ClickMechanic Pre-Purchase Inspection Review

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ClickMechanic will send a mechanic to look over a used car for £79, and the slot can be tomorrow morning. That buys an 86-point mechanical and structural inspection with a road test of up to 5 miles, carried out wherever the car is standing, with the report emailed as soon as the mechanic finishes. £95 takes it to 136 points and adds bodywork; £137 takes it to 185 points, adds a plug-in diagnostic check, photographs in the report and the car raised off the ground.

The company has been doing this since 2012 and says there are over 1600 mechanics and garages in the network, each one “vetted on their work history”, with an in-house team that “helped over 35,000 customers last year”. Booking is done entirely online: you give a registration and a postcode, the site returns what it calls an “instant fixed price” built from “industry-standard data”, and you pick a two-hour arrival window “of your choice starting from 8:00am”. It advertises same and next day bookings across the UK, and you do not have to be there — “You do not necessarily have to be present for the inspection.”

Two things are worth knowing before you book rather than after. The inspection “does not include any vehicle history checks on the vehicle”, so outstanding finance, a previous write-off and a mileage discrepancy are all outside it and have to be bought somewhere else. And three kinds of vehicle are refused outright: ClickMechanic says it is “unable to inspect vehicles written off by insurance, motor homes over 7.5t or imported vehicles”.

Three tiers, and what changes is how far the mechanic gets into the car

The three packages are priced from £79, £95 and £137, and the ladder is easy to read because the checklist grows in one direction. Basic is 86 points of mechanical and structural inspection with interior, electrical, engine-bay and tyre checks on top. Standard is 136 points and brings bodywork inside the inspection. Premium is 185 points, with a full interior, bodywork and paint inspection, a plug-in diagnostic check, photographs in the report, and what the site describes as the “Vehicle raised to conduct more thorough inspections”.

That last line is the one that matters most and the one the pricing page says least about. A car on its wheels on a driveway hides its underside, and raising it is the difference between looking at a suspension arm and looking under it. Nothing on the page explains how the car is lifted, where, or whether the Premium booking therefore has to happen somewhere other than the seller's kerb — and for a service sold on the promise that the mechanic comes to the car, that is the question a buyer would most like answered before paying the extra £42.

The road test is the same at every level. All three checklists carry a “Driving test (up to 5 miles)”, so the £137 package drives the car no further than the £79 one. Time on site is where the money shows instead: Basic and Standard “usually take between one and two hours” and Premium “typically takes between two and three hours, depending on the vehicle and its condition”. The report lands by email “as soon as the inspection is complete” and also sits in your ClickMechanic account, and only Premium carries photographs — a Basic report comes back as words.

The same website prices the bad news

This is what no other pre-purchase inspection in Britain can do. ClickMechanic's main business is booking repairs, so the company that tells you the clutch is slipping also publishes what replacing it costs, on the same site, before you have decided whether to buy the car at all. Its price-estimate tool is built from what it calls “millions of data points including official labour times, parts prices and regional labour rates”, and it will take a registration and a postcode and return a fixed figure.

The published averages give a used-car buyer a rough price list for the faults an inspection turns up. Brakes average £191.65, car electrics £218.58, suspension £232.73, ignition £235.75, the cooling system £270.96, the exhaust £267.63, engine work £397.36, the fuel system £406.28, and clutch and transmission £567.91. The company's own rule of thumb is “around £100-£250 for minor repairs and £250-£750 for major repairs”.

Take the clutch, because it is the classic thing a test drive catches and a forecourt does not mention. ClickMechanic gives the job at “on average £400, with prices ranging from £250 to £600”, taking “between 3 and 6 hours”, and then breaks it down by marque: £500 on a BMW, £576 on a Ford, £636 on a Volkswagen, £709 on a Vauxhall, £776 on a Land Rover, £791 on an Audi, £814 on a Renault and £816 on a Mercedes-Benz. By model it quotes £450 to £750 on a Fiesta, £550 to £900 on a Golf and £700 to £1100 on a 3 Series.

Set those against the inspection fee and the arithmetic is the argument for buying one. At the £400 average, a clutch costs about five times the £79 Basic inspection; at the £567.91 category average, about seven times; on a Mercedes at £816, more than ten. The quoted repair price includes the parts, the fitting, the fluids, disposal of the old parts, “VAT (if applicable)” and a 12-month parts and labour warranty, with the mechanic “Coming to you (under 1600cc)” — though a car over 1600cc that will not drive needs recovery, and ClickMechanic says to “budget around £100 for its collection”. None of this is a sales pitch the firm makes for its own inspection; the two halves of the site simply sit next to each other, and a buyer can do the sum.

Where the 50% saving comes from, and where it stops

The inspection page leads on a comparison: “Up to 50% cheaper than AA and RAC”, expanded underneath to “An average 50% saving when compared to the AA and RAC (AA: £142-£191, RAC: £116-£267)*”, with an asterisk that reads “*Prices as of February 2024”.

