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How it works
Three steps and about a minute. Nothing is charged until you have chosen what you are searching for, and if a plate matches more than one vehicle, the register is searched only once you have picked yours.
- 1
Enter VIN or plate
The 17-character VIN, or switch to Number Plate and pick the state it's registered in.
- 2
Pay securely
a one-off fee by VIN, a one-off fee by Number Plate. Visa, Mastercard or American Express.
- 3
Your report
By plate we match it to the vehicle first; if it matches more than one, you pick before the search runs.
A REVS check, run as a PPSR search
REVS, the NSW Register of Encumbered Vehicles, closed in January 2012 when every state register moved into the national Personal Property Securities Register. What people still call a REVS check is now a PPSR search, and it is national: finance registered in any state shows up, whichever state the vehicle is in today.
Searching by VIN
The VIN is the vehicle's own 17-character identifier. It never changes and it cannot be transferred, so a VIN search is the one that cannot be confused with another car. You will find it on the build plate under the bonnet, stamped on the driver's door frame, in the lower corner of the windscreen, and on the seller's registration papers.
A VIN never contains the letters I, O or Q — they were left out so they could not be mistaken for 1 and 0. If you are reading one off a dusty plate and see what looks like an O, it is a zero.
Once you pay, the search runs immediately and the report is emailed to you.
Searching by number plate
The PPSR itself has no plate search. It accepts a VIN, a chassis number or a manufacturer's number, and nothing else. So a plate has to be matched to a vehicle before the register can be searched, which we do through the national registration database.
That extra lookup is the difference between a one-off fee and a one-off fee.
A plate can be transferred between cars, so a plate search finds the vehicle the plate is registered to now. Where it matches exactly one vehicle, the search runs on that vehicle straight away. Where it matches more than one, we stop, show you each by the last characters of its VIN, and the PPSR search only runs once you pick. If it matters that it is one particular car, search by its VIN instead.
If we cannot match your plate
The usual cause is the wrong state: a plate registered in Queensland will not be found under Victoria. If we cannot match it, no PPSR search is run and you are not charged for one. You can try another state on the same payment, switch to a VIN search, or take a refund.
Email, SMS, or both
Every search is emailed. At checkout you can add SMS — free — for one text with the headline answer and your report link, sent the moment the result lands, plus a text if the finance changes during the free 14-day re-check.
You need an Australian mobile for the SMS option.
How long it takes
A PPSR search is three sequential calls to the register, and the certificate has to be generated and retrieved before it can be sent. In practice that is tens of seconds. You do not have to wait on the page — the search runs on our servers and the report is emailed either way.
If the register is inside a scheduled maintenance window, we say so before taking payment rather than selling you a search that cannot run.
What it costs
| Search | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| By VIN | a one-off fee | PPSR search, plain-English summary, official certificate (PDF) |
| By Number Plate | a one-off fee | As above, plus the plate-to-vehicle lookup |
One-off. No account to create, no subscription to cancel.
Ready to check?
Enter a VIN and you'll have the report before you finish reading the ad.
* Delivery time. Reports are issued within minutes while the Personal Property Securities Register is available. The register has scheduled maintenance windows, set out in our Terms & Conditions. A search requested during a maintenance window is issued as soon as the register reopens.
† Free re-check. The 14-day free re-check applies only to vehicles that returned a registered security interest (finance owing). It re-checks whether those security interest details have changed. Stolen and written-off records are not re-checked.