FREE — NO SIGNUP — NO PAYWALL

CarFax wants $40 to tell you what the federal government already publishes free.

Every recall, every title brand, every odometer reading on your prospective used car is published by NHTSA, NMVTIS, and 50 state DMVs — for nothing. OpenVIN pulls that data into one report card so dealers stop using a paywall as a smoke screen.

US USED-CAR MARKET 0B 2024 · PRECEDENCE RESEARCH

FEDERAL DATA SOURCES 0+ NHTSA · NMVTIS · STATE DMVs

CARFAX SUBSCRIPTION TIERS 0 PAYWALL · 2025 ANTITRUST · $50M SUIT

Decode a VIN Or read the case against CarFax

SECTION 01 / LOOKUP

Type a VIN. Get the report card.

A VIN is 17 characters, no I, O, or Q. Paste yours below or pick a sample to see how the report works. The demo runs five canned VINs that exercise every kind of verdict OpenVIN will deliver in production — clean, recall-flagged, salvage, lemon-buyback, and odometer-tampered.

AWAITING VIN · NO RECORD LOADED

SECTION 02 / THE CASE

Honest comparison. We're not pretending to be CarFax.

CarFax has real proprietary data — mostly accident reports their dealer network feeds them. We don't have that. What we do have is the federal stack they've been quietly walling off behind a $40 single-VIN paywall and a $899–$1,549/month dealer subscription. Here's the line:

CARFAX PAID

Dealer-network accident reports (proprietary)
Branded title-transfer history across states
Service-history line items where dealers submit
NHTSA recalls (re-wrapped, on top of proprietary)
NMVTIS title brands (re-wrapped)
Full NHTSA complaint database (filtered, summarized)
Manufacturer TSB index (rare, summarized)
No paywall — $40 per VIN, $899+/month for dealers

OPENVIN FREE

Dealer accident reports — we don't have them
Service-history line items — not feasible without dealer feeds
Full NHTSA recalls + campaign IDs
NMVTIS title brands (clean / salvage / junk / flood / lemon-buyback / rollback)
Full NHTSA complaint database, unfiltered
Manufacturer TSB index for the make/model/year
Lemon-buyback cross-reference to state law
Free. No signup. No paywall. Forever.

RULE OF THUMB Buy the OpenVIN report first. If it's clean, decide whether the $40 CarFax adds anything. If it's flagged, walk away — no number of accident reports fixes a salvage title.

SECTION 03 / TEST DRIVE

What to bring when you go look at the car.

A clean OpenVIN report is necessary, not sufficient. The report can't tell you about a hidden paint repair or a slipping transmission — but you can. Print this checklist, take it to the seller, and use it before you write a check.

OBD-II scanner ($25–60)

Plug into the port under the dash. Pulls live engine codes and permanent diagnostic memory. Sellers can clear the warning lights ten minutes before you arrive; they can't clear the codes the car has stored.

Paint depth gauge ($20–80)

Original factory paint is 4–7 mils. Bondo-and-respray patches read 12+ mils. Walk every panel; record every reading. A car that's been hit and respun shows up here even when it doesn't show up on CarFax.

Magnet (any fridge magnet)

Slides freely on steel; sticks weakly or not at all on body filler. Run it along the rocker panels and quarter panels. Repaired collisions hide there.

Flashlight + creeper

Look at the underside. Look for orange rust, fresh undercoating (covering rust), bent subframe rails (collision), white salt residue (flood). The undercarriage doesn't lie.

Cold-start it yourself

Tell the seller you'll arrive at 7am and start the car cold. Sellers warm cars before buyers arrive to mask noisy lifters, blown head gaskets, and EGR codes. A cold start at 7am is a different car.

Independent pre-purchase inspection ($120–200)

Worth every penny. A mechanic with a lift catches what you can't from the curb. If the seller refuses to release the car for an inspection, walk — that refusal is the inspection.

SECTION 04 / GET INSPECTED

A vetted independent inspector at this VIN.

OpenVIN's first paid product is the one CarFax refuses to do: a real human, near you, lifts the car, runs the OBD-II, prints a 24-page PDF, and sends it to your phone before you write a check. $149–$179 flat depending on the metro. We're piloting this in Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Tampa first.

Drop your email and a VIN. We'll line up an inspector and quote you within 12 business hours. This demo doesn't charge your card — we'll only follow up by email.

→ 24-page PDF report, photos, OBD-II scan
→ ASE-certified mechanics only, no "drivers"
→ Inspection happens before you sign anything
→ Money-back guarantee if a flagged defect surfaces in 30 days

SECTION 05 / SOURCES

Every claim above, traced.

[1] Precedence Research — U.S. Used Car Market: $393.8B (2024), projected $519B by 2030 (4.6% CAGR).
[2] Lexology, 2025 — 120+ U.S. dealers file $50M antitrust suit against CarFax; Cox Automotive defects to AutoCheck mid-2025; Cars.com and KBB pull out of CarFax syndication.
[3] CarFax dealer subscription pricing — reported $899 / $1,549 monthly tiers (industry trade press, 2025).
[4] NHTSA — recalls.gov · nhtsa.gov/recalls · complaint database nhtsa.gov/vehicles. Free, public, queryable by VIN.
[5] NMVTIS — National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, administered by U.S. DOJ. Title-brand history (clean / salvage / junk / flood / lemon-buyback / odometer rollback). Public records; consumer access via approved providers.
[6] California Civil Code §1793.2 (Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act) — the strongest U.S. lemon-buyback law; full fee-shifting to manufacturer.
[7] ISO 3779 / 4030 — the international standard defining the 17-character Vehicle Identification Number; positions 1–3 = WMI (manufacturer), 4–8 = VDS (vehicle attributes), 9 = check digit, 10 = year, 11 = plant, 12–17 = serial.
[8] U.S. EPA / FuelEconomy.gov — year-letter conversion table (e.g., position 10 = "H" → 2017; "M" → 2021).

DEMO INSTANCE · SAMPLE VINs ARE SYNTHETIC AND WILL NOT MATCH REAL VEHICLES · PRODUCTION RELEASE PULLS LIVE NMVTIS-AUTHORIZED + NHTSA API DATA