About try.vin
try.vin is a free VIN decoder and vehicle research site for people buying a used car in the United States. Decode any VIN, read the NHTSA recall, complaint, and crash-test data for its model year, look up your state's lemon law or a DMV office — and buy a full vehicle history report when a car makes your shortlist.
Operated by
Carlify Inc.
Full history reports
3 for $7.99
Contact
What try.vin does
What's free, and what needs an account
Most of try.vin is free to use. A free account unlocks the AI tools that analyze your own photos and listings, plus API tokens. Full vehicle history reports are the only paid product.
Open to everyone
No account needed.
- VIN decoder Year, make, model, engine, and plant country from NHTSA's vPIC decoder, plus the NHTSA recall campaigns for that model year.
- VIN photo scanner Photograph the dashboard plate or door-jamb sticker and AI reads the 17 characters for you.
- Recalls, complaints & crash tests NHTSA recall campaigns, owner complaints, and NCAP crash-test ratings by make, model, and year.
- Inspection & reliability guides AI-written checklists and reliability outlooks for a model year, built from its NHTSA recall and complaint data.
- Lemon-law guides Plain-English summaries of each state's lemon law, plus an AI qualifier chat that estimates whether a car may qualify.
- DMV office directory Offices by state and city from OpenStreetMap, plus each state agency's main office.
- Glossary Plain definitions of title brands, history-report terms, and recall and lemon-law vocabulary.
- MCP server Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and other AI assistants to VIN decoding and NHTSA recall lookups, with no API key.
Sign up with your email
No credit card required.
- AI photo condition check Upload 3–8 photos for a report on visible damage, rust, paint mismatch, and tire and interior wear, plus questions to ask the seller.
- AI listing analyzer Paste a listing and add up to 6 photos to get a deal score, red flags, and questions for the seller.
- REST API Decode VINs from your own code with a personal API token, up to 30 requests per minute per token.
Pricing
One paid product: full vehicle history reports
The free tools tell you what a car is and what NHTSA has on file for its model year. A full vehicle history report adds what has been reported about that specific vehicle. Decode a VIN, then buy reports from that vehicle's page while signed in to a free account — each report stays saved in your dashboard.
Empty reports are refunded in full. Other refund requests made within 14 days of purchase are reviewed case by case — see the refund policy.
3 vehicle history reports
$7.99
One-time payment · reports never expire
- Title brands, accidents and damage, odometer readings, ownership, and service records, where reported
- An AI briefing that sums up the records, with questions to ask the seller
- Sourced from a commercial vehicle-history data provider
- Secure payment by Stripe
Company
Who runs try.vin
try.vin is operated by Carlify Inc., the company named in our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. It is a private company, not a government agency: try.vin republishes public NHTSA data but is not affiliated with or endorsed by NHTSA or any state DMV.
447 Broadway, 2nd Fl, New York, NY 10013
Get in touch
Contact us
Support
[email protected]Reports, billing, corrections, and questions about the tools. We aim to respond within 24 hours on business days.
Support center
Answers to common questions and a contact form
Editorial principles
How we work
The data sources & methodology page covers where each dataset comes from and how often it's refreshed. These are the rules behind it.
We show what the source reports
Recall, complaint, and crash-test details are NHTSA's own records, and a history report shows what the data provider has on file for that VIN. We don't edit those records.
We say when we don't know
If we can't confirm a model year's recall list, the page says so instead of showing zero. Report sections the provider didn't check are left out rather than shown as clean, and DMV listings can be incomplete.
AI is a starting point
Our data sources & methodology page lists every feature that uses AI. AI output can be wrong, so confirm anything important with a mechanic or the original record.
Not legal or mechanical advice
Lemon-law guides summarize state statutes in plain English and aren't legal advice. No online check replaces a pre-purchase inspection by a mechanic.
Corrections are welcome
Spot an error? Send us the page link and what looks wrong. We fix our own mistakes and point you to the right place when the error is in the source data.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers about the company behind try.vin, what it costs, and where its data comes from.
New to vehicle-history terms? The glossary explains them.