Which Car Check Pack Should You Buy? A Plain Guide to All Ten

There are ten Car Check Packs on the SortedCars site, and the honest truth is that nobody needs to understand all ten. You need to recognise your own situation in one of them. That is what this guide does: it starts from what you are trying to do — buy one car, narrow down three, price your own, argue a number down — and points at the pack built for it.

Every pack is a bundle of the same reports you can buy individually from the Paid Check builder, priced lower than buying them one by one. The price shown is the price you pay: no subscription, no upsell at the till, no per-car surcharge.

1. Why the Provenance Report Decides Most of This

Seven of the checks buyers care about most live inside a single report. The Full Provenance Report covers the stolen vehicle check against the Police National Computer, outstanding finance, insurance write-off and salvage, mileage and clocking, keeper and owner history, plate and colour changes, and import, export and scrapped markers. Provenance data is provided by Experian.

Because those seven rows travel together, the question “which pack” is mostly the question “does this pack contain the provenance report, and what else does it add on top?” Once you have that in your head, the ten packs stop looking like a wall.

2. One Car You Are Serious About

You have found the car, you have spoken to the seller, and you intend to view it. This is the straightforward case, and it has a straightforward answer.

Essential Pack — £5.99. Six reports on one car: the Full Provenance Report, the Safety Recall Check, the Current Valuation from UKVD, the Car Tax (VED) figure, Spec & Options and the Full Vehicle Identity check. That is the deal-breaker set plus enough to know what you should be paying and what it will cost to tax.

Essential Protected — £7.49. Exactly the same six reports, but the provenance report is bought with a Data Guarantee of up to £10,000. The report data is the same either way; the cover level is what changes. That guarantee is Experian’s, under Experian’s own terms and conditions — we cover how it works, and its conditions, in our Data Guarantee guide. Packs listed as None include the full provenance report without a Data Guarantee, which means the report is informational only.

3. A Car You Intend to Keep

Complete Pack — £8.99. This is the pack highlighted in the comparison table on the packs page. It takes the Essential six and adds five reports that are about living with the car rather than buying it: Future Value & Depreciation, the Desirability rating, the manufacturer’s OE service schedule, running cost in pence per mile and a vehicle life forecast.

If you buy cars and sell them on after two or three years, the depreciation and desirability numbers are the ones that change your decision. If you buy and keep until it dies, the service schedule and running-cost figures matter more.

4. A Used Electric Car

Complete + EV — £11.99. The Complete Pack’s eleven reports plus the Used EV Range Report. Battery condition is the single biggest unknown on a used EV and it is not something a test drive round the block will tell you. If the car is electric, this is the pack that answers the question the others cannot.

5. An Older Car, or One Where Service History Matters

Complete + History — £14.99. The Complete eleven plus the OE Service History and the Factory Build Sheet. The service history report shows what the manufacturer network recorded; the build sheet shows what the factory actually fitted when the car was made.

Two situations make this pack worth the step up. One is a car where the seller says the history is “all there” but the folder is thin. The other is a car sold on its specification — the build sheet is how you find out whether the options being described were fitted at the factory or added by a previous owner.

6. An Expensive Car

Premium Protected — £24.99. The same thirteen reports as Complete + History, with the provenance report bought at a Data Guarantee level of up to £30,000. As with Essential Protected, the data is identical — the cover level is the difference.

Whether that step is worth it depends on the price of the car and on how much of your own checking you could evidence afterwards. Experian’s guarantee has published conditions attached, and it is Experian, not SortedCars, that decides eligibility and settles any claim. Read our Data Guarantee guide before you assume a cover level does what you expect.

7. Three Cars Still on the List

Shortlist Pack — £11.99. One payment, three registrations. The Full Provenance Report runs on all three cars; the other five Essential items run on car 1 only. The page states its own reasoning for that split: valuation, tax and spec only matter for the car you actually buy, so running them on cars you reject would just make the pack dearer.

The practical consequence is that you should nominate as car 1 the one you are most likely to buy, because that is where the extras land. Check all three for deal-breakers, pick your winner, and the final choice also gets recall, valuation, car tax, spec & options and vehicle identity.

8. The Three Task Packs — No Provenance Report

These three are cheap because they are narrow. None of them contains the Full Provenance Report.

Seller Pack — £2.99. Current Valuation, Price Predictor (Standard) and live market demand. For pricing your own car before you advertise it.

Negotiator Pack — £4.99. Current Valuation, Price Predictor (Standard), Future Value & Depreciation, the Desirability rating and live market demand. Price ammunition before you haggle — and nothing else.

PCP Buyer Pack — £4.99. Outstanding Finance Check, Current Valuation, Future Value & Depreciation and Car Tax. It contains the finance check on its own, which is the one provenance section a finance buyer most needs, but it does not contain the rest of the provenance report. No stolen check, no write-off check, no mileage check.

If you are buying a car, one of these three plus a provenance report — or simply the Essential Pack at £5.99 — is the combination that leaves nothing important unchecked.

9. All Ten, Side by Side

Packs marked None include the full provenance report without a Data Guarantee — the report is informational only. The Data Guarantee, where included, covers financial loss caused by an error in the data, up to the stated amount — provenance data provided by Experian. Prices are as shown on the site at the time of writing; the page price is always the price you pay.

10. Buying One

The buy step asks for the registration and the current mileage, and a postcode where the pack contains the Price Predictor. Before you pay you tick a consent line, worth reading rather than skipping: “I consent to my vehicle report being generated and delivered immediately, and I acknowledge that once it has been delivered I lose my 14-day right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013.” That is a normal consequence of buying digital content delivered on the spot, and it is set out in the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 themselves.

If You Only Read One Line

Buying one car and want the checks that matter: Essential, £5.99. Keeping it a while: Complete, £8.99. It is electric: Complete + EV, £11.99. History matters or the car is old: Complete + History, £14.99. Still choosing between three: Shortlist, £11.99. Selling, haggling or taking on finance: the task packs, from £2.99 — but add a provenance report if you are the buyer.

This guide provides general information and is not legal or financial advice. Pack contents and prices are those shown on the Car Check Packs page at the time of writing; provenance data in these reports is provided by Experian and DVLA data by the DVLA, and the commonest mistake buyers make with packs is assuming a low-priced task pack includes a history check — the Seller, Negotiator and PCP Buyer packs do not contain a Full Provenance Report. SortedCars is independent: we do not sell cars, we are not paid by sellers, and the reports we sell are the same for everyone.