How do I check a car's history with the VIN?

Paste the VIN. The decode and an open-recall check are free on every VIN, with no account and no counterparty. The full report — $19.99 — adds the history the seller may not volunteer: reported accidents, title brands (salvage, flood, junk), theft and total-loss events, odometer readings over time, and real photos of the car through its life. Every page lives at its own address, vhr.vin/{VIN}, so the report is the record — one VIN, one page, both sides can read it.

What the free check gives you

Before you pay anything, the free rung confirms you're looking at the right car and flags the one thing that can't wait. Paste the VIN and it checksum-verifies — the check digit certifies the seventeen characters describe a real, coherent vehicle, not a transposed or invented string. From there you get the decode (year, make, model, and the trim the car actually is), a spec summary, and an open-recall check against the federal register (NHTSA) at load time, with remedy status on each campaign. You also get the record's structural count — how many records exist across how many categories — its anatomy, never its values. That count tells you the report has substance behind the paywall without handing you the substance for free. All of it is free on every VIN, and you can add a standing recall-watch and save the VIN to your garage with a single email.

What the full report adds

The $19.99 report opens the five rows the free check only counts:

1. Title history — every title event on the record, in order, each with its source and timestamp. Brands like salvage, flood, and junk read here, plain, when the record carries them.
2. Odometer readings — each reading as reported, dated and sourced, so a rollback or a broken sequence shows itself at a glance instead of hiding inside an average.
3. Open recalls with remedy status — the same federal check as the free rung, kept inside the report so the full picture sits on one page.
4. The original window sticker — the car as it was built, factory spec on the record, so later changes surface as deltas rather than assertions.
5. Photos over time and five market values — real images of the car across its life, and retail, private-party, trade-in, wholesale, and auction figures, each with the sources under it and no adjective in front of it.

The history behind those rows is drawn from a multi-source cascade, and every event carries its own timestamp. A fact that hasn't cleared verification says so — "Reported, not yet verified" — rather than passing itself off as confirmed.

A clean record is a result, not a blank

The discipline that matters most is what happens when there's nothing to report. On this record a dash means a value was withheld pending payment; it never means a fact is missing. And when a category genuinely has no events — no accidents on file, no title brands, zero open recalls — the report states that outcome. Zero is stated, not celebrated, and never implied. You are never left to read a blank space as good news. That is the difference between a record you can act on and a sales sheet: the flaws are data, stated in the open, and so is their absence.

Why the address is the record

Because every report lives at vhr.vin/{VIN}, the page you read is the page the dealer reads — the same facts, the same sources, the same timestamps, on both sides of the desk. There is no version of the truth reserved for the seller. If you're buying, that turns the negotiation into a shared document instead of a contest over who knows what. If you're selling, it lets your provenance stand on the record rather than on your word. And if the same VIN was pulled recently, the report is $9.99 — the cached price, with the pull's timestamp shown beside it before you decide, so you can see exactly how fresh the record is.

For comparison, the same class of report lists at $44.99 at Carfax and $29.99 at AutoCheck — each provider's published list price as of mid-2026; VHR's full report is $19.99, one payment, no subscription.

The free faces lead, the report deepens

This is the precision ladder in its consumer shape. The anonymous base — decode, open recalls, the structural count — is free on every VIN and answers the first question completely. The full report is the deepening step you reach for once the free rung tells you there's something worth reading. You never pay to find out whether to look; you pay to see what's there.

For machines, the same record returns as typed JSON via Accept negotiation, and the paid report is a typed offer at the posted price through one MCP server, apis.vin/mcp. One price surface, either reader.

Keep reading the car

• values.vin — what it's worth, not just what happened to it: five market numbers for the VIN, each with source and timestamp.
• recalls.vin — the standalone open-recall check and a standing watch that alerts you when a new campaign lands.

Read the whole record at vhr.vin — paste the VIN, read it, then decide. The report is step zero of the buy.