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Insurance Groups · Checker · 2026

Car insurance group checker (UK 2026)

Every UK car sits in insurance group 1 to 50, and the gap is worth about £1,620 a year: a group 1–5 car insures for around £430 while a group 41–50 car averages about £2,050. You can check any car’s group free in under a minute using its registration, and cars first registered after 1 August 2024 also carry a new Thatcham Vehicle Risk Rating of 1–99 alongside the traditional group. Here is how to check yours, and what each band actually costs.

How to check your group → All 50 groups
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1 to 50
the UK insurance group scale
£430–£2,050
typical yearly cost, lowest to highest band
~£1,620/yr
gap between group 1–5 and 41–50
Direct Answer

How do you check a car’s insurance group?

The fastest way is a free registration lookup: enter the number plate into any car insurance group checker and it returns the ABI group (1–50) held against that exact vehicle record. The rating comes from Thatcham Research, the not-for-profit automotive risk body funded by UK insurers, and is signed off by the ABI Group Rating Panel. Because the group is set per variant — engine, trim, gearbox and even security specification — two cars of the same model and year can sit several groups apart, so a registration lookup is always more accurate than looking up the model name.

If you do not have the registration to hand, the group is also printed in the manufacturer’s price list and specification sheet for that model year, and is shown on most dealer listings. What it is not is a number you can find on the V5C logbook: the insurance group is an insurance-industry rating, not a DVLA record, so it does not appear on the registration document.

The group matters because it is one of the three biggest levers on a premium, alongside driver age and postcode. A driver moving from a group 41–50 car to a group 1–5 car saves roughly £1,620 a year on a typical comprehensive policy — more than any no-claims discount, excess change or optional extra will ever deliver. For the full market context on what an average policy costs in 2026, see our UK car insurance cost index.

The data

What each insurance group band costs to insure (UK 2026)

UK car insurance cost by insurance group band — 2026
The bottom band insures for about £430 a year; the top band costs roughly 4.8× that. The steepest jump is between groups 30 and 41.
Groups 1–5£430 Groups 6–10£520 Groups 11–15£650 Groups 16–20£760 Groups 21–25£880 Groups 26–30£1,060 Groups 31–40£1,350 Groups 41–50£2,050

Source: indicative band midpoints modelled on the Confused.com Price Index (£719 average UK comprehensive premium, three months to May 2026) and Thatcham Research group rating data.

Insurance group bandTypical carsIndicative annual premiumvs UK average (£719)
Groups 1–5Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto, VW Up!, Toyota Aygo X£430−40%
Groups 6–10Fiat 500, Vauxhall Corsa 1.2, Ford Fiesta 1.0£520−28%
Groups 11–15Ford Focus, VW Golf 1.6 TDI, Toyota Corolla hybrid£650−10%
Groups 16–20Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Octavia, Kia Sportage£760+6%
Groups 21–25BMW 1 Series, Audi A3 petrol, VW Tiguan£880+22%
Groups 26–30BMW 3 Series, Tesla Model 3, Mercedes C-Class£1,060+47%
Groups 31–40Audi A6, BMW X5, Ford Focus ST, Tesla Model Y£1,350+88%
Groups 41–50Porsche 911, BMW M3, Range Rover, Audi RS models£2,050+185%

Sources: Confused.com Price Index (£719 average UK comprehensive premium, three months to May 2026), ABI Motor Insurance Premium Tracker (£560 average premium paid, Q1 2026) and Thatcham Research group rating data for the example vehicles. Premiums are indicative band midpoints for a 35-year-old driver with a clean licence and full no-claims discount — they are not quotes, and driver age and postcode move these figures more than group alone. Refresh: 2026-10-24.

How to check

Four ways to check your car’s insurance group

  1. Registration lookup (most accurate). Enter the number plate into a free group checker. Because the tool resolves the plate to a specific variant record, it captures the engine, trim and gearbox differences that shift a model across several groups. This is the number an insurer will actually rate on.
  2. Manufacturer price list or brochure. Every UK manufacturer publishes the insurance group alongside each trim in its price list and specification PDF for the model year. This is the best route when you are comparing cars you do not yet own — you can see the group for every trim at once rather than one plate at a time.
  3. Dealer and classified listings. Most large used-car listings show the insurance group in the specification panel. Treat it as a guide only: listings are frequently populated from the base model, so a higher trim may sit two or three groups above the figure shown.
  4. Ask for a quote. Quote forms resolve the vehicle from the registration and price the exact variant, so a real quote is the definitive answer. It is slower than a lookup but it is the only method that also factors in your age, postcode, mileage and claims history.

One thing every checker gets wrong sometimes: imported, modified and re-registered vehicles often have no clean group rating attached, and a checker will either return the nearest UK equivalent or nothing at all. If your car falls into that category, a specialist broker will rate it manually rather than by group, and the group number you find online is close to meaningless.

