 303,193). A longer history has more readings in which a figure can go wrong. The rate does not say why any one car dropped.
4. Of 41,695 vehicles with a drop over 1,000 miles, 12,511 later climbed back to at least 98% of the figure before the drop. Another 4,249 landed within 20% of a tenth of the previous reading, which is what a missed digit looks like. Neither pattern is proof of clocking.
5. Comparing a new Golf with a ten-year-old Clio is misleading. At ages 9–11, the Golf passed 77.9% of 88,425 tests and the Fiesta 71.6% of 121,846. The Qashqai was 70.1% of 37,220 and the Clio 67.3% of 32,622, against 75.0% for every test in that age band. Same age, still not a league table of reliable cars.

What's changing with MOT rules in 2026 and 2027?

Checked against GOV.UK on 7 October 2026. Confirmed, in rollout, still a consultation, or already rejected. A consultation is not a change to the next MOT. The check above still shows the record for one car.

Example MOT history report

Tests, newest first

How these example figures were worked out

Five of the six tests passed, including the retest on 18 March 2024. The live checker counts a fail and a later pass as two tests, so this example does too: 5 divided by 6, rounded to the nearest percent, is 83%.

Average miles per year uses the earliest and latest readings only: 75,800 minus 28,400 is 47,400 miles, over the time from 12 March 2022 to 1 March 2026. That is 11,940 miles a year for this illustration. It is not a typical figure for a model, and a single MOT reading does not confirm the car's whole mileage history.

The same tyre advisory is on the 2025 pass and the 2026 pass. Reading the tests in order is how you see a note that has come back. The brake disc failed the car on 2 March 2024. The pass 16 days later means it got through the next test. It does not show the repair invoice.

Mileage on this example rises at every test. A later reading that is lower than an earlier one is a discrepancy in the record, not proof the odometer was changed. How often that pattern appears is in mileage discrepancies in MOT history. Model pass rates, which describe many cars rather than this example, are in the tables below.

How VehicleScore analyses MOT data

A registration lookup reads that car's MOT history. The tables are a separate calculation, produced once from records stored when vehicles were checked through VehicleScore, and they are not recomputed on each visit. Last updated 27 September 2026, job 2026-09-27.1.

• Lookup source. The checker uses DVSA MOT history for the registration you enter. VehicleScore is an independent service. It is not operated or endorsed by the DVSA or the UK government. The public service is GOV.UK: Check the MOT history of a vehicle.
• Statistics source. The pass rates, comment categories and mileage figures come from MOT records stored when vehicles were checked through VehicleScore (collection motTaxDvlaCache). They are not a DVSA national census and they are not every vehicle on the road.
• Records analysed. The job read 1,262,009 stored records. 1,181,609 vehicles had at least one pass or fail. Those vehicles had 14,163,118 pass/fail tests: 11,121,200 passes and 3,041,918 failures, a pass rate of 78.5%.
• Vehicle classes. The snapshot was not limited to one MOT class. Cars, vans and other vehicles with a pass or fail result are included. Make and model tables keep only vehicles whose model name resolved.
• Names. Manufacturer and model names were matched to VehicleScore's model list. 1,100,665 vehicles resolved. 80,944 did not, and they are left out of the manufacturer and model tables. They remain in the overall, age and mileage totals.
• Pass rate. Passes divided by pass and fail tests, shown to one decimal place. A result that was neither PASSED nor FAILED was excluded.
• Retests. Each PASSED or FAILED result is one test. A failure and a later pass are two tests. The tables do not collapse a retest into the original fail.
• Missing or invalid data. 48,031 tests had no usable age and 1,772 fell outside 0–60 years, so they are absent from the age table. 44,475 zero or unreadable mileage readings are absent from the mileage table. 3,449,886 comments matched no wording rule. 977,519 comments were skipped because the type was not fail, advisory, minor or PRS.
• Failure comments. 3,705,368 classified comments had type FAIL. That is not the number of failed tests (3,041,918). One test can record more than one defect. The category share is the category's FAIL comments divided by all classified FAIL comments.
• Age. Age at the test is the completed date minus the first-used date, divided by 365.25 days. Bands are 0–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–11, 12–14 and 15 or over. The job did not keep a count for each single year, so this page does not publish a year-by-year table. MOT class was not stored, so ages 0, 1 and 2 cannot be split by class.
• Minimum samples. A manufacturer or model row is published only with at least 100 vehicles and 250 pass/fail tests. Age-standardised rates are shown only when every age band used in the adjustment had at least 50 tests.
• National files. The DVSA publishes anonymised MOT test results under the Open Government Licence. Those files are not an input to these tables. They are a different population, and mixing them with this sample would double-count vehicles that appear in both.
• Limits. Age bands overlap, because one vehicle is counted in every band it was tested in. Make and model crude rates are not adjusted for age, mileage or how the vehicle was used. A pass rate is not a reliability score, and it does not predict the next test. An MOT mileage reading does not verify the vehicle's complete mileage history.

The same snapshot is written up in the used car data report, with downloads for age, models, comments and mileage discrepancies.

Research notes for this page

Title

VehicleScore MOT history check: pass rates, failure comments and mileage readings

Publication date and last updated

27 September 2026. Job 2026-09-27.1. The date is the snapshot, not the day you opened this page.

Dataset

MOT records stored when a vehicle was checked through VehicleScore. 1,262,009 stored records, 1,181,609 vehicles with a pass or fail, 14,163,118 pass/fail tests, pass rate 78.5%. No registration is included in the published tables.

What this is not

It is not the DVSA anonymised MOT testing data, and it is not a count of every UK test. That national extract is published separately by the DVSA under the Open Government Licence, from tests since the MOT system was computerised in 2005. It was last updated on GOV.UK on 22 June 2026. VehicleScore has not loaded those files into this page. Combining them with this sample would count some vehicles twice.

Official sources

A live registration check uses DVSA MOT history for that vehicle. The public lookup is GOV.UK: Check the MOT history of a vehicle. The national research files, which this page does not use for the tables, are on DVSA anonymised MOT data.

Suggested citation

VehicleScore, “MOT history check research”, snapshot 27 September 2026, job 2026-09-27.1. Vehicles checked through VehicleScore. https://vehiclescore.co.uk/mot-check

Aggregate downloads

• Age and mileage bands
• Model pass rates used on the model research page
• Common comment categories
• Mileage discrepancies

Longer write-ups of the same snapshot: pass rate by age, pass rates by model, common MOT problems, mileage discrepancies.