How to check vehicle recalls by VIN for free

What a recall actually is

When a manufacturer finds a safety-related defect, or a vehicle that does not comply with a federal safety standard, it recalls the affected vehicles. The point of a recall is a free fix: a replaced part, a software update, or a component reinstalled correctly.

A recall is not a ban and it does not mean the car cannot be driven. In some campaigns the manufacturer does advise not driving the vehicle, or parking it outside, until the remedy is applied — when that advice exists it is shown separately on the record page.

Campaigns are numbered. In NHTSA records the number looks like "22V624000": the year, the campaign type, and a sequence number. Quoting it at the dealer saves time.

What a VIN is and where to find it

The VIN is the vehicle identification number: a unique 17-character code. Parts of it identify the manufacturer, the assembly plant, the model year and the serial number. It is assigned once and never changes.

Three places to look: the metal plate at the bottom-left of the windshield, visible from outside; the label on the driver-side door jamb; and your registration or insurance card. Many vehicles also have it stamped in the engine bay or under the trunk liner.

The letters I, O and Q are never used in a VIN. Characters that look like them are the digits 1 and 0 — this is the single most common transcription mistake.

Running the lookup

Type the 17-character VIN into the box on the home page. Once the number is recognised, the make, model and model year are decoded and the matching records are listed.

If you do not have the VIN to hand, type the make instead and browse the make and model-year lists. The result is the same, and browsing works with JavaScript turned off.

Your VIN is never sent to this server and is never logged. The decode request goes straight from your browser to NHTSA's vPIC service; our server does not see it.

Reading the result

If there is a record, the page gives you four things: the defect summary, the consequence, the remedy, and the campaign number. Those four texts are the official NHTSA record and are reproduced verbatim in English — they are not translated, because a translation stops being the record.

The page also carries the manufacturer name, the date the report was received and the vehicle coverage. To confirm your specific vehicle is included, take the campaign number to a franchised dealer.

If there is no record, that does not prove your vehicle is not subject to a recall. The coverage section below explains why.

Coverage: what NHTSA records do and do not include

Every record on this site comes from NHTSA, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and covers vehicles in the US market.

Recalls issued in the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia or any other market are not in this list. The same model can be recalled in one market and not another: suppliers, assembly plants and equipment levels differ by market.

So do not treat this list as the only source for a vehicle outside the US. Make pages link to the manufacturer's own VIN lookup page; check there as well. This site never sends automated requests to manufacturer sites — it only links to them.

If a recall comes back, what to do

First, write down the campaign number. Second, contact a franchised dealer and have them confirm with your VIN whether your specific vehicle falls within the campaign: not every car of that model year is included, and campaigns usually cover defined production ranges.

Third, book the appointment. Recall work is as a rule carried out at no cost to the owner. This site does not perform repairs, book appointments or contact dealers on your behalf.

If the record page shows a manufacturer advisory such as "do not drive" or "park outside", follow it until the remedy is applied. Those advisories come from the source record; this site never invents one.

Buying a used car

Open recalls on used cars are common: the previous owner may never have heard about the campaign, or simply never went in. The right to the free repair attaches to the vehicle, not to the person, so a new owner can still have it done.

Running the VIN before you buy takes a couple of minutes and is useful leverage in negotiation. It matters most for imported vehicles: a car that came from the US market is directly within the scope of NHTSA records.