VIN Lookup

A VIN — vehicle identification number — is the 17-character code stamped on every road vehicle built since 1981. It is on a plate at the base of the windscreen on the driver's side, on a sticker inside the driver's door jamb, and printed on your registration and insurance documents. No two vehicles share one.

The characters are not random. The first three identify the manufacturer and where it was built; characters four through eight describe the model, body, engine and restraint system; the ninth is a check digit that makes a mistyped VIN detectable; the tenth encodes the model year and the eleventh the assembly plant. The last six are that vehicle's serial number. I, O and Q never appear, because they are too easily confused with 1 and 0 — which is why a VIN with an O in it is a VIN that has been copied down wrong.

Paste yours above and VINdown decodes it against the free public NHTSA vPIC database, then matches the result to the model in our tracked set — so you get the year, make, model and trim, and then the part nobody else shows you: what that exact vehicle is worth now, what it will be worth at every age up to ten years, what it costs per day to own, and which model year is the one worth buying. Nothing is stored, and no account is needed.