Know the car. Before you sign.

What CheckMyVIN does

Used-car buying is mostly an information problem. Dealers know the car; you don't. CheckMyVIN closes that gap with one tool: enter a VIN, get a report in about 30 seconds covering decoded specs, every open NHTSA recall, the maintenance schedule for the engine in question, and an AI plain-English summary of what the model is actually like to own.

Everything in the basic report is free. No signup, no email harvest, no upsell wall. There is one affiliate slot at the bottom of every report (vehicle history reports from a licensed provider) — that is the only thing that pays for the AI bill.

Our mission

Help the next buyer of a used vehicle walk into the negotiation knowing as much about the car as the seller does — at minimum: open recalls, engine family quirks, and which model years had which issues. None of that information should cost $40 from a paid history report. The NHTSA already publishes it for free; we just made it readable.

Data sources

Every fact in a CheckMyVIN report traces to one of three places:

• NHTSA VPIC — the federal Vehicle Product Information Catalog. Source of every spec: make, model, year, engine, drive, plant, body class, fuel type, electrification level, battery kWh.
• NHTSA Recalls API — live federal recall data. Every open campaign with official campaign number, affected component, summary, and remedy.
• AI plain-English summary — generated by a small OpenAI model based on the NHTSA fields above. Never invents recalls. Marked "NHTSA + AI" on every report and accompanied by a disclaimer that it is not a substitute for a professional inspection.

Maintenance specs (oil grade, capacity, spark plugs, intervals) come from a CheckMyVIN-maintained database keyed by engine code. Where we don't have a confident engine-level match — most notably tire size, which varies by trim and wheel package — the row reads "Varies by trim — check door-jamb label" rather than guessing.

Who built this

CheckMyVIN is a solo project. Code is hosted on Cloudflare Workers, source data is queried live from NHTSA, and there is no team — meaning bug reports and corrections reach a real person quickly.

Get in touch

Spotted bad data, want a brand added, interested in the embeddable widget for your dealership site, or need to talk about API access for high volume? Email kimicode@hotmail.com.