Decode any VIN.
Engine, trim, body, transmission, airbags, the plant it was built in, and every open safety recall. Around 50 fields straight from the federal database, free.
What the seventeen characters are
Every VIN is split the same way by ISO 3779. Here is a 2003 Honda Accord, laid out the way this site lays out yours.
Sample VIN 1HGCM82633A004352. See the full decode, or read the anatomy of a VIN.
What you actually get
Not a list of promises. This is the real output for the sample VIN above, a 2003 Honda Accord, exactly as the decoder returns it.
The car, at a glance
- Trim
- EX-V6
- Body class
- Coupe
- Cylinders
- 6
- Displacement (L)
- 3.0
- Horsepower
- 240
- Fuel
- Gasoline
- Transmission
- Automatic
- Doors
- 2
Then every other field, 33 of them here
Grouped the way you read a car. The exact set depends on what the manufacturer filed: a 2003 saloon returns fewer than a current EV, which carries battery and driver-assistance fields that did not exist then.
| Group | Fields returned for this VIN |
|---|---|
| Vehicle | Make, Model, Model year, Trim, Body class, Vehicle type, Doors, Gross vehicle weight rating |
| Engine and drivetrain | Cylinders, Displacement (L), Horsepower, Configuration, Fuel, Transmission, Transmission speeds |
| Restraints and airbags | Front airbags, Side airbags, Curtain airbags, Seat belt type |
| Manufacturing | Manufacturer, Assembly plant city, Assembly plant state, Assembly plant country |
| Other fields NHTSA returned | Displacement CC, Displacement CI, Engine Model, GVWR_to, Make ID, Manufacturer Id, Model ID, Other Restraint System Info, Valve Train Design, Vehicle Descriptor |
And every open recall, 24 on this one
Each with the component, what can go wrong, and the fix. This is the part almost no free decoder joins up: recalls are a separate federal service and most sites simply do not call it.
AIR BAGS:FRONTAL:DRIVER SIDE:INFLATOR MODULE
An explosion of an inflator within the driver frontal air bag module may result in sharp metal fragments striking the driver, front seat passenger or other occupants resulting in serious injury or death.
One of 24. See the full decode.
What a VIN cannot tell you
Nothing about this particular car's history. A VIN encodes what the factory built: model, engine, plant, build sequence. It carries no accident record, no title status, no odometer reading and no ownership chain, and no free decoder can produce those because they live in state DMV and insurance databases rather than in the number itself.
That is a real limit, not a paywall trick: the data genuinely is not in the number. If you need the car's history rather than its specification, a paid vehicle history report is the only route, and it is worth knowing that going in rather than clicking through three decoders to find out.
Why I, O and Q never appear
The VIN alphabet deliberately excludes them. On a plate stamped into metal and read through a windscreen, I is indistinguishable from 1 and O from 0, so the standard removed all three rather than accept the ambiguity. If you think you see an O in a VIN, it is a zero. This site checks that before it checks anything else.
Decoders by make
Each make page lists the manufacturer prefixes that actually appear in position one to three of its VINs, with the plant country behind each one.
- Ford78 WMI
- Chevrolet1 WMI
- Toyota34 WMI
- Honda45 WMI
- BMW18 WMI
- Mercedes-Benz37 WMI
- Nissan18 WMI
- Jeep1 WMI
- Dodge3 WMI
- Ram41 WMI
- GMC110 WMI
- Hyundai15 WMI
- Kia9 WMI
- Subaru6 WMI
- Volkswagen11 WMI
- Audi5 WMI
- Lexus34 WMI
- Mazda11 WMI
All 45 makes, covering 888 manufacturer prefixes.
Decoded live against NHTSA vPIC. Manufacturer prefix tables built 2026-08-09.