Does Carfax Show All Accidents? What Paid Reports Can't See

Read the buyback guarantee before you read the report. The guarantee is the one place where a history-report company puts money behind its data, and both of the big ones put that money behind a single field. Carfax pays out if its report missed a DMV-issued branded title that was issued at least 60 days before the report ran. Experian's AutoCheck does the same, and then writes the sentence a buyer most needs to see: "It doesn't apply to accidents or other negative records reported by commercial data sources."

So the most common reason people buy these reports, to find out whether the car was in a crash, is the one thing neither company stands behind.

That is not a scandal. It is a description of how the data arrives, and once you see the arrival path you can predict, before paying, which questions a paid report can answer and which it structurally cannot. Everything below comes from the companies' own terms and source pages, a federal regulation, one state statute, the FTC's used-car guide and NICB's free VIN lookup, all read on 15 October 2026.

The guarantee pays on one field of the report

Here is what the Carfax Buyback Guarantee terms require before any payment. The report must state that the vehicle does not have a branded title while a branded title exists. The report must be dated before you bought the car, but "no more than 30 days prior to such purchase." The vehicle must have a model year "no more than 20 years before the date of the Report." The brand must have been issued "at least 60 days prior to the date of the Report." You must still own the car, and you must file "within 1 year after the date of the Report," with the claim form, your current title, the report, your bill of sale and both sides of the branded title.

The payment is the lesser of what you paid for the car, with fees, taxes, warranties, insurance, accessories and reconditioning taken out, and "110% of the current CARFAX History Based Value." Accepting it releases Carfax from every claim relating to the report, including future reports on the same car.

Three kinds of brand are carved out entirely. The terms call them Excluded Brands: "a Title originally issued without a Brand, but a Brand was subsequently added to the Title without the Title being reissued," "a Title indicating salvage due to theft," and "a Branded Title issued in error."

AutoCheck's buyback protection runs on the same skeleton with different numbers. It covers flood, fire and hail brands, junk, salvage and dismantled brands, manufacturer buyback, odometer brands, and rebuilt or reconstructed, from any of the 50 states. It pays up to 110% of the J.D. Power NADAguides published retail value, plus up to $500 in aftermarket accessories. The brand must have been issued at least 60 days before the report was run. You register within 90 days of the date you purchased the vehicle, and the protection "expires one year after the date on the AutoCheck report."

Then the exclusion, in plain words: "accidents, insurance loss or odometer rollback are not covered." AutoCheck also tells you how to spot which lines on its own report are inside the guarantee. In the Detailed Vehicle History section, a state title brand always shows the Data Source as "Motor Vehicle Department." Records that look similar but came from "Auto Insurance Source" or "Auto Auction" are outside it.

That Data Source column is worth more than the guarantee. It tells you, line by line, whether a record came from a government office that was required to keep it or from a company that chose to share it.

What the 60-day rule says about timing

Both guarantees refuse brands issued less than 60 days before the report. Neither page explains why, and a rule like that can serve several purposes. Whatever else it does, it tells you that the companies themselves do not promise a brand issued in the last two months has reached their database.

The free federal system has a stated pace too. Under 28 CFR 25.54, states feed NMVTIS once every 24 hours, while insurers and salvage yards file monthly inventories under 25.55 and 25.56, which is covered in detail in the NMVTIS title check explainer. A car totaled last month and sold this week sits squarely in the window where every report, free or paid, can be honestly blank.

The practical response is cheap. If the seller's report is dated weeks before you saw the car, run your own on the day. If the car changed hands or crossed a state line recently, treat a clean brand history as provisional, and read what a brand meant in the state that applied it rather than trusting the word on the paper title.

Nobody is required to report to Carfax or AutoCheck

Carfax's data-sources page says the company has "more than 151,000 data sources" and a database of "over 35 billion records," covering vehicles from "model year 1981 or later." The sources it names are federal and state agencies, Canadian provincial motor vehicle agencies, auto auctions, fire and police departments, fleet management and rental agencies. The same page carries this disclaimer, written in the voice of a report:

"A CARFAX Report is based only on information supplied to CARFAX. Other information about this vehicle, including problems, might not have been reported to CARFAX."

AutoCheck's source page lists state DMVs, auto auctions, salvage auctions, collision repair shops, service and maintenance facilities, insurance companies, manufacturers, law enforcement agencies, car dealerships and extended warranty companies, import and export companies, rental and fleet companies, and inspection stations. Accident reports appear under both the state DMV and the law enforcement entries. On the buyback page, almost in passing: "Not all records are reported to AutoCheck."

Compare that with who is legally compelled to report anything. Federal law under 28 CFR part 25 obliges exactly three groups to send vehicle data to NMVTIS: state titling agencies, insurance carriers, and junk and salvage yards. Nobody is obliged to tell Carfax or Experian about a fender repair, an oil change, a crash, or a dealer auction. Every collision shop, dealer service lane and fleet operator on those source lists is there by contract or by choice.

Two consequences follow, and they cut in opposite directions.

First, a paid report can genuinely know things the federal file does not. AutoCheck's source page says salvage auction data can show whether a car "is salvaged, but was not titled as salvage by the DMV." Auction condition reports, rental-fleet history and service-lane mileage readings exist nowhere in NMVTIS. That is the honest case for paying.

Second, coverage depends on which shop and which police department. Two identical cars with identical damage can produce different reports because one owner went to a dealer body shop that shares data and the other went to an independent that does not. The report does not tell you which kind of shop the car visited when it shows nothing. It cannot.

How a crash becomes a line, read through one state's code

To see why accident coverage is patchy, follow one crash through a statute. Texas is a useful example because its rules are explicit; check your own state's equivalent before assuming it works the same way.

