Car insurance group checker: find your car's group (1–50) by reg

What your result shows

A result has up to four parts, and it's worth knowing what each one is before you type anything in. First, the vehicle the DVLA holds against that registration — make, fuel type, engine size and year. Second, the insurance group, either as a single number for one derivative or as a range across the model. Third, a cost band and typical annual estimate produced by our published methodology — a comparison figure, not a quote. And fourth, a Vehicle Risk Rating note where the car is new enough that a 1–50 group may not exist for it.

Exact group or model range: how to tell

The result says which one you're looking at. A single number means the DVLA fields matched one derivative in our dataset. A range — say “groups 10–37” — means several versions of that model share the same engine size, fuel type and year, so the registration alone doesn't separate them.

A range isn't a failed lookup; it's the honest answer to an under-determined question. If you need the exact figure, the quickest route is to check the trim on your V5C or your purchase paperwork and then find your model and every trim on its own page, where each derivative is listed separately.

How accurate is a reg-based insurance group check?

This is the question we'd want answered if we were using someone else's checker, so here it is plainly. Any insurance group checker by reg is limited by what a registration can actually tell it, and the honest answer is that a car insurance group by reg gets you close — often exact — but no reg-based checker can be exact every time, including ours.

The box above takes any current-format UK plate, so a number plate insurance check and a reg check are the same lookup here; there's no separate step to complete first. What follows is what that lookup can and can't resolve.

Where our data comes from

Two sources. Vehicle details come from the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service, the government's own API. Its published schema returns make, engine capacity, fuel type, colour, CO₂, year of first registration and MOT/tax status. It does not return the model name or the trim.

Group figures come from our own dataset, built from publicly documented ABI and Thatcham Group Rating Panel information and maintained editorially. Where we publish a range for a model, that range is researched rather than scraped from a licensed feed, and we say so on our methodology page. We don't publish a precise group we can't stand behind, and we don't publish per-model VRR scores at all, because Thatcham doesn't publish them per vehicle.

Why people call them ABI groups

You'll see the same ratings described as ABI groups, and searchers look for an ABI group checker or simply an ABI checker. It's the same 1–50 scale: the Group Rating Panel that assigns it is run by the Association of British Insurers together with the Lloyd's Market Association, using Thatcham Research testing. So an ABI group and an insurance group are the same number, and a vehicle ABI code checker is this tool under a different name. There is no separate ABI scale to look up elsewhere.

Why the same model can sit in several groups

Because the panel rates derivatives, not model names. The VW Golf spans roughly group 10 on its entry engine to the high thirties as a Golf R — the same bodyshell, the same badge, twenty-seven positions apart. The Ford Fiesta behaves the same way once you reach the ST.

That's why “what group is a Focus?” has no single answer, and why any checker that always returns one tidy number is either resolving your exact derivative from licensed data or guessing. We'd rather show you the range and tell you it's a range.

What the letter after your group means (E, A, P, D, U, G)

Groups are often written with a letter — 11E, 10D, 22A. The letter is a security rating from Thatcham, not a second cost band. For E and D it has already moved the number you're looking at.

Insurance groups vs the new Vehicle Risk Rating (VRR)

If your car is new and shows no group, this is usually why. Thatcham launched Vehicle Risk Rating on 24 September 2024, covering brand-new model ranges sold in the UK from 1 August 2024, with a planned 18 months dual-rating period during which new models carry both. No retirement date for the 1–50 scale has been announced.

Insurance group, band or category: which one do you mean?

These get used interchangeably, but one of them means something completely different — and confusing it with the others can give you a badly wrong answer.

Insurance group is the 1–50 rating this tool returns. It describes the vehicle model's risk and is set by the Group Rating Panel.

Band and bracket are informal names for the same thing. If you searched for a car insurance band checker, an insurance bands checker, a car insurance bracket checker or an insurance bracket checker, this is the tool you wanted — there is no separate band or bracket scale to look up.

Write-off category is not the same thing at all. Cat A, B, S and N describe damage history on one individual vehicle after an insurance claim — whether it can legally return to the road. A Cat N car sits in exactly the same insurance group as an undamaged one. If that's what you're checking, a group checker won't tell you: you need a vehicle history check. See write-off categories vs insurance groups for the difference, or groups vs bands vs categories for the full terminology.

Other ways to find your car's insurance group

A registration isn't the only route, and it isn't always the best one — particularly if you're researching a car you don't own yet.

Checking a van

Worth being straight about scope if you came looking for a van insurance group checker. The reg lookup resolves car-derived vans and pickups already in our dataset, such as the Ford Ranger, so a van insurance group checker by reg works for those. It does not yet cover the full light-commercial-vehicle range, because vans are rated on a separate commercial scale and we don't hold that dataset. Rather than return a car-scale number for a van, we tell you it's out of scope. Our van insurance groups guide sets out what is and isn't covered.