MOT & Road Tax Reminder

Never miss your MOT or road tax again

Two dates catch UK drivers out more than any other: the day your MOT expires and the day your road tax (Vehicle Excise Duty) is due to renew. Both come round once a year, both are easy to forget, and both can be expensive to miss. This free reminder keeps them — plus your insurance, service and breakdown-cover dates — in one private garage, sorts them soonest-first, and lets you export the lot to your calendar or get an email nudge. Add your dates once and the tool does the remembering for you.

What the MOT is, and why the date matters

An MOT is the annual roadworthiness test required for most cars over three years old. It checks safety-critical items — brakes, tyres, lights, steering, emissions and more — and the certificate is valid for one year. Driving a car without a valid MOT is an offence and can carry a fine of up to £1,000. The one common exception is driving to a pre-booked MOT test (or to a garage for repairs needed to pass). On top of the fine, driving without a valid MOT can invalidate your insurance, so the date is well worth pinning down.

You can find your official MOT due date on your most recent MOT certificate, or check it free on gov.uk/check-mot-status using just your number plate. A useful habit is to book the test a couple of weeks early: if the car fails, you keep the cover of your existing certificate while repairs are done, and you avoid being stuck off the road. That's exactly why our calendar reminder fires 30 days ahead.

Road tax (VED): check and renew on gov.uk

Vehicle Excise Duty, commonly called road tax, must be paid to keep a vehicle on (or even parked on) a public road. You can check whether a vehicle is taxed and when it's due on gov.uk/check-vehicle-tax, and renew at gov.uk/vehicle-tax using the reference from your V11 reminder, V5C logbook or new-keeper slip. Tax no longer transfers when a car is sold, so new owners must tax it before driving away. Crucially, even cars in the £0 tax band still have to be taxed each year — the price being zero doesn't mean you can skip the renewal. Driving while untaxed can lead to penalties and, in some cases, the vehicle being clamped. If you're taking a car off the road, a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) is the alternative to taxing it.

The renewal-shopping habit that saves real money

Here's the money angle. Car insurance and breakdown cover are priced to reward inertia: the auto-renewal quote that lands in your inbox is very often higher than the price a new customer would pay for the same cover. The Financial Conduct Authority's rules now stop insurers charging existing customers more than a new customer for the identical policy at renewal, but shopping around — and being prepared to switch — still routinely beats simply letting a policy roll over. The trick is timing: get your quotes around three to four weeks before renewal, when prices tend to be keenest, rather than on the day. Setting an insurance reminder turns "shop around" from a good intention into something that actually happens, year after year.

One garage for the whole car

MOT and tax are just the start. We see this as the foundation of a proper Keepwise car-ownership dashboard: MOT → tax → insurance → service → tyres → breakdown, all in one place, all reminding you at the right moment. Today you can track the first handful of dates; over time the same garage becomes the home for everything your car needs, so the boring admin happens quietly in the background and you only hear about it when there's something to do — or a few pounds to save.

Your privacy

There's no account and no login. Your vehicles, registrations and dates are stored with your browser's localStorage and never sent to any server — so the data genuinely stays on your device. The trade-off is that clearing your browser data clears the garage, and the list won't follow you to another device automatically. Free email reminders are live — add your email and we'll nudge you about 30 days before each date. A registration-plate lookup is now built in: enter your plate and we fetch your official MOT date from the DVSA MOT History API (your plate is sent to our server only for that lookup, never stored). Everything is free.