MOT Date Calculator

All vehicles in the UK over 3 years old must have a valid MOT certificate. The test checks roadworthiness, covering brakes, lights, steering, suspension, tyres, seatbelts, exhaust emissions and bodywork, and it records the mileage and general condition at the same time. The maximum fee is set by the DVSA at £54.85 for a standard car in 2026/27, and many garages charge less because they treat the test as a loss leader that brings repair work through the door.

The due date follows a simple pattern: three years from the date of first registration for the first test, then annually on the anniversary of the last certificate or its expiry. You can look yours up free with your registration number through the DVLA service at gov.uk/check-mot-status. Raising the first-test threshold to four years was proposed and then rejected, so the three-year rule still stands.

Testing early costs you nothing in cover. An MOT done up to one month before the expiry date keeps the original anniversary, with the new certificate running from the old one's expiry, which leaves time to fix anything that fails without the car sitting off the road. The calculator estimates the test fee plus likely repairs from your vehicle's age and type. Common failures include blown bulbs at £5 to £15, worn tyres at £60 to £120 each, damaged windscreens at £75 to £350, worn brake pads at £100 to £250 per axle and emissions faults from £100 to £500 or more depending on the cause. An eight-year-old Ford Fiesta tested at a typical £45, with front brake pads at £120 and a failed rear wiper blade at £15, comes to about £180 all in.

What happens after a failure depends on how the defect is graded. A vehicle marked dangerous cannot be driven away at all. A major fail means no driving until the fault is repaired and the car retested. A minor fail is advisory, and the car stays road legal. Bring it back to the same garage within 10 working days and the retest is free; leave it longer and you pay the full fee again, up to £54.85. Driving an MOT-failed vehicle on the road, other than to or from a pre-arranged repair appointment, risks a £1,000 fine and leaves you without insurance cover.

A few vehicles sit outside the annual test. Anything older than 40 years, which as of 2026 means registered before 1986, is MOT exempt unless it has been substantially modified. Electric goods vehicles under 3.5 tonnes registered before March 2015 are exempt from emissions testing specifically. Vehicles used for hire or reward, such as taxis, need an MOT plus separate annual local authority checks, and tractors and agricultural vehicles fall under their own testing regime entirely.

Booking the MOT alongside other work usually saves money. The cheapest combination is an independent garage charging between £30 and the £54.85 government cap for the test, paired with an interim service at £100 to £200, and some chains bundle the two. A dealer MOT at £80 to £120 buys no advantage over an independent, while an MOT-only operation without servicing expertise may pass a car while missing a problem that is quietly developing. Car tax renewal is a separate process, but the two are linked in one direction: the DVLA checks for a valid MOT before it will let you tax the vehicle.