Enter the registration and you will have every recorded test for that bike in about three seconds, free, with no account. Results, dates, mileage, failure items and the full wording of every advisory.

The rest of this page is about what to do with it, because the record is only as useful as your ability to read it.

What the history contains

Every test since the bike's first, which for most machines means from three years old.

Pass or fail, with the specific items for any failure.

Advisories, in the tester's own wording. These are the notes about things that are not yet failures.

The mileage recorded at each test, which is the only independently timestamped mileage trail that exists for a bike.

The expiry date of the current certificate.

What it does not contain is anything before three years old, anything about work done between tests, or anything at all if the bike is too new to have been tested.

Advisories are the most useful part, and most people skim them

A pass with advisories is still a pass, which is why buyers glance at them and move on. That is a mistake, because the advisory trail is the closest thing you will get to a maintenance record for a bike whose owner kept no receipts.

The question is never what a single advisory says. It is what happened to it afterwards.

An advisory that appears once and then disappears means somebody read it and fixed it. Repeated across several years it tells you the bike has been owned by people who deal with things.

An advisory carried forward across consecutive tests means it was noted, ignored, and has been getting worse in the background. A brake disc flagged as approaching its limit in 2022 and again in 2023 and again in 2024 is now a disc you will be buying.

A cluster of new advisories in one year usually means the bike changed hands, or stopped being looked after, or spent a winter outside. Cross-reference the date against the keeper history.

An advisory that becomes a failure the following year is the ordinary lifecycle of a worn component, and it is what a well-run bike looks like.

Reading the wording

Testers write in a fairly consistent register, and the qualifiers carry real information.

The items worth taking most seriously on a bike are anything mentioning the frame, the steering head, the forks, brake components and tyres. A cosmetic corrosion note on an exhaust hanger is a different order of problem to corrosion on a frame member.

What the gaps mean

Bike MOT records have holes in them that would look alarming on a car and are usually nothing at all.

No record before three years old. Expected. Bikes are exempt until then.

A missing year with a SORN in place. Somebody laid the bike up for a season. Entirely normal, and on a machine that is stored properly it is better for the bike than being ridden through salt.

Several missing years then a fresh test. A project, a barn find, or a bike that sat in a garage through a change in the owner's circumstances. Worth asking about, and often a good buy if the storage was dry.

A test at a centre hundreds of miles from the last one. Sometimes a house move. Sometimes a bike that has changed hands without the keeper record catching up.

Tests clustering in a short window across different centres. Occasionally a bike being prepared for sale by someone shopping for a pass. Rare, but the pattern is visible.

When the record is wrong

Test records are entered by people, and people mistype. Two errors turn up often enough to be worth recognising.

A mileage typed wrong. A tester enters 41,203 instead of 14,203 and every reading afterwards looks like a drop. This is the single most common cause of a mileage anomaly that turns out to be nothing, and it is worth checking the digits for a transposition before assuming the worst. A genuine clocking usually shows a clean, plausible-looking lower number rather than an obviously garbled one.

A test recorded against the wrong registration. Rare, and it produces a record that makes no sense at all.

If you own the bike and the record is wrong, it can be corrected, but the route runs through the test centre that made the entry rather than through any general helpline. Go back to them with the certificate and ask them to amend it.

If you are buying and something looks like a typo, say so and ask the seller to get it corrected before you commit. A genuine error is fixable. A seller who does not want it looked at has told you something.

Using the record when you are selling

Most people never look at their own bike's history until a buyer raises something, which is the worst moment to see it for the first time.

Read it before you write the advert. Whatever a buyer will find, find it first.

Fix the cheap advisories and say so. Clearing a two-year-old advisory before you list costs very little and removes the most obvious thing a buyer will negotiate on.

Do not test early to look good. Testing more than a month before expiry loses you the remaining time on the current certificate, and buyers can see the dates.

Put the honest version in the advert. "Two advisories at the last test, both dealt with, receipts included" is a stronger line than saying nothing.

What the history will not tell you

It shows nothing about finance, theft markers or write-off status. A bike can hold a perfect ten-year MOT record and still have an active hire purchase agreement on it, still be recorded as stolen, and still carry a Cat N marker that never touched its logbook. Those sit on separate registers.

It also shows nothing about work done between tests, so a bike with a thick folder of receipts and one with none look identical here.

FAQs

Is motorbike MOT history free to check?

Yes, here and on the government's own service. There is nothing to pay and no account needed.

How far back does the record go?

Digital records cover roughly the last two decades for most bikes. Older machines may have thinner records, and anything before the digital system will not appear at all.

The bike has advisories. Should I walk away?

Not on its own. Almost every used bike carries some. Look at whether they were dealt with and whether anything mentions the frame, forks, brakes or tyres.

Why does the record show no tests at all?

Most likely the bike is under three years old. It can also happen after a recent plate transfer or on a very new registration.