Once you know the group, our per-group pages break down what that specific number costs and which cars sit in it — for example group 5, group 15, group 27 and group 42. New drivers should start with the cheapest insurance group cars for new drivers.

What changed

Group rating (1–50) vs the new Vehicle Risk Rating (1–99)

The 1–50 group system dates back decades and was built around a world of mechanical repairs. Thatcham Research replaced it for new vehicles with the Vehicle Risk Rating (VRR), which applies to cars first registered from 1 August 2024. Cars registered before that date keep their traditional 1–50 group, so for most of the UK parc the old scale is still what your quote is built on.

VRR scores a vehicle from 1 (lowest risk) to 99 (highest risk) across five separate pillars, each scored independently:

  • Performance — power, acceleration and the claims frequency that follows from them.
  • Damageability — how badly the car is hurt in a standard low-speed impact.
  • Repairability — how expensive and how slow the repair is, including whether panels are bonded, whether calibration of driver-assistance sensors is required, and parts availability.
  • Safety — crash-avoidance and occupant-protection technology, which reduces injury claims.
  • Security — resistance to theft, including keyless-entry relay attacks.

The practical difference is that VRR lets insurers reward a car that is cheap to repair even if it is quick, and penalise one that is slow and safe but ruinously expensive to fix. That matters in 2026 because repair cost, not accident frequency, is what is pushing premiums: repair accounted for around 64% of total UK motor claims spend and the average accidental damage claim reached about £3,699 in Q1 2026, up 8% in a single quarter. Electric vehicles and cars packed with sensors are the clearest beneficiaries and casualties of the change — a modest EV can score badly on repairability while scoring well on performance and safety.

For now, when you check a group you may get one number, two numbers, or a VRR only. All three are normal. If your car is post-August-2024 and you only see a VRR, that is the correct rating and there is no 1–50 group to find.

FAQs

Car insurance group checker: common questions

Enter the number plate into a free car insurance group checker. The tool resolves the registration to the exact vehicle variant and returns the ABI group from 1 to 50 held against that record, set by Thatcham Research and approved by the ABI Group Rating Panel. A registration lookup is more accurate than searching by model name, because engine, trim, gearbox and security specification can move the same model across several groups.
No. The insurance group is an insurance-industry rating produced by Thatcham Research, not a DVLA record, so it does not appear on the V5C registration document. The V5C gives you the make, model, variant details and VIN, which is enough for a checker or an insurer to look the group up. The group is also published in the manufacturer's price list for that model year.
About £1,620 a year on a typical comprehensive policy in 2026. A car in groups 1 to 5 insures for around £430 a year for a 35-year-old driver with a clean licence, while a car in groups 41 to 50 averages around £2,050 - roughly 4.8 times as much. The gap widens sharply for young drivers, where the group multiplier is applied on top of a much higher base premium.
The Vehicle Risk Rating is Thatcham Research's replacement for group ratings, scoring cars from 1 to 99 across five pillars: performance, damageability, repairability, safety and security. It applies to cars first registered from 1 August 2024. Vehicles registered before that date keep the traditional 1 to 50 insurance group, so both systems run side by side and most cars on UK roads are still rated on the old scale.
Because the group is set per variant, not per model. Engine size and power, trim level, gearbox, factory security specification and even the presence of alloy wheels or driver-assistance sensors all feed into the rating. A base 1.0 petrol hatchback and the sport trim of the same car can sit fifteen or more groups apart, which is why a registration lookup beats a model-name search every time.
Yes. The ABI Group Rating Panel reviews ratings regularly and a vehicle can be re-rated as real claims and repair-cost data accumulates, particularly if parts prices rise or a security weakness emerges. Modifications also change the rating in practice: any change to engine, bodywork, suspension or wheels must be declared, and insurers usually rate a modified car manually rather than by its factory group.
Almost always, but the group is only one of three big levers. Driver age and postcode routinely move a premium more than the group does: a 17-year-old in a group 1 car still pays several times what a 40-year-old pays in a group 20 car. The group is the lever you control most easily when buying a car, which is why checking it before you buy is worth more than shopping around afterwards.
Groups 1 to 5 for the cheapest possible cover, and no higher than group 10 if you want any real choice of car. City cars such as the Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto, VW Up! and Toyota Aygo X sit in groups 1 to 5 and are the standard new-driver picks. Anything above group 15 gets expensive quickly for under-25s, and performance trims in group 25 and above are often declined outright or quoted at over £4,000.

Our sources

Reviewed by the Car Insurance Expert editorial team

Reviewer: senior motor insurance research editor, Car Insurance Expert. Methodology: band premiums are indicative midpoints derived from published market averages (Confused.com Price Index and the ABI Motor Insurance Premium Tracker) applied across the Thatcham group scale for a 35-year-old clean-licence driver; rating-system facts are taken directly from Thatcham Research and re-checked at every review. No figure on this page is a quote.

Corrections and data queries: editorial@carinsuranceexpert.co.uk

Last updated: 2026-07-24 · Next scheduled review: 2026-10-24

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