Driving Licence Check: what you need

The Driving Licence Check verifies a UK driving licence and returns the holder's status, entitlements and any penalty points. It's built for rental, fleet, insurance and gig-economy onboarding — anywhere you need to confirm someone can legally drive before handing over the keys.

What you need to run a check

Unlike vehicle lookups, this product needs two inputs:

1. The driver's licence number.
2. An 8-character DVLA share code from the government "Share your driving record" service.

Share codes are case-sensitive and valid for 21 days from the moment the driver generates them.

What it returns

• Driving status and licence validity dates
• Photocard expiry date
• Full vehicle entitlements (the categories held)
• Penalty-point endorsements with offence codes
• Total live points and offences

How it's billed

Each successful check costs £1.50 at Tier 1, falling to £1.10 on the largest top-up tier. If the licence can't be verified, you're not charged.

Calling it

Send the licence number and share code to the driving-licence product's live endpoint:

curl -X POST "https://vehiclematic.com/products/driving-licence-checking-service/api/live/check" \
  -H "X-VEHICLEMATIC-KEY: your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"licence_number":"MORGA657054SM9IJ","share_code":"Ab12Cd34"}'

See Making a lookup for the response envelope and How credits work for billing.