Dating the comparison is the right instinct and it is more than most advertisers manage — the Advertising Standards Authority's own guidance on verifiability says an ad should identify the specific products being compared and when the comparison was made, and CAP rule 3.34 requires a comparison with an identifiable competitor to “objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature of those products”. The trouble is that the date is now twenty months old and the two rivals have moved.

Read from their own pages on 17 October 2026, the AA charges £110 for Basic, from £199 for Comprehensive and from £279 for Advanced, with 10% off for members, up to 99, 214 and 221 points, and nothing older than 20 years inspected at any price. The RAC charges from £132, from £225 and from £290, with 307 points on the two upper tiers and road tests of up to 3, 10 and 20 miles. Neither range is the one in ClickMechanic's footnote: the real AA ceiling is £88 above the £191 printed, and the real AA floor is £32 below the £142.

The saving is real and it is worth having, but it is smaller at the bottom than the headline suggests and larger at the top. Against the AA's £110 Basic, the £79 Basic is 28% cheaper; against the RAC's £132 Basic, 40%. Against the AA's £279 Advanced, the £137 Premium is 51% cheaper, and against the RAC's £290, 53% — but that is the comparison between the least similar products, since 185 points and a five-mile drive is not 307 points and twenty miles. Even on ClickMechanic's own February 2024 figures the four comparisons available come out at 44%, 28%, 32% and 49%, and the page does not say which products were paired or how the average was struck. All of that is fixable with one afternoon's work and a new date.

A warranty that covers the repair and not the report

Every page on the site carries the same promise: “All repairs & services come with a 12-month warranty on both labour and parts.” The governing document behind it, ClickMechanic's Auto Service Warranty Requirements, puts it at 12 months or 12,000 miles, whichever is sooner, requires the work to be free from defects in materials and workmanship, and requires any part supplied by the mechanic to be “new and a match for the Customer's vehicle”. It is a minimum the platform imposes on its mechanics rather than a ceiling, and a mechanic may offer better.

It does not reach the product this page is about. The same document says a mechanic “need not provide this warranty in respect of inspections”, naming pre-purchase inspections, and adds that “Inspections and diagnosis are based on the condition of the vehicle at the time the auto services are provided.” The inspection page says it in four words of its own: “Inspections do not come with a warranty.”

That is not unreasonable in itself — an opinion about a car's condition on a Tuesday is a different thing from a gearbox that must keep working for a year — and it is stated plainly in two places rather than buried. What it means in practice is that the most expensive thing an inspection can do to you, which is miss something, is the one outcome with no contractual remedy attached. The terms narrow it further. Clause 1.1 says “The customer buys auto services from the mechanic who accepts their booking – not from ClickMechanic”, clause 9.2 says “Under no circumstances will we be liable in any way for any Auto Services”, and clause 19.3 says the company is “under no obligation to provide you with a refund or credit note” if you are unhappy with the work. Clause 19.2 sends you to the mechanic: “If you are unhappy with any Auto Services you should speak to the Mechanic to try and resolve the issue.” The terms were last updated on 3 December 2025, so this is current drafting rather than something left over.

A consumer is not left with nothing — a service bought in the United Kingdom has to be carried out with reasonable care and skill whatever a contract says — but the person who owes that duty is a self-employed mechanic you have never met, not the brand whose name is on the invoice, and there is no ombudsman behind either of them.

£50 and £79 buy two different documents

ClickMechanic sells a second thing that looks like the first. A Vehicle Health Check costs £50, “comes with a written report by a vetted mechanic”, runs to 28 points, and includes a road test. It covers seat belts, warning lights and the horn inside; the cambelt interval, fluid levels, cooling system, drive belts, oil and leaks under the bonnet; all four tyres, the spare and the wheel-nut torque; bodywork, lights, washers and wipers outside; and suspension, brakes, steering and the exhaust.

So £29 separates a 28-point health check from an 86-point pre-purchase inspection, and both end in a written report after a drive. On the arithmetic that is 58 extra checks for twenty-nine pounds, which makes the Basic inspection the better value of the two by a distance — and it is the kind of comparison a seller would normally keep off one page. Neither product page explains the difference, and the health check page does not mention the inspection at all.

Point counts across the trade are not comparable anyway, and nobody in it publishes a definition of a point. ClickMechanic's 86, 136 and 185 sit below the AA's 99, 214 and 221 and well below the RAC's 307, but a provider that counts each tyre separately has four points where a provider that writes “tyres” has one. The useful comparisons are the ones with units behind them: hours on site, miles driven, whether the car is raised, whether a diagnostic reader is plugged in, and whether there are photographs. On those, ClickMechanic's Premium is the only inspection of the three brands that both raises the car and reads fault codes for under £150.

