Affiliate links, in plain terms
Some links on this site are affiliate links. When you click one and make a purchase — such as a full vehicle history report from our partner — we may earn a commission. That commission comes at no additional cost to you; you pay the same price you would have paid otherwise. These commissions are what allow us to keep our VIN check, recall lookup, and Alberta guides free to use.
How our vehicle-history partnership works
Our free check shows recalls, complaints, and safety ratings from public data. For deeper records — accident and damage history, ownership records, title brands, lien indicators, and odometer history — we link to a third-party vehicle-history provider. If you choose to buy a report through that link, the purchase and payment happen entirely on the partner’s site, under their terms and privacy policy, and we may receive a referral commission. Affiliate links are marked and open in a new tab, and carry a “sponsored” attribute.
Our editorial independence
This is the part that matters most: our commercial relationships do not influence the free information we provide. The recall, complaint, and safety data on a vehicle’s page is the same whether or not you ever click a partner link, and our guides are written to help you make a good decision — including advice that costs us nothing, like doing checks yourself or walking away from a bad deal. We only link to a history provider we believe offers genuine value.
What is and isn’t an affiliate link
Affiliate links on this site point to our vehicle-history partner. Links to official bodies (such as AMVIC, Alberta registry services, NHTSA, or Transport Canada) and internal links to our own guides and tools are not affiliate links and earn us nothing — we include them purely because they’re useful.
Data sources
Our free VIN decoding and recall, complaint, and safety data are sourced from the public databases of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This data is provided as-is; see our terms of service for the full disclaimer on third-party data.
Questions
If anything about our disclosures or partnerships is unclear, we’re happy to explain — reach us via the contact page.