How to choose a UK vehicle data provider.
There are a dozen or so companies selling UK vehicle data through an API, and from the outside they look much the same. These are the questions that actually separate them, and our own answers to each, so you can hold us to the same standard.
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1
Where does the data actually come from?
Registration and MOT data come from public registers: the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service and the DVSA MOT History API. Valuation and provenance do not; they come from licensed commercial registers, and a supplier is reselling access. Knowing which is which tells you why one check costs pence and another costs pounds, and what happens to your service if a licence lapses.
Our answer
Vehicle records come from the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service and MOT records from the DVSA MOT History API. Valuation, provenance, specification, tyre and battery data is supplied under licence by an authorised UK automotive data provider. Every source and its freshness window is listed on our data and coverage page.
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2
Are the per-lookup rates published?
Plenty of suppliers publish a headline rate for one product and put the rest behind a trial sign-up or a sales call. That is a legitimate commercial choice, but it means you cannot model your costs before committing time to an integration, and it makes like-for-like comparison across suppliers impossible.
Our answer
Every per-lookup rate for every product is on our pricing page, at every tier, with no account needed. So are the plan prices.
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3
Can you test it before you sign anything?
The response shape matters more than the marketing copy. You want to see the actual JSON: field names, nesting, how nulls and partial results are handled, before you scope the work, not after.
Our answer
The sandbox returns representative responses with no account, no key and no card. The full OpenAPI spec for each product is published, and there is an interactive reference for each one.
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4
What are you charged for?
The interesting cases are the edges. A lookup on a registration that does not exist, one where the upstream register is down, one where only half the packages you asked for returned anything. Whether those are billable is worth establishing before you find out from an invoice.
Our answer
You are charged on successful delivery. A lookup that returns nothing costs nothing. Where we serve a recent result from our own records inside the freshness window, the charge still applies: you are paying for the answer, not for the outbound request.
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5
How long is the contract?
Annual contracts with a bundled allowance work well above a certain volume and badly below it, because you pay for the allowance whether you use it or not. Per-lookup credit models invert that. Neither is better in the abstract; it depends entirely on your volume and how predictable it is.
Our answer
No contract and no minimum. One-off top-ups are valid for 12 months, monthly plans are rolling and cancellable from the billing page. Above roughly 250,000 lookups a month a fixed 12, 24 or 36-month term with invoicing usually works out better, and we will price one.
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6
What does the free trial actually give you?
"Free trial" covers everything from a handful of live lookups to a sandbox of fixture data to a sales demo. All three are useful; they are not the same thing, and it is worth knowing which one is on offer.
Our answer
Two things. A public sandbox that returns representative sample responses with no account at all, and 10 free live vehicle lookups when you create an account: no card required.
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7
Who is the data controller?
Where vehicle data is personal data, somebody is the controller and somebody is the processor, and the answer determines who carries the lawful-basis obligation. A supplier who has not thought about this is a supplier who will not have a data-processing agreement ready when your legal team asks.
Our answer
You act as controller and we act as processor for delivery. You need a lawful basis for your purpose; our terms set out the restrictions, including that the data must not be used for direct marketing or for tracing individuals. We will walk through a DPA if you need one.
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8
What is NOT covered?
Breadth varies enormously. Some suppliers carry Republic of Ireland and European data, police national computer checks, insurance industry codes, address data or bulk registration cleansing. If you need one of those, it narrows the field immediately, and it is much cheaper to discover before an integration than during one.
Our answer
We are UK only and we key on the registration mark, not the VIN. We do not supply Republic of Ireland or Spanish vehicle data, PNC checks, ABI insurance codes, Royal Mail address data, fuel prices or bulk registration cleansing. If you need any of those, we are not the right supplier and would rather say so.
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9
How is the response shaped?
Some suppliers pass the upstream provider's response through more or less untouched, which means a different field-naming convention per data source and a parser per product. Others normalise. The second costs you less to integrate and much less to maintain when a source changes.
Our answer
One normalised JSON envelope across every product, REST only, no SOAP and no XML. Add a product later and it is the same pattern: no new SDK, no new parsing.
Where we would not be the right choice
- We sell ten data sets. Some suppliers carry two or three times that, including data we have no plans to add.
- We are UK only. If you need Republic of Ireland, European or international vehicle data, you need someone else: possibly as well as us.
- We key on the registration mark. If your workflow starts from a VIN, we cannot help yet.
- We do not do PNC checks, ABI insurance codes, Royal Mail address data or bulk registration cleansing.
- We are a newer business than several of the established suppliers. If a long trading history is part of your procurement criteria, that is a fair thing to weigh.
Questions buyers ask
- Is there a cheapest UK vehicle data API?
- Not in a way that is useful to answer, because the per-lookup rate depends on your volume and the mix of checks you run. A supplier who is cheapest on DVLA lookups may not be on provenance. Work out your actual monthly mix, then price it against published rates, and treat a supplier who will not publish rates as an unknown rather than as expensive.
- Can I use the DVLA API directly instead?
- Yes, for registration data. The DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service is available to registered users with no per-lookup charge. You take on the integration, key management and compliance, and you still have nothing for MOT history, valuation, provenance, specification or imagery: each a separate source with its own contract.
- How do I compare suppliers whose prices are not published?
- Ask for a written rate card per product at your expected volume, and ask whether unsuccessful lookups are billable. Those two questions together give you a comparable number. If a supplier will only quote after a demo, factor the delay into your timeline.
- What should I test during an evaluation?
- Send registrations you already know the answers for, including awkward ones: a vehicle recently taxed, one recently sold, an import, a personalised plate, and a registration that does not exist. How a supplier handles the last of those tells you most.
- Does switching supplier mean rewriting the integration?
- Usually yes, because response shapes differ. It is worth putting a thin mapping layer between your application and whichever supplier you pick, so a future change is one class rather than a project.
Hold us to our own answers
Every rate is on the pricing page, the sandbox runs without an account, and the sources and freshness windows are all published.
Try it on your own registrations
Create an account, get 10 free lookups, and see the response for yourself.
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