VIN decoder
Free VIN lookup, no account needed. Enter a 17-digit VIN number and we decode it against NHTSA’s vPIC database — the same public register manufacturers file their build information into — to return the make, model, year, body style, engine, drivetrain and assembly plant. Then we show the recall, complaint and safety records we hold for that make, model and year.
Your VIN is sent only to run the decode. It never becomes part of a published page, never enters a URL, and is not stored — the cache is keyed on a salted hash. How this works
What a VIN decode does and does not tell you
A decode, a recall, an owner complaint and an investigation are four different things
What the decode gives you
A VIN encodes how a vehicle was built: manufacturer, model year, body style, engine, drivetrain and assembly plant. That is factory configuration. It says nothing about how the vehicle has been maintained, whether it has been in a crash, or what condition it is in now.
Recalls are decided per VIN
A safety recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle has a safety-related defect or does not comply with a federal motor vehicle safety standard. Recall repairs are free. Whether a specific vehicle is covered depends on its VIN — a recall listed for a model year does not necessarily apply to every vehicle of that year.
Complaints are owner reports
Complaints are reports submitted to NHTSA by owners and drivers. NHTSA does not verify most reports before publishing them, and a complaint does not establish that a defect exists. Volume is influenced by how many of a vehicle were sold, how long it has been on the road, and how much attention an issue has received.
An investigation is not a finding
NHTSA opens an investigation to examine whether a safety defect may exist. An open investigation is not a determination that a defect exists, and many investigations close without a recall. Investigations can, however, lead to one.
Where to find a VIN
The same 17 characters appear in several places on and around the vehicle
- On a plate at the base of the windscreen, driver’s side, readable from outside the vehicle.
- On the sticker inside the driver’s door jamb, with the tyre placard.
- On the vehicle title, registration and insurance documents.
- Stamped on the engine bay firewall or the frame on many vehicles.
If the characters you have include an I, an O or a Q, they are almost certainly a 1, a 0 or a 0 — those three letters are excluded from the VIN alphabet precisely because they are confusable.
How the 17 characters are structured
ISO 3779, the standard every VIN issued since 1981 follows
| Position | Name | What it encodes |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | World manufacturer identifier | Country, manufacturer and vehicle class of the plant that built it. |
| 4–8 | Vehicle descriptor section | Model, body style, engine, restraint system — the fields this tool decodes. |
| 9 | Check digit | Calculated from the other sixteen characters to detect transcription errors. |
| 10 | Model year | A single letter or digit on a 30-year cycle, which is why year alone is ambiguous. |
| 11 | Plant code | The specific assembly plant. Recalls are frequently scoped by plant and build date. |
| 12–17 | Serial number | Identifies the individual vehicle. This is the part we never store or display back. |
The check digit is arithmetic derived from the other sixteen characters, which is how a mistyped VIN is caught before it is sent anywhere. It is mandatory in North America but not applied consistently elsewhere, so we report a failed check as a warning rather than refusing the lookup.
What the first three characters mean
The World Manufacturer Identifier — country, marque and vehicle type
Character 1 — country of assembly
| 1, 4, 5 | United States |
|---|---|
| 2 | Canada |
| 3 | Mexico |
| 6 | Australia and New Zealand |
| 8 | Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela |
| 9 | Brazil and Colombia |
| J | Japan |
| K | South Korea |
| L | China |
| M | India, Indonesia and Thailand |
| S | United Kingdom, and part of the German block |
| T | Switzerland, Czechia, Hungary and Portugal |
| V | France, Spain, Croatia and Estonia |
| W | Germany |
| Y | Sweden, Finland and Belarus |
| Z | Italy |
Characters 1–3 — common manufacturer prefixes
| 1FA | Ford — US-built cars |
|---|---|
| 1FM | Ford — US-built SUVs and MPVs |
| 1FT | Ford — US-built trucks |
| 1G1 | Chevrolet — US-built cars |
| 1GC | Chevrolet — US-built trucks |
| 1GT | GMC — US-built trucks |
| 1G6 | Cadillac — US-built cars |
| 1C4 | Jeep — US-built SUVs, Chrysler group |
| 1C6 | Ram — US-built trucks, Chrysler group |
| 1HG | Honda — US-built cars |
| 1N4 | Nissan — US-built cars |
| 1VW | Volkswagen — US-built cars |
| 4T1 | Toyota — US-built cars |
| 5TD | Toyota — US-built SUVs and minivans |
| 5YJ | Tesla — US-built vehicles |
| 5NP | Hyundai — US-built cars |
| 5XY | Hyundai — US-built SUVs |
| 2HG | Honda — Canadian-built cars |
| 3VW | Volkswagen — Mexican-built cars |
| JHM | Honda — Japanese-built cars |
| JH4 | Acura — Japanese-built cars |
| JN1 | Nissan — Japanese-built cars |
| JM1 | Mazda — Japanese-built cars |
| JF1 | Subaru — Japanese-built vehicles |
| JTD | Toyota — Japanese-built cars |
| KMH | Hyundai — Korean-built cars |
| KNA | Kia — Korean-built vehicles |
| WAU | Audi — German-built cars |
| WBA | BMW — German-built cars |
| WDD | Mercedes-Benz — German-built cars |
| WP0 | Porsche — German-built cars |
| WVW | Volkswagen — German-built cars |
| YV1 | Volvo — Swedish-built cars |
| SAJ | Jaguar — UK-built cars |
| SAL | Land Rover — UK-built SUVs |
| ZFF | Ferrari — Italian-built cars |
A prefix identifies the plant and marque that built the vehicle, not its badge. Most manufacturers hold several. This is the subset people look up most, not the full register.