What it costs to change your mind, and the labour rate hidden inside it

The charges are set out in a separate Auto Service Booking Policies document, and they are moderate. Cancelling or rescheduling is free with at least 24 hours' notice before the earliest scheduled arrival time. Inside that window a Late Cancellation or Late Rescheduling charge of up to £20 applies. Once the mechanic has started travelling it becomes an Extra-Late charge of up to £40. If work has already begun, an In-Progress Cancellation means paying for the labour incurred, any parts already fitted, and the labour to put the car back together if you ask for that.

Underneath all of it sits a Minimum Labour Charge of 0.9 hours, charged at the standard rate and stated as falling “between £34.44 and £75.30”. That is the most useful number on the document, because it is the only place the platform publishes what labour actually costs: 0.9 hours at £34.44 is an hourly rate of about £38, and 0.9 hours at £75.30 is about £84. That calculation is this page's own, not ClickMechanic's, but the two figures it rests on are the company's.

Three things in the same document are worth reading twice. Every one of the cancellation charges applies “at ClickMechanic's sole discretion”, which cuts both ways and is at least honest about who decides. A Forced Cancellation charge can land on the customer where the mechanic turns up and cannot do the work for reasons including “incorrect information affecting labour or parts” — a risk that falls on whoever filled in the booking form, which on a pre-purchase inspection is a buyer describing a car they have never owned. And the inspection page carries its own version: “It is not always possible for the mechanic to undertake all checks”, followed by “No refund will be made in these circumstances.” A partial inspection is still a paid inspection.

A software company, a mechanic, and a car on a stranger's drive

CLICKMECHANIC LTD is company 08297894, incorporated on 19 November 2012, active, a private limited company registered at 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. Its single SIC code is 62012, “Business and domestic software development” — which is a fair description of what the company does and a slightly startling one to find behind a service whose whole promise is a human being arriving with a toolbox. The business it is in is the booking engine; the spanner work is bought in.

The accounts say the same thing about scale that the marketing does not. ClickMechanic has filed “total exemption full accounts” every year, the most recent made up to 31 December 2024 and filed on 26 September 2025, running to 14 pages. Accounts for the year to 31 December 2025 were due by 30 September 2026 and had not appeared on the register when this page was written on 17 October 2026. A small company claiming audit exemption publishes no turnover, so there is no independently filed figure for the size of the business anywhere — only the company's own “over 1600 mechanics and garages”, “over 35,000 customers last year” and “212000+ Customer Reviews”.

Its own account of itself is that it was “founded in 2012” by two people it names only as Andrew and Felix, after one of them had run a car-parts aggregator, and that its institutional investors “include EF, Forward Partners, 500 Startups, and Imperial Innovations”, with the former chief executive of JustEat and chairman of Treatwell, Klaus Nyengaard, as an angel. No amounts are given for any of it. Companies House supplies the surname the about page leaves out: Andrew Jervis is recorded as a director and a person with significant control, with his details last updated in November 2023.

One more structural fact, and it flatters the firm. The same three packages at the same three prices appear on ClickMechanic pages built for other brands — the HPI partner page carries “From £79”, “From £95” and “From £137” and the same 86, 136 and 185 points, under the heading “HPI recommends pre-purchase inspections”. Other motoring names point their readers at this inspection rather than running one of their own, and the price does not change when they do.

What the inspection does not look at, and what the state looks at free

The clearest limit is one ClickMechanic states itself: the checklist “does not include any vehicle history checks on the vehicle”, and the page suggests those “can easily [be] purchase[d] elsewhere online”. An inspection answers what is wrong with the car today. It does not answer whether the car is still on finance, whether it has been written off and repaired, whether the mileage is what the dashboard says, or whether it is stolen. Those four questions have sunk more used-car purchases than a tired clutch ever has, and a buyer who books an £79 inspection believing it covers them has bought the wrong half of the job.

Part of the rest is free. GOV.UK's vehicle recall service, last updated on 9 September 2026, will “Find out if the manufacturer has recalled a vehicle, part or accessory because of a serious safety problem” from the registration alone, and also lists faults registered with the DVSA; where a recall applies, owners “will not usually have to pay for any repairs or parts”. Nothing in ClickMechanic's checklists mentions outstanding recalls, and nothing on its site points a buyer at the free check. The same is true of the MOT history service, which gives every recorded test, mileage reading and advisory since 2005 for nothing.

Two absences round it off. No ombudsman or alternative dispute resolution body is named anywhere on the site: the terms escalate to the mechanic, then to support@clickmechanic.com, then to the courts of England, with clause 19.4 setting English law and English jurisdiction. And no rating from an independent ratings body could be found for the brand — it does not appear on Smart Money People, and neither Defaqto nor Fairer Finance covers garage services at all, which leaves the company's own published review counts as the only measure of satisfaction available. Neither gap is unusual in this trade, and both are worth knowing before treating a brand name as a guarantee.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 17 October 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.