HPI Check Review: The Register Behind Everyone Else's Car Check

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HPI has been running the same register since 1938, when it produced what its own corporate timeline calls “Britain’s first ever vehicle provenance check”. That is 88 years of finance houses, insurers and the police filing entries against vehicle identities, and it is the reason “doing an HPI check” became the phrase people use for the whole exercise. The trading company is HPI Limited, registered in England under number 04068979 and incorporated on 6 September 2000, with its registered office at 8a Platform, New Station Street, Leeds LS1 4JB. It is owned by HPI Holding Limited (06765994) and has been part of Solera since 2008; Solera bought the valuation business cap in 2014 and merged the two into cap hpi in 2015, so the trade pricing book and the consumer provenance check now sit under one roof.

The consumer product comes in three sizes. The full hpi check® is £19.99 and covers what HPI describes as “80+ in-depth data points” — outstanding finance, stolen markers, insurance write-off category, previous keeper count, scrappage, logbook and VIN verification, mileage discrepancies, plate changes, import and export records, MOT history and a valuation. A Basic Check is £9.99 and a MultiCheck is £29.99 for three full checks. The full check carries a £30,000 guarantee that runs for two years from the date of the check.

The scale behind it is the part worth knowing before you spend anything. HPI says it holds “over 7 million current finance agreements”, that “each year 150,000 vehicle thefts are recorded by insurers”, and that its check “uncovers more than 2,000 insurance write-offs every day”. It also operates the National Mileage Register, and reckons 1 in 11 vehicles on its database carries a mileage discrepancy. Those are the four things a used car can be hiding, and one company has been collecting all four of them for longer than most of the cars on the road have existed.

Six registers, one report

An hpi check® is not one database. It is a query run across several, and knowing which is which tells you how much weight each answer deserves. HPI names the DVLA for registration and keeper data, the Police National Computer for stolen markers, finance houses for outstanding agreements, insurers through the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register for write-offs, the SMMT for technical specification, and its own National Mileage Register for odometer readings.

The finance and write-off registers are the two you cannot get anywhere else, and they are also the two that depend entirely on somebody else choosing to file an entry. A lender that does not register an agreement leaves no trace for HPI to find; an insurer that has not yet notified a total loss leaves the category blank. HPI is candid enough about this in its own small print, saying that because the information “is aggregated from various sources, we cannot accept any liability for the accuracy of content” and that visitors “are strongly encouraged to independently verify the information before acting”. A clear report means nothing has been filed, which is a different statement from nothing having happened.

The mileage register is HPI’s own asset and the one it has built for longest. Its corporate timeline records the National Mileage Register passing 150 million readings in 2012. Readings come from MOT tests, service records, finance and insurance transactions, so a car that has spent years off the road or out of the country produces gaps rather than lies — the register can only show what somebody wrote down.

The £9.99 version leaves out the two things you were worried about

The Basic Check at £9.99 is half the price of the full report and, on HPI’s own description, it “won’t benefit from our guarantee and elements such as mileage discrepancies and write off details will not be included”. Read that against the company’s own headline figures — 2,000 write-offs uncovered a day, 1 in 11 vehicles carrying a mileage discrepancy — and the £10 saving removes the two checks the numbers say are most likely to catch something.

The gap between the two products is really about the guarantee. Only the full check is backed, so the Basic Check is a data lookup with no financial promise attached. If the point of paying is to have someone stand behind the answer, the Basic Check is not the product doing that job, and HPI does not pretend otherwise.

The MultiCheck at £29.99 works out at £10.00 a check and is the only sensible option if you are shortlisting more than one car, which most buyers are. Two full checks bought separately cost £39.98, so the third is effectively free plus £9.99 back in change.

What the £30,000 actually promises

The guarantee is the product, and it is worth reading rather than assuming. HPI’s terms set the maximum at “£30,000 where you have supplied us with the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), Vehicle Registration Mark (VRM)”, and it covers losses arising from inaccurate information about write-offs, insurance total loss, or a failure to acquire good title. Claims can be submitted for “two years from the date of your HPI Check”.

