Full motorbike history check
Everything the free check shows, plus the finance, theft and write-off records that decide whether a bike is worth buying.
- Experian Autocheck data
A full motorbike check returns 66 data fields on any UK-registered motorbike, scooter, moped or trike, in about five seconds, from the registration number alone. Below is what it covers, section by section, with a guide behind each one, followed by what to do when something comes back marked.
Every field in the report
The section-by-section walkthrough below explains what each finding means. This table is the short version: everything the report returns, in one place.
Field | What it confirms |
|---|---|
Outstanding finance agreement | Whether money is still owed against the bike |
Lender and agreement type | Who holds it, and whether it is HP, PCP, conditional sale or lease |
Agreement start date and settlement status | When it began and whether it shows as settled |
Police theft marker | Whether the bike is recorded as stolen on the Police National Computer |
Stolen V5C marker | Whether the logbook appears on the register of stolen documents |
Write-off category | Cat A, B, S or N, plus legacy Cat C and D on older machines |
Write-off date and insurer | When it was recorded and by whom, where available |
Salvage records | Auction and salvage entries, where available |
Scrapped marker | Whether the bike has been formally scrapped |
Certificate of Destruction | Whether it must never return to the road |
Mileage at every MOT | Every odometer reading on the official record, in date order |
Mileage anomaly analysis | Drops, freezes and implausible jumps, flagged |
Frame number | The recorded number, to check against the headstock |
Engine number | The recorded number, to check against the crankcase |
Plate change history | Every registration the bike has carried, with dates |
Colour change history | Any recorded change of colour |
Import marker | Whether the bike was brought in from abroad |
Export marker | Whether it has been declared exported |
Safety recall status | Whether an outstanding manufacturer recall applies |
Previous keeper count | How many registered keepers the bike has had |
Keeper change dates | When each one took it on |
Private, trade and retail value | What it should fetch in each situation |
DVLA specification | Make, model, engine size, year, colour, weight, fuel and body type |
Tax and SORN status | Whether it is currently taxed or declared off the road |
MOT status, expiry and full history | Every test, result and advisory |
Outstanding Finance
A large share of used bikes are bought on finance, and while an agreement is live the finance company owns the machine rather than the person selling it to you. The report checks the credit reference agency registers and shows whether any agreement is recorded, all sourced against the registration and frame number.
Agreement detail. Where finance is found, the report names the lender, the type of agreement (hire purchase, PCP, conditional sale or lease), the date it started and whether it shows as settled. That is enough to go back to the seller with a specific question rather than a general one.
What counts as finance, and what does not. Hire purchase, conditional sale, PCP and lease agreements all leave the lender holding title, and all of them appear here. An unsecured personal loan does not, and should not, because it is a debt between the borrower and their bank with no claim attached to the machine. A seller telling you they bought the bike with a loan may be telling the exact truth. The check is how you establish which of the two situations you are in.
Why it matters more than anything else in the report. If money is still owed, the bike can be repossessed from you after you have paid for it, and a private buyer has little recourse against a seller who has disappeared. This is the finding to act on before any money moves. Read our guide on what to do if a bike has outstanding finance for how to get a settlement letter and verify it.
A clear result is worth having too. Most bikes come back with nothing recorded, and that is the outcome you are paying for. It means no agreement was on the registers at the moment you searched, which is the evidence you need before handing over several thousand pounds to somebody you met last week.
Theft Markers
Bikes are stolen at far higher rates than cars and recovered far less often, because two people can lift one into a van in under a minute. The report checks the Police National Computer for an active theft marker against the registration and frame number.
Stolen document check. Separately, the report checks whether the V5C logbook appears on the register of stolen documents, because a genuine blank logbook is the tool that makes a cloned bike convincing. A stolen bike wearing a real identity and carrying a real-looking logbook is the version of this that costs people the whole purchase price.
Scrapped and destroyed identities. The same section covers scrapped markers and Certificates of Destruction. A machine whose identity was formally destroyed should not exist on the road at all, so when that identity turns up attached to a running motorcycle, something has been moved from one bike to another.
What a marker means for you. A stolen bike can be recovered from you at any point, with no compensation, whether or not you bought it in good faith. Read our guide on how to avoid buying a stolen motorbike for what to do if a marker appears and how cloning works.
What a clean result does not prove. A bike stolen this morning may not be on the record this afternoon, and a properly cloned machine carries a clean identity by design, because the identity belongs to a real and legitimate bike somewhere else. That is exactly why the frame and engine number verification below sits alongside this check rather than instead of it.
Insurance Write-Offs
Bikes are written off more readily than most buyers expect, because parts and labour are expensive against a low book value, and a bike dropped at walking pace can rack up a bill that exceeds its value. The report returns the write-off category, the date it was recorded, the insurer where available and any salvage entry, covering Cat A, B, S and N plus the legacy Cat C and D markers on older machines.
