Search for the cost of an IVA test and you will be told anything between £199 and £741. Both numbers appear in real published tables; neither is the answer on its own. DVSA sets the fee by the class of vehicle, the type of test and whether it happens inside working hours, and the whole table is public. Here it is, with the costs that sit either side of it.
The short version
- A car inspection is £199 in working hours, £294 outside them — the same for normal IVA and for basic IVA in the personal-import and left-hand-drive classes.
- Amateur-built, rebuilt and parts-of-a-registered-vehicle cars are £450 and £545.
- A re-inspection after a failure is £40, not another full fee.
- Statutory IVA fees carry no VAT. Voluntary IVA does, and its table is quoted VAT-inclusive.
- DVLA first registration is £55, and the maximum a garage may charge for a car MOT is £54.85.
The headline number, and its conditions
For the overwhelming majority of imported cars the inspection fee is £199. That figure holds whether the car goes through normal IVA or through basic IVA as a personal import, a left-hand-drive vehicle, a hearse or a very low volume production car. What changes with the class is the average test length — 60 minutes for normal, 110 for basic — not the price.
The £450 figure attaches to a genuinely different kind of vehicle: amateur built (class A), rebuilt (class S) and made using parts of a registered vehicle (class C). Those take four hours to inspect. A Japanese import is not one of them unless somebody has rebuilt it.
The statutory fee table for cars
Basic IVA — low-volume, hearses, left-hand drive, personal imports
| Test type | In working hours | Outside working hours | Average length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection | £199 | £294 | 110 minutes |
| Re-inspection | £40 | £59 | 35 minutes |
| Appeal | £199 | £294 | 70 minutes |
Classes L, M, N and P. Source: DVSA, 'Vehicle approval test costs: cars', GOV.UK. Page last updated 13 December 2022; checked 1 September 2026.
Basic IVA — amateur built, rebuilt, parts of a registered vehicle
| Test type | In working hours | Outside working hours | Average length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection | £450 | £545 | 240 minutes |
| Re-inspection | £90 | £109 | 45 minutes |
| Appeal | £450 | £545 | 180 minutes |
Classes A, S and C. Source as above.
Normal IVA
| Test type | In working hours | Outside working hours | Average length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection | £199 | £294 | 60 minutes |
| Re-inspection | £40 | £59 | 20 minutes |
| Appeal | £199 | £294 | 70 minutes |
The route for any car that does not meet the basic IVA criteria. Source as above.
Add 45 minutes to the average inspection length for vehicles over 3,500kg. Out-of-hours testing costs roughly 48% more and exists for operational convenience rather than to get you seen sooner.
Voluntary IVA, and why it carries VAT
If the car has ever been registered in the UK, the IVA scheme is closed to it and voluntary IVA applies instead. The prices are published differently and the difference tells you something: statutory fees are shown as one figure, voluntary fees as a service charge plus VAT. A statutory test is a statutory function; a voluntary one is a service being sold.
| Voluntary IVA, in working hours | Service charge | VAT | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection — LHD, personal import, hearse, low volume | £213.98 | £42.80 | £256.78 |
| Re-inspection, same classes | £43.01 | £8.60 | £51.61 |
| Inspection — amateur built, rebuilt, parts | £483.87 | £96.77 | £580.64 |
| Re-inspection, same classes | £52.40 | £10.48 | £62.88 |
Out-of-hours voluntary inspections run to £379.37 and £703.24 respectively. Source: DVSA fee tables, GOV.UK, checked 1 September 2026.
Certificates and replacements
| Certificate | Cost | When you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Mutual Recognition / EC approved vehicle without a Certificate of Conformity | £100 | An EU-approved car whose manufacturer will not supply a CoC |
| GB conversion IVA certificate (VCA) | £100 | An EU-registered left-hand-drive vehicle being converted for GB use |
| Replacement Individual Approval Certificate | £25 | The original IAC has been lost before registration |
Sources: DVSA fee tables and GOV.UK 'Getting vehicle approval', checked 1 September 2026.
The costs either side of the test
The inspection fee is rarely the largest number in the approval line of a landed cost. These are:
- Headlamp conversion or replacement. DVSA states that headlamps on vehicles imported from countries that drive on the right may need converting or replacing, and that masking is not accepted. Cost depends entirely on whether the unit is a common part.
- Rear fog lamp supply and fitting. DVSA expects a car imported from outside the EU not to have one. It must be ‘e’ or ‘E’ marked, wired through a grommet, switched, and interlocked with the dipped, main or front fog lamps.
- Speedometer. It has to indicate mph. A dual-marked dial usually passes; a km/h-only dial does not, and a GPS or bicycle instrument is explicitly not accepted.
- Transport to the test centre. There are 22 IVA centres in Great Britain and only 18 take passenger cars, one of them in Scotland and one in Wales. An unregistered car cannot drive itself there except to a pre-booked test — check which centre can actually take your car before you plan the movement.
- Storage while you wait. DVSA aims to respond within 10 working days and to offer an inspection within 20. The car is somewhere during that, and somewhere usually charges.
The re-inspection fee is the cheap part of failing
£40 is not what a failure costs. The cost is the second transporter movement, another slot in the queue, and the remedial work. Fixing the headlamps and the fog lamp before the first inspection is the single highest-return decision in the whole exercise — DVSA publishes the top ten failure points, so there is no excuse for meeting them for the first time on the day.
A worked total for a Japanese import
A nine-year-old Japanese car, so approval is required, won at auction and shipped to a UK port. The purchase and freight figures below are placeholders to make the arithmetic legible — the fees, rates and statutory charges are the published ones.
Approval and registration, nine-year-old Japanese import
On an illustrative £12,000 customs value. Statutory figures checked 1 September 2026.
Two things stand out. The first is that VAT dwarfs everything else — the approval line is under £700 of a £3,000 stack. The second is that the duty line is £0 only because a Japanese-built car with valid proof of origin qualifies for preference. Without that document the same car attracts the third-country rate of 10%, which on £12,000 is £1,200 of duty and a further £240 of VAT charged on top of it. One piece of paper, £1,440.
The origin rules are set out in our guide to export documents, and the full registration sequence in registering an imported car in the UK.
What has not changed
Worth stating because so much of the material online implies otherwise: the GOV.UK page carrying these tables was last updated on 13 December 2022. There has been no IVA fee increase since. If a 2026 guide quotes you a car inspection fee that is not £199, £294, £450 or £545, it did not come from the published table.
Fees are set by DVSA, the Vehicle Certification Agency and DVLA and are subject to change. Duty and VAT rates come from the UK Integrated Online Tariff and depend on the commodity code, the origin of the vehicle and the evidence held. Every statutory figure on this page was checked against its primary source on 1 September 2026; the purchase and freight figures in the worked example are illustrative and not a quotation. Confirm current fees at gov.uk before committing to a purchase.