Recall and complaint records by vehicle
The model years people research most, straight from the corpus this decoder links into
- 2018 RAM 25002,590 complaints · 10 recalls
- 2018 Ford F-1502,308 complaints · 19 recalls
- 2018 Honda CR-V2,141 complaints · 5 recalls
- 2018 Honda Accord1,883 complaints · 6 recalls
- 2018 Jeep Wrangler1,820 complaints · 14 recalls
- 2018 Ford Escape1,797 complaints · 4 recalls
- 2019 Jeep Cherokee1,641 complaints · 11 recalls
- 2020 Ford Escape1,600 complaints · 23 recalls
- 2019 RAM 15001,477 complaints · 30 recalls
- 2019 Ford F-1501,327 complaints · 9 recalls
- 2020 Ford Explorer1,218 complaints · 33 recalls
- 2019 Ford F-250 Sd1,164 complaints · 12 recalls
Browse by make
VIN decoder questions
What people ask most often about decoding a vehicle identification number
How do I decode a VIN number?
Enter all 17 characters into the decoder above. It reads the VIN against NHTSA’s vPIC database, the register manufacturers file their build information into, and returns the make, model year, body style, engine, drivetrain and assembly plant that the manufacturer recorded for that vehicle.
Is this VIN decoder free?
Yes. There is no account, no payment and no lookup limit. The underlying vPIC data is published by the US Department of Transportation and is free to query.
Where is the VIN located on a car?
Four places carry it: a plate at the base of the windscreen on the driver’s side, readable from outside; the sticker inside the driver’s door jamb next to the tyre placard; the title, registration and insurance paperwork; and, on many vehicles, a stamp on the firewall or frame.
How many characters is a VIN?
Seventeen, for every vehicle built from the 1981 model year onward, when ISO 3779 was adopted. Earlier vehicles carry shorter manufacturer-specific numbers that this decoder cannot read.
Why do VINs never contain the letters I, O or Q?
They are excluded from the VIN alphabet because they are too easily confused with the digits 1 and 0. If the characters you are reading appear to include an I, an O or a Q, they are a 1, a 0 and a 0.
Does decoding a VIN show open recalls on that vehicle?
No. A decode returns factory configuration. Whether a particular recall is still open on one specific vehicle is answered only by NHTSA’s own VIN lookup or the manufacturer, because it depends on repairs already carried out on that VIN. This site shows which recall campaigns were issued for a make, model and year, which is a different question.
Can a VIN tell me if a car has been in an accident?
Not from a decode. The VIN encodes how a vehicle left the factory and nothing about what happened to it afterwards — no crash history, no odometer reading, no service or title record. Those come from separate commercial history reports.
What do the first three characters of a VIN mean?
They are the World Manufacturer Identifier. The first character is the country of the plant that built the vehicle, and the next two identify the manufacturer and its vehicle type. A VIN beginning 1FT was built by Ford in the United States as a truck.
What happens to the VIN you enter
The design constraint this tool was built around
Your VIN is sent to this site only to be decoded. It is never part of a page we publish, and no page on RoadVitals is ever created for a VIN. If a VIN does reach the address bar — handed over from the search box, or pasted in — it is stripped out before the lookup runs. We do not store the VIN itself: the decode cache is keyed on a salted hash, which can answer “have we seen this before” and nothing else.