Category analysis. The category is the thing that matters. Cat A and B must never return to the road. Cat S and Cat N are legal once repaired and are often good value, but they are worth meaningfully less than a clean example and a Cat S needs an independent inspection of the repair.
The Cat N logbook gap. A Cat N write-off requires no re-registration, so the logbook is never marked and the damage shows only on a history check. You can read a Cat N bike's V5C line by line and find nothing at all. Read our guide on buying a written-off motorbike for what each category means and how to inspect a repair.
Legacy markers never expire. Bikes registered before October 2017 can carry Cat C or Cat D instead, and those stay on the record permanently. They are not reclassified into the current system and they do not fade with age, so a marker from fifteen years ago will still appear in your buyer's check when you come to sell.
What it does to the price and the premium. A repaired write-off sits below a clean equivalent and the gap does not close with time, because every future buyer runs the same search you just did. Cover is available, but fewer insurers will write it and some decline outright, so it is worth getting a quote before you commit rather than after.
Mileage & Clocking Analysis
On a bike the instrument cluster comes off in an evening, which makes mileage easier to fake than on a car, and the MOT record is the only independently timestamped mileage trail that exists. The report pulls the odometer reading logged at every test, in date order.
Anomaly detection. By comparing the recorded readings over time, the report flags sudden drops, frozen readings and implausibly long gaps between tests. These irregularities often point to a wound-back clock, a replaced cluster or an undeclared period of use. Steady year-on-year growth is the signal of a transparent history.
Where the trail starts, and why that matters here. A bike needs no MOT until it is three years old, so a nearly new machine has no independent mileage record at all. Not a low one. None. On a bike inside that window the clock is the only source, which is precisely when the paid records carry the most weight.
When a drop is not clocking. Readings are typed in by people, and a tester entering 41,203 instead of 14,203 makes every later figure look like a reversal. A genuine clocking usually shows a clean, plausible lower number rather than an obviously garbled one, so check the digits for a transposition before you accuse anyone.
Reading the wear against the numbers. The clock can lie, but the grips, footpegs, discs and sprockets cannot. Read our guide on how to spot a clocked motorbike for what real wear looks like at 5,000, 20,000 and 50,000 miles.
Frame & Engine Number Verification
A bike carries two stamped identifiers, not one, and both should match the V5C exactly. The report returns the recorded frame number and engine number for you to check against the machine in front of you.
Two numbers, and the second one is the one people skip. The frame number is stamped into the headstock and the engine number into the crankcase. Most buyers check the first and stop. A bike assembled from a stolen machine and a dead identity frequently passes on the frame number and comes apart on the engine, which is the whole reason both are on the report.
Identity history. Alongside the numbers, the report shows every previous registration with dates, any recorded colour change, and import or export markers, so you can see whether the bike's identity has been consistent over time. A plate that has changed three times on a five-year-old machine is worth a question even when every change was legitimate.
Why a mismatch is the strongest warning. A frame or engine number that does not match the paperwork is the single clearest sign of a cloned or rung bike. Read our guide on how to check a frame and engine number for where to find them and what altered stamping looks like.
Not every mismatch is theft. Replacement engines are common on older and higher-mileage bikes and entirely legitimate when documented. What matters is whether the seller knows about it and can produce the history. A receipt settles it. A shrug does not.
Keeper History
The report shows how many registered keepers the bike has had and the date each one took it on. A bike passed through several hands quickly is worth a closer look, and the ownership pattern is worth reading against the advert and the MOT record.
Read the pattern, not the total. Bikes change hands far more often than cars, so a high count means much less here than car-derived advice suggests. A fifteen-year-old machine with seven or eight keepers is unremarkable. What is worth attention is clustering: three keepers in eighteen months usually means the same fault kept being found and moved on.
Cross-reference the dates. Keeper changes line up against the MOT record more usefully than they read on their own. A cluster of new advisories arriving in the same year the bike changed hands tells a story that neither record tells alone.
What it will not show. It does not release keeper names or addresses, which no provider can do without going through the DVLA's own process. The count and the dates are what you get, and they are enough to judge whether the history is consistent. Read our guide on motorbike keeper history for how to read the pattern and the one legitimate route to more.
Check the count against the logbook in your hand. The V5C states the number of previous keepers. If that number and the record disagree, you want to know why before anything else happens.
Safety Recalls
Manufacturers issue safety recalls when a defect turns up across a batch of machines, and the repair is free for the life of the bike regardless of who owns it or how old it is. The report shows whether an outstanding recall is recorded against the machine.
Why this matters more on a used bike than a new one. Recall notices are posted to the registered keeper. If the bike has changed hands since the notice went out, and it usually has by the time you are looking at it, the letter went to somebody else's address and the current owner may have no idea. A recall can sit outstanding for years simply because nobody told the person who ended up with the bike.