The write-off limb is capped separately and much lower: “50% of the market value of the vehicle, or £15,000, whichever is the lower”. On a £12,000 car that is £6,000, not £30,000. The headline figure applies to the title limb, where the whole purchase price can be at stake.

Then come the exclusions, and there are several. The guarantee does not cover the vehicle’s description, its value, its mileage or the accuracy of its documents. Vehicles with a recorded mileage discrepancy are excluded, as are vehicles bought more than 30% below retail market value, vehicles without a valid MOT certificate, and “Q” prefix or suffix registrations. Motor traders and anyone buying for profit are outside it entirely. You must also have supplied the VIN and the V5C details and completed the verification before you buy — a check run the morning after the money changed hands is not a covered check.

Taken together, the exclusions describe a careful private buyer paying a fair price for a roadworthy car with clean paperwork. That is exactly the buyer least likely to need the guarantee, which is how most indemnities work, but it means the bargain-hunter buying a cheap car at a keen price — the person with most to lose — has quietly stepped outside the cover.

A 1964 Act already protects private buyers, and nobody mentions it

HPI’s finance pages say that if you buy a vehicle with an outstanding agreement on it “you’re in danger of losing both the vehicle and the money you paid for it”. For a trade buyer that is accurate. For a private buyer it is not the whole story, because Part III of the Hire-Purchase Act 1964 has said otherwise for 62 years.

Section 27(2) provides that where a vehicle still subject to hire purchase or conditional sale is sold to a private purchaser, and “he is a purchaser of the motor vehicle in good faith without notice of the hire-purchase or conditional sale agreement”, that disposition “shall have effect as if the creditor’s title to the vehicle has been vested in the debtor immediately before that disposition”. In plain terms, you get good title and the finance company’s claim is against the person who sold the car, not against you. Section 27(3) extends the same protection to the first private purchaser where the car passed through a dealer first.

Two conditions carry all the weight. The buyer must be a private purchaser — a motor trader or finance company gets nothing from the section — and must be acting without notice. That second phrase is the one worth pausing over, because a check that reveals outstanding finance gives you notice of it. Run the check, see the marker, buy the car anyway, and you have argued yourself out of the statutory protection you would otherwise have had. The check is therefore most valuable as a reason to walk away, and least valuable as something to note and ignore.

None of that makes the finance check pointless. It saves you a fight you would rather not have, it protects you from a seller who cannot settle, and it matters enormously if you are buying through a business. It does mean the risk being described in the marketing is larger than the risk the law actually leaves sitting with an honest private buyer.

The logbook loan is the hole the law never filled

There is one form of secured lending where the 1964 Act gives no help at all, and the check earns its price. A logbook loan is a bill of sale under Victorian legislation, not a hire purchase agreement, so section 27 does not touch it. The Law Commission put the consequence bluntly in its work on the subject: “as the loan follows the vehicle, buyers may lose cars bought in good faith”, and it recorded a case of a van repossessed from a buyer who had done nothing wrong and lost both the van and the money.

The Commission also measured the growth of the practice — bills of sale rose from under 3,000 in 2001 to over 37,000 in 2015 — and published a full report in September 2016 with 34 recommendations, including repealing the bills of sale legislation, a new Goods Mortgages Act, and express protection for good-faith private buyers. That protection has not arrived. Until it does, the logbook loan marker on an hpi check® is the single line on the report with no legal safety net behind it, and HPI includes it in the full check.

Two government services answer part of the question for nothing

Before paying anyone, it is worth knowing exactly what the state gives away. GOV.UK’s MOT history service shows every test result for cars, motorcycles and vans since 2005 — pass or fail, the mileage recorded at each test, failure items, advisories and the test location — with HGV, trailer and bus records from 2018 and Northern Ireland from 2017. All you need is the registration.

The DVLA vehicle enquiry service adds, free, the current tax rate and expiry, SORN status, MOT expiry, date of first registration, the last V5C issue date, year of manufacture, type approval category, weight, engine size, fuel type and CO2 emissions. Keeper details are the one thing you cannot get online — DVLA requires a written request for information about a current or previous registered keeper.

