Several genuinely free official checks exist in Canada, and you should run them first. Then enter the VIN here to see what they leave out — who owned the car, what happened to it, and whether the odometer story holds up — before you decide whether to pay for any of it.
Each registration on record, the province it sat in, and how long it stayed there. Present on effectively every Canadian report we generate.
Reported collisions and damage records, including insurance write-offs where they were reported.
Readings captured over time, so a rollback or an implausible jump shows up as a break in the sequence.
Maintenance and repair records. Canadian vehicles in our data carry these more often than American ones.
Salvage, rebuilt, flood, fire and hail brands — including brands applied in a different province before the car moved.
US records for vehicles brought across the border, which is where a surprising amount of Canadian used stock comes from.
Before paying for anything, run the official checks — they are the authoritative records, and most cost nothing. Each one covers a single slice of the vehicle's history:
Shows whether the vehicle has been reported stolen to Canadian police, updated daily. Covers stolen-vehicle records only — it says nothing about accidents, liens or odometer readings.
Shows whether a participating insurer has branded the vehicle non-repairable after flood, fire or collision. Covers Alberta, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, and only insurers that participate.
Shows open safety recalls for the make, model and year. Covers recalls only, searched by model rather than by VIN.
Each official check stops at its own border: provincial registries cover their own province only, a stolen-vehicle hit says nothing about accidents, and a recall search says nothing about liens. None of them follows a vehicle that moved between provinces or came up from the U.S. Running the VIN here pulls cross-North-America records — accident and damage history, odometer readings, title brands, theft and lien records — into one report, so you can see what the official checks each miss.
Six provinces publish their own vehicle lookup. Each covers that province's records only — a car that moved provinces has a history the local tool cannot see.
| Province | Official tool | Cost | Shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ontario | ServiceOntario | $20 — and the seller is required to provide it in a private sale | Ontario registration and plate history, lien information and the average wholesale value. Covers Ontario records only, and no accident or damage history. |
| Quebec | SAAQ | a small fee | Descriptive data on the vehicle, the number of owners it has had and how it was used. Covers Québec registration data; liens are registered separately in the RDPRM. |
| British Columbia | ICBC | free status lookup; claims report paid | The vehicle's B.C. registry status — normal, rebuilt, salvage, altered or non-repairable — free of charge, plus a paid B.C. claims history report. Covers ICBC claims only — damage paid by other insurers or in other provinces is not included. |
| Alberta | Alberta.ca | a small fee, online or through any registry agent | The vehicle's Alberta registration history, current status and the number of liens registered against it. Covers Alberta records only — history from other provinces is not included. |
| Manitoba | MPI | a small fee, through an Autopac agent or MPI Service Centre | Manitoba ownership history, liens, odometer readings and whether the vehicle was ever written off in Manitoba. Covers Manitoba records only. |
| Saskatchewan | SGI | free | Saskatchewan registration, damage claims history back to November 2002 and whether PST is still owing. Covers Saskatchewan records only; SGI's Cross-Canada VIN search is a separate paid request by phone. |
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador and the three territories have no public vehicle lookup; the national CPIC, IBC and Transport Canada checks above still apply there.
Run the CPIC stolen-vehicle check. It is free, national and updated daily — if the car is reported stolen, nothing else matters.
Run IBC VIN Verify and your provincial tool: ICBC in B.C., SGI in Saskatchewan, MPI in Manitoba, the UVIP in Ontario (the seller must give you one), a SAAQ record in Quebec, a VIR in Alberta.
Enter the VIN above for the free preview. It decodes the vehicle and shows which records exist across every province and the U.S. — ownership, accidents, odometer readings, title brands, theft, recalls — without charging you.
Unlock the full report only if the preview shows records worth reading. A car with no accident, brand or odometer records may not need one.
A vehicle written off in one province can be repaired and registered in another. Provincial systems are separate, so the brand history is easier to lose track of than most buyers expect. A VIN check looks across the record rather than at one province.
Vehicles imported through the RIV programme carry a US history that a Canadian provincial record will not show you. If a car was a flood loss in Texas before it was imported, the American record is where that appears.
