"How much does a UK vehicle data API cost?" is a harder question to answer than it should be, because most suppliers don't publish a full rate card. You'll find a headline figure for a basic lookup, and then a sign-up form. This post sets out what actually drives the price, what a realistic monthly bill looks like at different volumes, and the questions worth asking before you commit engineering time to an integration.
The short answer
At the time of writing, a UK registration lookup through a commercial gateway costs somewhere between 4p and 15p depending on volume. An MOT history lookup is similar or cheaper. A provenance check: write-off, outstanding finance, stolen markers: costs £2 to £3, which is 20 to 60 times more.
That ratio is the single most important thing to understand about this market, and it isn't about margin.
Why some checks cost pence and others cost pounds
The difference is the source.
DVLA registration data and DVSA MOT history come from public registers. The DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service and the DVSA MOT History API are both available to registered users, and neither charges per lookup. A gateway that resells them is charging you for the integration, the normalisation, the caching and the availability, not for the data itself. Hence pence.
Provenance is different. Insurance write-off records, outstanding finance agreements and police stolen markers are held on licensed commercial registers, aggregated from insurers, finance houses and the police. Access is licensed, and the licensor charges per interrogation. Any supplier selling you a provenance check is paying for it, which is why the price is broadly similar wherever you buy it. If you find one dramatically cheaper, it is worth asking which registers it actually queries.
Valuation sits in between: licensed data, but a less expensive licence.
What a month actually costs
Work from your real mix rather than a headline rate. A worked example for a dealer group running 3,000 part-exchange appraisals a month:
| Check | Volume | Rate (volume tier) | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicle details | 3,000 | 4p | £120 |
| Valuation | 3,000 | 16p | £480 |
| Provenance | 400 (offers taken) | £2.34 | £936 |
| Total | £1,536 |
Two things to notice. First, the cheap checks are almost irrelevant to the bill: the DVLA lookups are 8% of it. Second, the variable that actually matters is how many provenance checks you run, which is a business-process question rather than a procurement one. Running provenance only on vehicles you're about to take in, rather than on every appraisal, is worth more than any rate negotiation.
Per-lookup versus a seat licence
There are two models in this market.
Annual contract with a bundled allowance. You pay a fixed fee, often per seat or per site, and get an allowance of lookups. Works out well above a certain volume, because the effective per-lookup rate keeps falling as you use more of the allowance. Works out badly below it, because you pay for the allowance whether you use it or not, and a quiet quarter costs the same as a busy one.
Pay per lookup, usually via prepaid credits. No commitment, and nothing to pay in a quiet month. The rate typically falls in tiers as you buy more credit at a time.
Neither is better in the abstract. The crossover is usually somewhere around 200,000 to 300,000 lookups a month, and it moves depending on how predictable your volume is. If it swings seasonally, and in motor retail it does: per-lookup handles that better than a fixed allowance sized for your best month.
What "free DVLA data" actually costs
The DVLA's Vehicle Enquiry Service has no per-lookup charge, and for a straightforward registration lookup it is a legitimate option worth considering seriously. What you take on:
- The integration, and its maintenance when the API changes
- API key management and rotation
- Retry logic, rate-limit handling and a caching layer
- Your own compliance position on what you're storing and why
And you still have nothing for MOT history, valuation, provenance, specification, tyres, battery data or imagery. Each of those is a separate source with its own contract, its own response shape and its own failure modes. The honest question isn't whether the data is free. It's whether five integrations and their ongoing maintenance cost less than a few pence a lookup.
For a team of one shipping a side project, the DVLA route is often right. For a team with a roadmap, it usually isn't.
Five questions to ask any supplier
- Are the per-lookup rates published in full, or quoted on request? Both are legitimate, but you can't model your costs against the second.
- Am I charged for a lookup that returns nothing? The edge cases: a registration that doesn't exist, an upstream register that's down, a partial result: are where surprises live.
- Can I test the API before signing anything? You want to see the actual JSON, not a description of it.
- What's the contract length and the minimum? And what happens to your rate if volume drops.
- What's not covered? Republic of Ireland data, PNC checks, ABI codes, address data and bulk cleansing all vary enormously between suppliers, and it's much cheaper to find out now.
Our own numbers
We publish every rate at every tier on the pricing page, because we'd rather you could compare us properly than have to ask. In summary: a DVLA lookup from 15p down to 4p, MOT history from 6p down to 2p, provenance from £3.00 down to £2.34, and a driving licence check from £1.50 down to £1.10: all ex VAT, charged only on a successful lookup, with no contract and no minimum.
The cost calculator will work out a monthly figure from your volume, and the sandbox will show you the response shape without an account. If you're weighing up suppliers more broadly, our buyer's guide sets out the questions above with our own answers to each.