Between them, those two free services cover the mileage story as far as the MOT record goes, and the identity and tax position of the car. HPI itself runs a free MOT history lookup and says of the wider product that a comprehensive check “isn’t something that can be offered for free”, warning that “some less reputable companies use our well-recognised name to attract customers to their own, often inferior, products”. On the four things only the paid check can see — finance, stolen markers, write-off category and mileage readings from outside the MOT record — that is a fair claim.

The write-off category is worth understanding before you read it. The ABI’s Code of Practice for the Categorisation of Motorised Vehicle Salvage sets the four letters: A is scrap, B is break for parts, S is structurally damaged but repairable, and N is non-structural damage. The ABI updated the code in May 2025, its first revision since 2019, adding guidance on electric and hybrid vehicles, megacasting and reusable components. It remains a voluntary framework, which is another reason a blank field is not the same as a clean history.

The identical report costs £14.99 with somebody else’s badge on it

This is the awkward part, and it is verifiable in about two minutes. The AA’s vehicle check site carries the line “Powered by HPI”, sells a single check at £14.99 and a MultiCheck at £29.99, describes the report as outstanding finance, stolen markers, insurance write-offs, V5C and VIN match plus “more than 72 other pieces of information”, and answers its phone on 0113 222 2012 — a Leeds number, which is where HPI sits.

The RAC does the same. Its car data check is also “Powered by HPI”, at £14.99 for the full check, £9.98 for a basic one and £29.97 for a multi-check, carrying the same “£30,000 data guarantee (on qualifying claims)” valid for two years, and throwing in up to £35 of RAC Shop vouchers on the full check and up to £55 on the multi. Parkers runs a fourth badge on the same engine, stating that it “is partnered with award winning vehicle history experts, HPI”.

So the same underlying report, with the same guarantee behind it, is £19.99 from the company that compiles it and £14.99 from two motoring organisations that license it — £5.00, or 25%, more expensive at source. The MultiCheck is the exception: £29.99 at HPI against £29.97 at the RAC is a two-pence difference and not worth crossing the road for. If you only need one check, buying direct from HPI is the dearest of the routes on offer, and that is not a small point on a £20 purchase.

Where HPI’s own pages disagree, and who you complain to

Two of HPI’s own consumer pages give different sizes for the same register. The sample report on hpicheck.com states that “HPI operates the National Mileage Register® (NMR), containing over 200 million recorded mileages”, while the mileage page on home.hpicheck.com says it “contains over 369 million readings”. Neither carries a date, so there is no way to tell which is current and which is stale copy. The same pair disagrees about the cost of clocking: £100 million a year on one page, “over £800 million annually” on the other, alongside a claim that clocking “can add up to £4,000 to the price of a used car”. The “1 in 3” fraction also does double duty — one page says one in three cars checked “is still on finance” and another says one in three has “some form of hidden history”, which cannot both be the same measurement.

The check terms are dated in a different way. They tell you that if HPI provides the information before the cancellation period ends “under The Consumer Protection Distance Selling Regulations 2000, then your right to cancel will end as soon as we provide the Information”. Those regulations were revoked and replaced by the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, in force since 13 June 2014. The practical outcome is much the same — you lose the cancellation right the moment the report appears on screen, which is a few seconds after you pay — but a live consumer contract citing an instrument repealed twelve years ago is not a good look for a company whose business is keeping records current.

Finally, there is no ombudsman here. A vehicle data check is not a regulated financial service, so the Financial Ombudsman Service has no jurisdiction over a dispute about a report, and there is no alternative dispute resolution scheme named in the terms. The site conditions disclaim liability for “any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage arising from your reliance on any information contained on this website” and submit everything to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. Outside the guarantee, a disputed report is a county court matter, and no independent ratings body publishes a verified score for vehicle data checks the way Defaqto does for insurance. HPI Limited last filed accounts to 31 March 2025, with the next set due by 31 December 2026.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 7 September 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.