Texas Transportation Code 550.062 requires a written report from a law enforcement officer "who in the regular course of duty investigates a motor vehicle collision," if the collision caused injury or death or property damage to any one person "to the apparent extent of $1,000 or more." The report has to be filed electronically not later than the 10th day after the collision.

Read the trigger carefully. It applies when an officer investigates. A parking-lot scrape where nobody calls the police produces no report under this section. A $900 bumper hit produces none even if an officer shows up.

Then section 550.065 decides who sees it. The full report is privileged and confidential except to listed parties, mainly the people involved, their insurers and representatives, and certain newspapers. Subsection (c-1) adds a redacted collision report that any person may request, and subsection (e) lets the department release "a vehicle identification number and specific collision information relating to that vehicle," and when it releases information under either route it must withhold or redact names, driver's license numbers, full dates of birth, addresses, the license plate number and the name of any insurance company. A copy of the full report costs $6.

That is a precise picture of how crash data can reach a commercial database: stripped of the people, keyed to the VIN, and only for crashes an officer wrote up. It also shows where the line breaks. If the report never existed, there is nothing to release. If the VIN on the report is wrong or missing, there is nothing to attach the crash to. NICB makes the same point about its own lookup: if the VIN you enter is incorrect, a matching record may not be identified.

Insurance claims are the other main accident path, and they have a federal blind spot of their own. The insurer's NMVTIS duty in 25.55(a) covers total losses on vehicles of "the current model year or any of the four prior model years." A repairable claim on any car, or a total loss on an older one handled outside a salvage yard, does not have to go anywhere by federal rule.

What no report, free or paid, will show you

None of the following is a criticism of any vendor. Each one is a place where no record was ever created, or where the record is the wrong kind of evidence.

Damage repaired for cash. No police report, no claim, a body shop that does not share data. This is the case every disclaimer is written around, and it needs no fraud at all for a damaged car to arrive with a clean history.

Mechanical condition. The FTC's guide to buying a used car from a dealer puts it in one line: "A vehicle history report may list accidents and flood damage, but typically it will not list mechanical problems." The same section says a history report "is not a substitute for an independent vehicle inspection." A slipping transmission or a head gasket that is starting to weep is invisible to every database in the country.

How well the repair was done. A report that does list an accident usually tells you that something happened and roughly where on the car. Carfax describes showing point of impact and a severity scale. Whether the frame was pulled straight, whether the airbags were replaced with new parts, whether the paint is hiding filler: those are questions for a technician with the car on a lift.

Work the owner did at home. No invoice, no record.

A brand still in transit. Covered above. Anything inside roughly the last 60 days is the window the companies themselves decline to guarantee.

Ownership counts, read literally. An owner count comes from title and registration events. A car that moved between relatives, or was registered to a business, can look like more or fewer owners than its real history. Treat the number as a prompt for a question, not an answer.

The free checks that come first

Before paying for anything, two lookups cost nothing and one costs about ten dollars.

NICB VINCheck is free and searches theft, salvage and flood records from participating insurers. NICB says the database, built through cooperation with its member insurers, represents 92.49% of earned insurance premium in the United States, and it limits you to a maximum of five searches within a 24-hour period per IP address. Its limits are written into the page: "only insurance records appear in response to a VINCheck query," and "VINCheck does not query law enforcement records." NICB's own conclusion is that it "is not a comprehensive vehicle history report."

An NMVTIS title report from a Justice Department approved provider runs about $10 and answers five federal questions: title status, brands, the odometer reading in the title record, insurer total losses, and salvage-yard handling. A recall lookup on the same VIN through NHTSA is free and takes a minute.

Stack those three and you have covered most of what the paid guarantees actually stand behind, because the guarantees cover state title brands and those brands are exactly what state titling agencies are required to send NMVTIS. What remains is the voluntary layer: service visits, auction and rental history, police-reported crashes that a state chose to release, and the claims that insurers chose to share. Whether that layer is worth the price of a paid report depends on the car. On a three-year-old car coming off a lease, the service and auction history can be dense and genuinely useful. On a fifteen-year-old car from a private seller, the paid report may add little beyond what the free checks already showed.

Turning a clean report into questions for the seller

A blank accident section is not evidence of no accident. It is evidence that no participating source attached one to that VIN. Used that way, the report becomes a list of things to ask about.

Start with gaps. A run of service records that stops for two or three years, then resumes in another state, is worth one direct question: where was the car serviced in between, and are there receipts? A mileage reading that jumps or stalls between records is worth checking against the odometer statement on the title.

Then the Data Source column, if your report has one. A damage line from "Auto Auction" or "Auto Insurance Source" is a record somebody chose to share, and it tells you where to look for more: the auction's condition report, or the claim details the seller can request from their insurer. A brand from "Motor Vehicle Department" is the one kind of line a state was required to keep, and the one kind the vendor guarantees.

Then ask the seller for paper the databases never see: body shop invoices, the insurer's estimate if there was a claim, the parts list if the airbags were replaced. A seller who had a crash repaired properly usually has the invoice, because the repair was expensive and the invoice was the receipt.

Finally, give every unanswered question to the technician doing the pre-purchase inspection. A report that shows nothing, plus a paint-depth reading that jumps on one door, is a more specific conversation than either one alone. The report tells the inspector where the paper trail is thin. The inspector tells you what the car itself says.

Prices, terms and source counts in this piece were read on the Carfax, AutoCheck, NICB, FTC and Texas Legislature pages on 15 October 2026. Guarantee terms change without notice, so read the current version on the vendor's own page before you rely on it.