About Reg Lookup.

Reg Lookup shows the MOT history and details of any vehicle registered in Great Britain. Type in a registration and you get the make and model, every MOT test on record, the defects found at each one, a chart of the odometer readings, the tax position, running cost estimates and, for buses and coaches, the fleet details. It is free to use and made by SYNK Team.

Where the data comes from

The MOT record comes from the DVSA MOT history service. The site asks that service for a vehicle when you search and shows what it sends back. It does not keep a copy of the vehicle database. Results are held in memory for ten minutes so that repeat searches are quick, then dropped.

Tax status and the vehicle's registered details come from the DVLA's vehicle enquiry service. These include the tax due date, the date of the last V5C, the weight, the CO₂ figure, the Euro status, the wheelplan and the type approval. The site looks them up the same way you would on the DVLA's public page, one at a time and kept for an hour. That service is sometimes down for maintenance, and when it is the DVLA section simply does not appear.

For buses and minibuses the site also asks whensmybus.co.uk, which SYNK Team runs too. Its fleet records are built from open data and the work of volunteers. That is where the operator, fleet number, exact chassis and body, branding and the active or withdrawn status come from. Those records can lag behind.

Road tax rates and weekly pump prices come from GOV.UK, and the plate areas come from the DVLA's published local memory tags.

What it leaves out

• Insurance, owners, keepers and previous plates.
• Insurance groups, power figures and valuations.
• The exact trim of a car or van. For buses, the chassis and body come from whensmybus.co.uk where it has a record, and otherwise from what the DVSA recorded, which is often only the body maker and model.

Things to know when reading a result

• Odometer readings are typed in by the tester. Some are in kilometres, some in miles and some are simply wrong. The chart converts everything to miles, so a sudden jump or drop is usually a mistake.
• The manufacture date in the DVSA record is sometimes later than the registration date. When that happens, trust the registration date.
• A new tax payment or SORN can take a couple of days to show up in the DVLA's records.
• A lapsed MOT does not mean a vehicle is off the road. Some vehicles are exempt, some are stored and some records lag behind.
• Cars get their first MOT three years after registration. Buses and coaches with more than eight passenger seats need one after a year.
• A vehicle that is not found may be very new, may be a typing mistake or may not be covered by the service.

Details the site works out

A few rows on the vehicle page are calculated by the site and are not supplied by the DVSA or the DVLA. Those that are estimates are tagged as such on the page:

• Age, counted from the registration date.
• Plate issued in, taken from the first two letters of a plate made since 2001, which show which DVLA office issued it. A transferred or cherished plate can say nothing about where the vehicle is.
• Vehicle type, read from the type approval code, for example M1 for a car or M3 for a bus.
• Euro status, where the DVLA gives none, estimated from the fuel and registration date for cars.
• Emission zones, an estimate of whether a car or van is likely to be charged in London's ULEZ and Birmingham's Clean Air Zone. Petrol needs Euro 4 and diesel needs Euro 6. Other vehicles follow different rules, so the site just says so.
• MOT exemption, a note on vehicles over 40 years old, which can be exempt from the MOT.
• MOT tests and average mileage, counted from the test history, with the yearly mileage shown only when the odometer readings look consistent.
• Road tax rate, the standard rate from GOV.UK's published tables, using the engine size, CO₂ figure and registration date. It leaves out extras such as the supplement on expensive new cars.
• Estimated economy and fuel cost, worked out from the CO₂ figure and the latest weekly pump price from GOV.UK. Real-world driving usually uses more fuel than the figure suggests.
• Days left on the tax, counted from the due date the DVLA gives.

These are estimates, and the page links to the official ULEZ checker and Clean Air Zone checker on GOV.UK for the real answer. The tax rates in the site were last checked on 25 October 2026, so they can be out of date after a change.

Buyer summaries

Under the vehicle details there is a button that writes a short, plain-English summary of the vehicle. All the figures in it, such as the number of tests and failures, the mileage readings, the advisories that keep coming back, the tax position, the estimates and the bus details, are worked out by the site from the record first. An AI model from NVIDIA then turns them into a few sentences, so it is not asked to find or guess the facts itself. The registration number is not sent to it.

It can still get things wrong, so it always carries a reminder to check. It never says whether a vehicle is a good buy.

Bulk lookup

The bulk lookup page takes up to 50 registrations at once and gives you a table you can download as a CSV file. It is limited to six runs every ten minutes so that the service stays usable for everyone.

Questions or corrections: blake@hostedbysynk.com