Every car in England, Scotland and Wales that is more than three years old must pass an MOT every year. The full record of those tests is public and free: passes, failures, advisories, and the mileage recorded at every visit. It takes under a minute to check. If you're buying a used car, it's the single most revealing free document you can pull on it.

The official way: GOV.UK's MOT history service

Go to gov.uk/check-mot-history and enter the registration number. For every MOT since 2005 you'll see:

• Pass or fail, with the date and the mileage recorded at the test
• Failure reasons, meaning what was actually wrong with the car
• Advisories: faults not bad enough to fail, but flagged as "keep an eye on this"
• The expiry date of the current MOT

You don't need to own the car, and the seller doesn't have to be involved. Note that Northern Ireland runs a separate scheme, so MOT history there isn't in this service.

What the history tells you that the seller might not

The MOT record is where a car's real story leaks out. Before you view any used car, scan it for these.

Mileage that doesn't add up.The recorded mileage should rise steadily year on year. A drop (or a suspiciously flat period) can indicate clocking, and it's sitting there in black and white.

Repeat advisories that never get fixed. The same corrosion or brake advisory appearing three years running tells you the owner ran the car on minimum spend.

A pattern of failures then quick re-passes. Perfectly normal in itself; combined with long advisory lists, though, it sketches how the car has been maintained.

Gaps in the record. A missing year may mean the car was declared off-road (SORN), was untaxed and unused, or was driven without an MOT. Worth asking the seller directly.

When is a car's first MOT due?

Three years after first registration. Until then it won't have any history to check, so lean harder on the service book and the DVLA record.

What does an MOT cost?

The legal maximum a test centre can charge for a car is £54.85, a figure unchanged since 2010, and many garages charge substantially less. There's no fee to check history. Anyone charging you for the record alone is reselling free public data.

Check the whole car in one search

MOT history is one piece. The DVLA holds the rest: whether the car is taxed or declared SORN, when the V5C was issued, engine size, colour changes, CO₂ band and more. Each of those is a cross-check on what the seller is telling you.