VIN Decoder (VIN Check & Check Digit Validator)

Free VIN Decoder for any 17-character Vehicle Identification Number: look up the country or region of manufacture from the first two characters of the WMI, the manufacturer when known, and the estimated model year, and validate the 9th-character check digit required in North America and China. Runs entirely in your browser.

Last updated: 2026-10-17

What is a VIN Decoder?

A VIN Decoder lets you enter the 17-character Vehicle Identification Number stamped on a car to validate the 9th-character check digit required for vehicles in North America and China, look up the country or region of manufacture from the first two characters of the WMI (and, when recognized, the manufacturer), and estimate the model year from the 10th character.

When copying a VIN during a used-car purchase or an import registration, a single mistyped character can slip through unnoticed. Checking the check digit here first helps catch obvious transcription errors before you rely on the number elsewhere. This tool only supports the 17-character ISO 3779 VIN used in North America and internationally — domestic Japanese chassis numbers aren't supported.

How to Use

Enter the VIN Paste the 17-character code exactly as it appears on a title, bill of sale, or auction listing.
Check the check-digit result See whether the actual 9th character matches the one calculated from the rest of the VIN.
Review the WMI and model year The country of manufacture, manufacturer (if recognized), estimated model year, plant code, and production sequence number are all decoded automatically.
Try another VIN Use the Clear button to reset and decode a different number.

Tips for getting more out of it

You can paste a VIN with spaces or dashes — they're stripped automatically before decoding.
The estimated model year comes from the 10th character, which cycles every 30 years. This tool follows the common convention that a numeric 7th character means 1980–2009, while a letter means 2010–2039.
This tool only supports the 17-character ISO 3779 VIN used in North America and internationally. Domestic Japanese chassis numbers use a different numbering system and aren't supported.
The manufacturer lookup only covers WMI codes for major passenger-car brands, so trucks, buses, and specialty vehicles may show as "manufacturer not in our list" even though the country is still identified.
Paste the VIN exactly as printed on a title, registration document, or auction listing to cross-check it against the decoded result.

Use Cases

Pre-purchase VIN check for a used or imported vehicle

Verify the check digit on a VIN from a listing or bill of sale as a first-pass check for transcription errors or tampering.

Reference info for gray-market import registration

Cross-check the decoded country of manufacture and estimated model year against your registration paperwork.

Reference for building VIN validation into your own system

Confirm the expected behavior of a mod-11 check-digit routine as defined in North America by 49 CFR Part 565 before implementing VIN validation in inventory or fleet-management software.

Organizing a personal record of VINs

Quickly decode the manufacturer and model year for a batch of VINs you already have on file.

Glossary

VIN: Short for Vehicle Identification Number — the 17-character international standard vehicle identifier defined by ISO 3779.
WMI: World Manufacturer Identifier — the first 3 characters of a VIN, identifying the country of manufacture and the manufacturer.
VDS: Vehicle Descriptor Section — characters 4–8 of a VIN, containing manufacturer-specific information such as body style and engine type.
VIS: Vehicle Identifier Section — characters 10–17 of a VIN, made up of the model-year code, plant code, and production sequence number.
Check digit: The 9th character of a VIN, calculated with a mod-11 formula to catch transcription errors. It is compulsory in North America (49 CFR Part 565) and China, but ISO 3779 does not define it and vehicles for Europe and other markets may not use it.
Model year code: The 10th character of a VIN, indicating the model year. Because the code repeats every 30 years, the 7th character is used to determine which cycle applies.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. A VIN follows the international ISO 3779 standard and is always 17 characters, while a vehicle registered in Japan uses a separate domestic chassis-number system (model designation number + classification number + unique serial) that doesn't use the North American check-digit rule either. This tool only supports the 17-character international VIN.

Not necessarily. The most common cause is a simple typo, often from misreading a similar-looking character. The 9th-character check digit always matches on vehicles for North America and China, but vehicles for Europe and other markets may not use it, in which case a mismatch is not an error. When the WMI country is outside North America and China, this tool says the check digit is not required. If a North American or Chinese VIN keeps failing, double-check the source document.

The 10th-character year code repeats every 30 years, so this tool infers the cycle (1980–2009 vs. 2010–2039) from whether the 7th character is a digit or a letter. That is a North American rule (49 CFR Part 565) covering passenger cars and trucks and multipurpose vehicles of 10,000 lb GVWR or less. It does not hold for vehicles built for Europe and other markets, or for heavy vehicles and motorcycles, so the estimate can be wrong for them. When the 10th character is not used as a year code (U, Z or 0), no year is estimated.

No. The WMI only identifies the country and, when recognized, the manufacturer. The exact assembly plant is encoded in the 11th character (the plant code), which each manufacturer defines independently, so a general-purpose tool like this one can't decode it.

No. All decoding happens locally in your browser using JavaScript; nothing is transmitted to an external server.

Side Note — Why the 9th character of a VIN is sometimes "X"

The 9th character of a VIN is called the check digit, and just like a bank account check digit, its only job is to catch typos and crude forgeries. In 1981, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) made the 17-character, checksum-verifiable VIN mandatory for all vehicles sold in the United States under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 115. The math behind it, now set out in U.S. federal regulation 49 CFR Part 565, converts each letter to a number, multiplies it by a weight based on its position, sums the results, and takes the remainder after dividing by 11. When that remainder is 10, there's no single digit to represent it, so the letter "X" is used instead. Note that ISO 3779, the international standard for the VIN layout, does not define the check digit: it is compulsory in North America and China, while vehicles for Europe and other markets may carry a filler such as "Z" in that position.

The first three characters form the WMI, or World Manufacturer Identifier. The first two characters together identify the country or region of manufacture, and the third narrows it down to a manufacturer or vehicle category. Codes starting with 1, 4, or 5 point to the United States and J to Japan, but the first character alone is often not enough — among VINs starting with T, for example, TA–TH means Switzerland and TJ–TP the Czech Republic. SAE (the Society of Automotive Engineers) assigns these ranges to national authorities under ISO 3780. Manufacturers often operate plants in more than one country, so the WMI alone can't pinpoint an exact factory.

The 10th character, the model year code, uses 30 possible values (21 letters, excluding I, O, Q, U, and Z, plus the digits 1 through 9) to represent the model year — but the same code repeats every 30 years. To resolve the ambiguity, the industry commonly checks the 7th character: a digit points to the 1980–2009 cycle, while a letter points to 2010–2039. This tool follows that same widely used convention. As vehicles from 2040 onward start appearing, the standard itself will need a new way to disambiguate the cycle, so the way VINs are read may change again in the coming years.

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