Salvage Prophet vs Total Car Check: which one do you need?

Total Car Check runs £3.99 to £9.99 a report, cheaper in a pack. What its Silver and Gold tiers cover, what our free checker gives first, and when to pay.

DATA · 4 min read

The short answer

Total Car Check is a budget UK vehicle-check provider, priced from £3.99 for a single Silver report, down to £1.99 each bought in a five-pack, up to £9.99 for a single Gold report, down to £3.99 each in a five-pack, with no subscription. Our free Vehicle History Checker gives you the official DVSA MOT history, mileage timeline and any Copart UK auction record we hold, at no cost, before you spend anything. If the free check leaves a gap, our own Full HPI Report at /hpi-check now covers the same write-off, finance and stolen-marker data Total Car Check's Gold tier charges for.

What each Total Car Check tier actually covers

The cheaper Silver tier, £3.99 single or £1.99 each in a five-pack, covers a written-off check, police stolen markers, plate-change history and a £10,000 data guarantee. Outstanding finance is not among its stated coverage. Only the Gold tier, £9.99 single or £3.99 each in a five-pack, adds an outstanding finance check and a vehicle valuation, and steps the guarantee up to £30,000. The same gap the RAC and the AA's cheapest tiers carry shows up here too: pick the bottom tier assuming any vehicle check covers finance, and it does not.

Why Total Car Check is worth knowing about, and what it isn't

Total Car Check is not a household name the way the RAC or the AA is, it has no roadside-assistance or insurance business behind it, the check itself is the whole business. It shows up repeatedly in independent UK car-buying comparison roundups as one of the cheapest routes to a written-off and stolen check, which is its actual pitch: the same category of registers other providers query, at a lower headline price. Like every other paid provider in this space, the underlying write-off, finance and stolen-vehicle registers are shared industry-wide, not a database exclusive to any one brand.

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What our free checker covers without paying either tier

We read directly from the DVSA MOT history API, so the full MOT and mileage timeline, every test, advisory and odometer reading, is free and instant with nothing to buy first. Add the VIN and we also check it against our own salvage auction records. For a straightforward UK-only car, the everyday questions, is the mileage consistent, is the MOT current, has it failed on anything serious, are answered by our free tools alone.

Where you now have a direct alternative to Total Car Check's Gold tier

Confirmed insurance write-off category, outstanding finance and stolen markers sit in registers only licensed commercial providers can query. Total Car Check is one; we are now one too. Our Full HPI Report, 5 credits per lookup with no subscription needed, pulls that same write-off, finance and stolen-marker data on top of the free MOT and mileage picture, in one report, on the same site you already ran the free check on.

The practical order to do it in

Run our free MOT, mileage and status check first, it costs nothing and takes seconds. If the car's paper trail is clean and it has stayed in the UK its whole life, that is often enough to bid with confidence. If real money is on the line, run our Full HPI Report for the confirmed write-off, finance and stolen data, or Total Car Check's Gold tier if you specifically want its multi-pack pricing for checking several cars at once. Either way, skip Total Car Check's cheaper Silver tier if finance is what you actually came for, since its stated coverage does not include it.

Run our own Full HPI Report, 5 credits, no subscription

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