Road salt corrosion and cold-start wear rarely produce a paper record at all. That makes the records that do exist — service history, accident reports, odometer readings — more valuable, not less, because they are the only documentation you get.
In Ontario a private seller is legally required to give you a Used Vehicle Information Package. Provincial registries hold the lien record. A VIN check sits alongside those, covering the history they do not.
CPIC is the police record. IBC VIN Verify is the insurers' own non-repairable list. ICBC and SGI publish their status lookups themselves. For the question each tool answers, it is the best source there is — better than any paid report, ours included. Run them.
A CPIC hit says nothing about a write-off. IBC covers non-repairable brands, not the far more common repaired collision. The UVIP carries no accident history at all. A rollback is only visible as a sequence of readings over time, which no provincial tool publishes. That gap is what a VIN check fills.
Start with the VIN check to decide whether the car is worth pursuing — that is the cheapest way to rule out a rollback or a hidden write-off. If it survives that, search your provincial registry (the PPR in most provinces, the RDPRM in Quebec, a PPSA search through ServiceOntario) to confirm no lien is registered against it, because in Canada the lien follows the vehicle and not the seller. In Ontario, ask the seller for the UVIP they are required to provide. Then book a mechanical inspection. Each step catches something the others cannot.
See a full sample report| Official free tools | Vektracer free preview | Full report | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reported stolen (CPIC) | Yes — authoritative | Record count | Record detail |
| Non-repairable brand (IBC) | Yes — participating insurers | Included in brand count | Brand and province |
| Open recalls | Yes — Transport Canada | Count | Each campaign with status |
| Registration status in one province | Yes — where a tool exists | Included in ownership count | Every province in the chain, with dates |
| Accident and damage history | No | Count | Each event, with location and severity where reported |
| Odometer readings over time | No | Count | The full sequence, rollback flagged |
| U.S. history of an imported vehicle | No | Count | Titles, brands, accidents and auction records |
| Liens | Provincial registry only | Not covered | Not covered — search the PPR or RDPRM |
Each province page names the local official tool, the provincial lien registry and the inspection rules that apply to a private sale there.
Yes. Canadian vehicles are the majority of what we look up. Ownership, accident, odometer and usage records are present on effectively every Canadian report, and service history appears more often on Canadian vehicles than American ones.
It covers the same kinds of records — ownership, accidents, odometer, service history, title brands — from different sources, at a lower price. Neither service, ours included, sees everything: a record only exists if somebody reported it.
Not reliably, and you should not depend on it for that. Liens in Canada are registered under provincial PPSA legislation, and only that province's registry is authoritative. Our loan and lien records come from North American title data, which does not include the provincial registries. Search the registry directly before you pay.
Records are checked for vehicles registered anywhere in Canada, plus US records for imported vehicles. Coverage is deepest in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, simply because that is where most vehicles are registered.
The Used Vehicle Information Package is a document Ontario requires private sellers to provide. It carries the registration history, and lien information, for that vehicle in Ontario. You should still ask for it — it is the seller's legal obligation and it costs you nothing.
Yes, and this is where a VIN check earns its money. Imported vehicles carry an American history that Canadian provincial records will not show, including title brands from states with different branding rules.
For parts of the history, yes. The CPIC stolen-vehicle check, IBC VIN Verify and the Transport Canada recall database are free and national; ICBC and SGI lookups are free within their provinces. No free tool shows accident history, odometer readings or ownership across provinces. Our preview is free and shows which of those records exist; the records themselves are in the paid report.
No. Carfax Canada sells its reports; there is no free full report from any provider, us included, because the data is licensed. What can honestly be free is a preview showing whether records exist, which is what this page gives you before you pay anything.
Not through any public tool. Provincial privacy legislation prevents plate-to-owner and plate-to-VIN lookups in every province. Ask the seller for the VIN — it is stamped on the car and printed on the registration, and there is no legitimate reason to withhold it.
A decoder reads the 17 characters themselves — year, make, model, engine, assembly plant — and involves no records, which is why it is free. A VIN check queries the history recorded against that VIN. The preview on this page does both: it decodes the vehicle and shows which history records exist.
Enter the VIN to see which records exist. The preview is free.