HPI Check Alternative: What You Get, and What You Pay For

"HPI check" has become the generic name for a car history check in Britain, in the way people say Hoover for a vacuum cleaner. That is a branding achievement, not a statement about what is in the data. If you are weighing up alternatives, the useful comparison is tier against tier.

Disclosure: HPI Check is a Solera product. We sell a competing check, and the prices below are taken from each company's own pricing page on the date given.

What do the HPI tiers actually include?

Two consumer tiers, priced on their own site at £19.99 for the full check and £9.99 for the basic one, both inclusive of VAT [1]. The full check advertises more than eighty data points, including outstanding finance, write-off history, stolen markers, mileage discrepancies, previous keepers, plate changes, scrapped status and a valuation. Three checks together are £29.99.

The line worth reading twice is what the basic tier leaves out. HPI's own page says the £9.99 option does not come with mileage discrepancies or write-off details [1]. Those are two of the four checks that decide what a car is worth, which makes the £9.99 tier a different product rather than a smaller one.

What does the rest of the field charge?

This is where the £9.99 headline stops meaning anything. At almost exactly that price, three different products give you three very different things [1] [3] [4]:

Check	Price	Finance	Write-off	Mileage	Stolen
Total Car Check Silver [3]	£3.99	No	Yes	No	No
AutoTrader [2]	£6.95	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Total Car Check Gold [3]	£9.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MotorCheck [4]	£9.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HPI Basic [1]	£9.99	Yes	No	No	Yes
Caraxle Full Check	£12.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HPI Full [1]	£19.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Source: Provider pricing pages, checked October 2026

Comparing only the tiers that carry all four, the field looks like this:

Single check including finance, write-off, stolen and mileage, in pounds

Two things fall out of that, and neither is the one the advertising suggests.

The same £9.99 buys very different coverage. MotorCheck and Total Car Check Gold both include all four checks at that price [3] [4]. HPI's £9.99 tier does not. If you were choosing on headline price alone, you would be comparing a complete check against a partial one and calling them equivalent.

Bundles change the arithmetic more than brand does. Total Car Check drops to £3.99 per check in a five-pack and MotorCheck to the same [3] [4]; Total Car Check's Silver tier falls to £1.99 each, though it carries no finance check at all. If you are working through a shortlist of five cars rather than buying one, the per-check price is the number to compare, and it is roughly a third of the single-check price.

Which checks actually change a buying decision?

In order of how badly they can hurt you:

The first three are not available from any free service. The fourth you can partly reconstruct yourself from the free MOT history, which records the mileage at each test. We explain how in our guide to what the free checks show.

What does the free GOV.UK service give you?

More than people expect, and it is the right first step. Enter a registration and you get tax and SORN status, MOT expiry, the date of first registration, the date the last V5C was issued, year of manufacture, engine size, fuel type and emissions figures [5].

What it will not give you is the keeper. The same page is explicit: you must write to DVLA to request information about the current or previous registered keeper [6]. So "previous keepers" on a paid check is a genuine addition, not a repackaging of the free service.

How does our check compare?

Tier	Price	Finance	Write-off	Mileage	Stolen	MOT history	Keeper history
HPI Basic [1]	£9.99	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Caraxle Full Check	£12.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HPI Full [1]	£19.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

We are cheaper than the full tier and we include the two checks the basic tier drops. We are not the cheapest option on this page, and the table above says so plainly: on a single purchase, AutoTrader, Total Car Check Gold and MotorCheck all carry the four core checks for less. What you get here is a single purchase with no bundle to commit to and no subscription, and the MOT and tax data read straight from the official sources.

Should you buy the cheap tier and upgrade later?

With us, no, and the arithmetic is ours, so we will show it.

The Caraxle MOT Check is £4.99 and covers MOT history, tax status, mileage and specification, with no finance, write-off or stolen checks. The full-history upgrade afterwards is £9.99. Buy them in that order and you pay £14.98. Buy the Caraxle Full Check outright and you pay £12.99.

So with Caraxle the two-step route costs £1.99 more than going straight there. If you already know you want finance and write-off data, buy it once. The cheaper tier is there for the buyer whose question genuinely is "is the MOT history clean", not as a way to get the full check for less.

We publish that because the opposite behaviour, letting people drift into the more expensive path, is how this category gets its reputation.

What do the write-off categories mean in practice?

This is the check people understand least, and it is where the money is. The insurance industry sorts written-off vehicles into four categories, and only two of them can legally return to the road:

• Category A. Scrap only. The whole vehicle must be crushed, including the parts.
• Category B. The body shell must be destroyed, though salvageable parts may be reused. It must never return to the road as a car.
• Category S. Structural damage that has been, or can be, repaired. It can be driven again, must be re-registered, and the marker stays with the vehicle for life.
• Category N. Non-structural damage, which can still mean serious electrical, water or airbag damage. "Non-structural" is not a synonym for cosmetic.

A Cat S or Cat N car is not automatically a bad buy. It is a car that should cost meaningfully less than the equivalent with no marker, and that needs an inspection by someone who understands what was repaired. The reason the check matters is that the discount only protects you if you know to ask for it, and the marker follows the car to the next sale, so it will affect what you get back.

What should you do with the result?

• Finance showing? Ask for the settlement letter from the lender, and do not pay the seller directly until it is cleared.
• Write-off marker? Get the category and the date, then have it inspected by someone who knows structural repair. Our write-off guide explains what each category permits.
• Mileage that does not rise steadily? Pull the MOT history yourself and read the readings in order. One odd entry can be a typo at the test centre; a downward step is not.
• Everything clean? Good. Now spend the money you saved on an inspection, because no check describes the clutch.

The short version

The brand name is not the product. The product is four checks, finance, write-off, stolen and mileage, and the only question that matters is which tier includes all four and what it costs. HPI includes them at £19.99 and drops two of them at £9.99, which is the same price at which MotorCheck and Total Car Check Gold include all four. Caraxle includes all four at £12.99. Whichever you pick, run the free GOV.UK check first, because tax, MOT status and MOT history cost nothing and rule out a surprising number of cars before you spend anything at all. And if you are checking more than two cars, compare the five-pack prices rather than the single ones.