An MOT pass does not clear it. Outstanding recalls are flagged through the MOT system rather than failed, so a bike can hold a fresh certificate and a live safety recall at the same time. If you assumed a recent pass meant the recall position was clear, it does not.
What to do with it. Any franchised dealer for that make will carry out recall work at no cost, whatever the age of the machine and whether or not you were the original owner. Read our guide on safety recalls on used motorbikes for how to confirm the work was done and what a dealer's internal system shows that the public record does not.
Import & Export Markers
The report shows whether the bike was brought into the country rather than first registered here, and whether it has been declared exported.
An import marker is information, not a warning. Plenty of good bikes are imports, particularly Japanese machines that were never sold here officially. What it changes is parts availability, the paperwork trail behind the machine, and how easily the next buyer will take it on.
Which kind of import matters more than the marker. A parallel import of a model that was also sold here behaves like any other bike. A grey import of a machine that never reached British dealers is a different proposition on parts, on servicing and on resale, and it is usually the more interesting motorcycle of the two.
An export marker on a bike being sold in Britain is a different matter. The record says the machine left the country and the advert says it is in a garage in Leeds. Those two things cannot both be true, and the explanation is worth having before any money moves. Read our guide on buying an imported motorbike for what to check on a grey import and what a Q plate really means.
Q plates carry a cost most buyers miss. A Q-plated machine counts as substantially changed, so it never qualifies for the 40-year MOT exemption however old it gets. On a classic bought partly for that exemption, the plate decides whether you are getting it.
Valuation
The report gives private, trade and retail figures, because the same bike is worth three different numbers depending on who is on the other side of the transaction. Knowing all three before you start means you negotiate rather than guess.
Three numbers, and which one applies to you. Private is what the bike changes hands for between two individuals. Trade is what a dealer would pay to take it in. Retail is what a dealer would ask for it on the forecourt, and the gap between the last two covers preparation, consumables, warranty and the cost of the machine sitting unsold through the winter.
What moves the number. Mileage, service history, time left on the MOT, the state of the consumables and any write-off marker all affect the figure, and modifications usually reduce it rather than add to it. Read our guide on what a used motorbike is worth for how mileage, history and the season change the price.
Read it against the rest of the report. A valuation only means something next to the record it sits beside. A write-off marker moves the figure down permanently, and a mileage discrepancy does not reduce the value so much as remove the basis for calculating one, because no figure means anything until the readings agree with each other.
Official DVLA & DVSA Records
Alongside all of the above, every report carries the full DVLA specification: make, model, engine size, year of first registration, colour, weight, fuel type and body type. It also shows current tax and SORN status and the full MOT history with every advisory.
The advisories are the useful part. An advisory is the tester writing down something that is not yet a failure, and what matters is what happened to it next. One that appears and then disappears means somebody dealt with it. The same note carried across four consecutive tests means it was seen, ignored, and has been getting worse for four years. There is more on reading them on our MOT check page.
Tax and SORN read differently on a bike. A gap from October to March on a machine that was laid up for winter is exactly what a sensible owner does, where the same pattern on a car would look like neglect. What is worth a question is a gap that contradicts the advert. Our tax check page covers the bands and the rule that catches every used buyer, which is that tax does not transfer with the bike.
Why it is repeated here. Most of this is also in the free check. It is included in the full report so you have the complete picture of a bike in one place rather than cross-referencing two screens.
Scooters, mopeds and off-road machines
The check runs on anything registered with the DVLA at any engine size, so a 50cc moped returns the same records as a litre bike. Finance, theft and write-off markers do not care what the machine is.
Two things differ in practice. Scooters and mopeds are stolen at high rates because they are light enough to lift into a van, which makes the theft marker the section to read first on a small machine. And an off-road bike that has never been registered has no DVLA record to check at all, in which case the frame number is the only identity it has; there is more on that on our frame number check page.
What to do when something comes back marked
Every provider will list what is in the report. Almost none of them tell you what to do about it, which is the part that matters when you are stood in someone's driveway with the cash in your pocket.
