VIN vs License Plate: What Each One Tells You

People often mix up the VIN and the license plate, but they do very different jobs, and knowing the difference matters when you are buying or researching a car. This page explains what each one is and when you need it.

The license plate, or registration plate, is assigned to a car when it is registered in a particular place, and it can change over the car’s life. A car can be re registered with a new plate when it moves to a different area or owner, and personalised plates can be moved between cars, so the plate is not a permanent fingerprint of the vehicle. It is mainly an identifier for road use, taxation and enforcement.

The VIN, by contrast, is built into the car at the factory and stays with it for life. It is stamped into the body and printed on the certification label, and it uniquely identifies that one vehicle no matter how many times it changes hands or plates. That is why the VIN, not the plate, is the number that decodes into the car’s manufacturer, model year, engine and plant, and the number that history checks and recall databases are keyed to.

In practice you use the plate for everyday registration matters and the VIN for anything to do with the car’s identity and history. When you are checking a used car, the VIN is the number that matters most, because it cannot be swapped as easily as a plate and it is what reveals whether the car in front of you really is what the advertisement claims.

To see what a VIN reveals, enter it in the decoder at the top of the page.