How it Works
BIB is three products built around one question: what should you actually buy? Each one answers a different part of that question.
Where are you in the buying process?
Most people use all three - but they answer different questions, and the right starting point depends on where you actually are right now.
You've found a car
you like.
It's on an advert. The plate's saved in your phone. You've got a viewing booked. You don't know what you're about to sit in - and the seller does.
Enter the registration plate. That's all you need. BIB identifies the vehicle from official DVSA records and builds your report from there.
- A free Bib Rating - 1 to 5 stars, with a full breakdown - the moment you search, no Bib needed
- The model's national reliability score - benchmarked against thousands of identical vehicles
- Every mileage reading ever recorded, charted against what's typical
- MOT Track Record, Advisory Check and History Summary - lifetime stats, whether advisories were fixed, and the full test-by-test record
- What this model most often breaks down with, ranked by frequency
- Model-specific questions to ask at the viewing, built from its real failure patterns
You walk into that viewing knowing what the seller knows - and more. You negotiate on facts. You spot red flags before you've even started the engine. Or you save the trip entirely.
You know the budget.
Not what to search for.
£12,000 to spend. Vaguely thinking Golf, maybe a Focus. But you don't know which year is the strong run, or whether there's something more reliable you haven't considered.
Search any UK make and model in Explorer. Free to browse summaries - 1 Bib unlocks the full profile for that model.
- Every production year ranked by real MOT failure rate - worst to best
- The top 3 years to target for that make and model
- Two competitor alternatives in the same class, benchmarked side by side
- What this model most often breaks down with - the common faults, ranked
- Fleet average mileage by year, so you know what's normal before you negotiate
You stop searching at random and start searching with a target. Before you've looked at a single advert, you know which year to prioritise, what else to consider, and what you're ruling out - and why.
You want to find
what's genuinely reliable.
No fixed model in mind. You want to start from the data - which cars were actually built well? Not which ones reviewers liked. Not which ones are popular. The real picture, stripped back.
Open the 3-Year Test rankings. Filter by vehicle type. Every qualifying UK model is already ranked - no search needed.
- Every qualifying UK make and model ranked by first-MOT failure rate
- An exact percentage - not a score, not an estimate. The raw number from real test results
- The national average benchmark, so you always know what "good" actually looks like
- Separate tables for cars, vans, motorcycles and pickups
- Only models with 200+ first-MOT results appear - everything here is statistically meaningful
The first MOT strips out owner care, age, and mileage. No previous owner has skipped a service. What fails at that point isn't wear - it's build quality. This ranking is the purest signal we have for which models were designed to last.
Built to walk you through
BIB includes two ways to get oriented without reading a manual - tooltips you can switch on at any time, and a guided tour that runs automatically on first visit.
Tap any green icon throughout BIB for a plain-English explanation of that section or term. The toggle switches them on or off at any time - they stay on by default.
Each product has its own tour accessible from this bar. The tour runs automatically on first visit - or hit Start to run it again any time. Remembered per browser once completed.
Launches on first visit to any car's Briefing. Walks through every section of the report in sequence.
Launches on first visit to Explorer. Covers everything you need to start researching a model.
Launches on first visit to the 3-Year Test. Explains the first-MOT signal before you start browsing.
Finding Your Way Around
A quick tour of the key screens and navigation elements in BIB.
Sign Up
Create your BIB account in seconds. Just an email and a password.
From plate to fully informed
Any UK plate from 1990 onwards. BIB identifies the exact make, model, year, colour, and current MOT status from the official DVSA record.
Instantly cross-referenced against every MOT test ever recorded for this model nationally - producing a free Bib Rating on the spot, before anything is generated on top.
Mileage consistency, reliability rating, MOT Track Record, MOT Advisory Check, MOT History Summary, common failures, wear guide, best years to buy, questions to ask - all assembled and ready to read.
Model-specific questions built from this car's actual weak spots. Not generic checklists - questions tailored to what this exact make, model, and year tends to fail on.
You arrive at the viewing knowing what the seller knows - and more. Make an offer with confidence, negotiate on facts, or walk away before you waste a trip.
13 sections in every report
Vehicle Identity is free the moment you search. One reg, one Bib unlocks the other 12 - generated for that specific car.
Where the intelligence comes from
Every MOT test in the UK since 2005 is publicly available via the DVSA. BIB doesn't estimate or generate data - we analyse what already exists at a scale that makes individual records meaningful. A single car's MOT history is interesting. 289 million of them create a map.
The dataset - 289M records, 97,106 model profiles, 13 types of intelligence derived.
Where the data is strong - and where it isn't
BIB is built on official DVSA records, not editorial opinion. That means the data is as strong or as thin as what the national record actually contains. We'd rather be upfront about this than present weak data as if it were robust.
| Vehicle type | Data quality |
|---|---|
 Cars | Excellent |
 Motorcycles | Good |
 Vans | Good |
 Pickups | Good |
 Motorhomes | Limited |
 Campervans | Not separately classified |
Limited data - but there's a better search
Motorhome brands are low volume, test stations frequently record model names as "MOTORHOME" or "UNCLASSIFIED" rather than the actual model, and most motorhomes are built on a donor van chassis - so the DVSA record reflects the base vehicle, not the conversion. All three problems hit at once. This is a DVSA data limitation, not a BIB one.
The practical fix: search the donor van in BIB. The engine, gearbox, and mechanical components that determine long-term reliability all come from the base vehicle. Brands like Burstner, Autotrail, Bailey, and Hymer add the living accommodation - they don't change the drivetrain. The four platforms that cover the vast majority of UK motorhomes:
No campervan category in DVSA data - search under Vans
Factory campervans and professional conversions - VW California, converted Transporters, converted Transits, converted Ducatos - are registered as standard vans in DVSA MOT records. The DVSA does not distinguish between a plain Transit van and one professionally converted to a campervan. Searching "campervan" as a vehicle type returns nothing, because the category simply does not exist in the source data.
The correct search is the base van. BIB covers the van's mechanical reliability in full - which is exactly the part of a campervan that matters most. The four base vehicles with strong BIB coverage that cover most campervans on the market:
BIB applies a minimum test threshold before showing reliability results. For standard vehicles, this is 100 MOT tests per model-year combination. For specialist vehicles, the threshold is 50. Below these numbers, BIB shows nothing rather than a figure. A reliability score built on 12 tests is worse than useless - it creates false confidence. A blank result is an honest one.
This also applies to very new models - vehicles registered in the last three years haven't reached their first MOT yet, so no test history exists regardless of how common the model is.
Ready to get started?
Have a plate? Run a Briefing. Shopping around? Open Explorer. Want to start from reliability? Check the 3-Year Test rankings.