Free VIN Decoder
Specifications, equipment and recall campaigns for a vehicle, read from the seventeen-character VIN. Most complete for vehicles built for the United States market.
How a VIN Is Read. Seventeen characters, four parts.
- 1–3
World Manufacturer Identifier
The manufacturer and the country or region of manufacture. The first character marks the region: 1, 4 and 5 for the United States, 2 for Canada and 3 for Mexico.
- 4–8
Vehicle Descriptor
The model, body style, engine and restraint systems. Each manufacturer declares its own layout for these positions.
- 9
Check Digit
A calculated character that detects errors in the VIN. Vehicles built for North America carry a valid check digit; many vehicles built for other markets do not.
- 10–17
Model Year, Plant and Serial
Position 10 is the model year, position 11 the production plant and positions 12 to 17 the serial number of the individual vehicle.
Decode by Make. Codes, models and recall campaigns.
Questions. Coverage, recalls and limits.
- Which vehicles does the decoder cover?
- Coverage is most complete for vehicles built for the United States market. Decode confidence is about 99 percent for model years from 1995 for most major brands, and lower for 1980 to 1994. Vehicles built for other markets are decoded in part: the make, country of manufacture and model year can usually be read, while model and equipment details are often missing.
- Does the report show the open recalls of this VIN?
- No. Recall campaigns are published by make, model and year, not by VIN. The report lists the campaigns issued for the model and model year. The definitive status of a specific vehicle is confirmed with the manufacturer or an authorised dealer.
- Why are some details missing?
- A missing value means that no data is held for that variable. It does not mean that the feature is absent from the vehicle.
- Can vehicles built in South Korea be decoded?
- Not by this tool. VINs that begin with KL to KR follow Korean market conventions that this tool does not read correctly. The Korean VIN Decoder reads them from Korean market data.
- How many VINs can be decoded?
- Up to 20 VINs per hour from one browser. Dealerships using Carlio decode VINs without this limit, directly in the vehicle inventory.
- Is the VIN stored?
- The VIN is not recorded against any account or person. Decoded results are cached for up to seven days so that repeated decodes are faster.
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