Result | What to do |
|---|---|
Active stolen marker | Walk away. Police can seize the bike from you at any point and you have no right to compensation |
Cat A or Cat B write-off | Walk away. Neither may legally return to the road. A bike offered as a runner with either marker is fraud |
Certificate of Destruction | Walk away. The bike should have been destroyed |
Frame or engine number mismatch | Walk away. The single strongest sign of cloning or ringing |
Export marker, bike being sold in the UK | Walk away. The record and the situation contradict each other |
Outstanding finance | Verify first. The lender owns the bike until it is settled. Get written confirmation from the finance company itself, not the seller |
Mileage anomaly | Verify first. Check the physical wear on grips, pegs, seat, discs and sprockets against the claimed figure |
Cat S write-off | Verify first. Structural damage. Legal once repaired, but get an independent inspection before you commit |
Stolen logbook marker | Verify first. Sometimes an administrative error, often not |
Cat N write-off | Negotiate. Non-structural damage. Legal and often good value, but it should be priced below a clean example |
High keeper count | Negotiate. Not a fault in itself, but it affects resale |
Plate change history | Negotiate. Usually a private plate coming and going. Ask why, and expect a straight answer |
Import marker | Negotiate. Affects parts availability and resale value on some models |
Mileage above the advertised figure | Negotiate. The advert was wrong, and the price was probably set against the wrong number |
What the check will not tell you
A history check covers the paperwork. It does not cover the bike, and being clear about the difference will save you a wasted argument later.
Crash damage that was never claimed. If a bike went down and the owner paid for the repair themselves, no insurer was involved and nothing was recorded. Scuffed bar ends, replaced levers, a fresh fairing panel in a slightly different shade and welded footrest hangers are all found by looking, not by checking.
Mechanical condition. Nothing in the report knows the state of the fork seals, the chain and sprockets, the head bearings or the clutch.
Service history. Whether the valve clearances were done at the right interval is a question for the stamps in the book.
Gaps in the MOT record on newer bikes. Bikes do not need an MOT until three years old, so on anything younger there is simply no test trail to analyse.
Who owns it in a dispute. The report shows the number of registered keepers, not names, and the registered keeper is not necessarily the legal owner.
When to run it
Before you travel, not when you get there.
Bikes are worth crossing counties for in a way that a comparable car often is not, and the whole point of a five-second check is that it costs you almost nothing to run on a bike you have not yet driven two hours to see. A stolen marker or an active finance agreement found from your kitchen table is a saved Saturday.
If you are already stood at the bike, run it anyway before any money moves. The report works on a phone and takes seconds.
What the report looks like
The report arrives on screen in about five seconds, with anything urgent at the top rather than buried in a table halfway down. Red flags are stated plainly, in words, before any of the detail.
It works on a phone, because that is where most people read it, usually stood next to the bike. You can save it, print it, or send the link to the seller, which is worth doing if you want to open a price conversation from a position of fact rather than opinion.
The report stays tied to the registration, so you can come back to it later without paying twice.
Where the data comes from
The provenance records come from the industry sources every established UK provider uses: the credit reference agencies for finance, Vehicle Salvage & Theft Data (the register formerly known as MIAFTR) for write-offs, the Police National Computer for theft markers, and DVLA and DVSA for the vehicle and MOT records.
It is worth being straight about what this means. A £19.99 branded report and a £9.99 one are usually querying the same underlying databases. What differs is presentation, interpretation and price. We have built ours for bikes rather than adapting a car product, which is why the report talks about frame numbers and engine numbers rather than a single VIN, and why the mileage analysis accounts for bikes having no MOT record before three years old.
Many people call any history report an HPI check, in the way they might say hoover for any vacuum cleaner. It has become the generic term for the category rather than a description of who supplied the data.
Price
£9.99 for a single full check. One payment, one report, no account required and no subscription. We do not enrol anyone in an annual renewal, which is worth checking before you buy from anyone in this market.
If you are looking at several bikes, run the free check across the whole shortlist first and pay only for the one or two you are serious about. That is almost always cheaper than travelling to see a bike you could have ruled out from your kitchen table.
Common questions
Does the full check work on scooters, mopeds and trikes?
Yes, on anything registered with the DVLA at any engine size. The finance and theft records are the same regardless of what the bike is.
What happens if the check finds nothing?
Most do not find anything, which is the outcome you are paying for. A clean report is a decision made on evidence rather than on how convincing the seller was, and it gives you something to show your insurer and the next buyer.
How is this different from an HPI check?
People say HPI check the way they say hoover for any vacuum cleaner, so a motorbike HPI check has come to mean any full history check on a bike rather than a report from one particular supplier. The paid records behind ours come from the same industry sources the well-known brands use. What differs is that this one is built for bikes, so it verifies two stamped identifiers rather than one and reads a winter SORN as normal rather than as a warning.
Can I check a bike by frame number instead of registration?
Yes. That is the better route on an import, on a machine with no plate fitted, or anywhere you are not confident the plate and the bike belong to each other.
How long does the report stay available?
It stays tied to the registration, so you can come back to it whenever you like without paying again.
Does a clean report guarantee the bike is sound?
No, and no report from anybody can. It confirms what the registers held at the moment you searched. Crash damage repaired without a claim, mechanical condition and service history are all found by looking at the machine, which is why the check is one of three things you do rather than the only one.
Check a bike before you hand over the money
Finance, theft markers, write-off category, keeper history, mileage analysis and valuation, in about five seconds.