The short answer: a carrier's CSA data is checked for free in about 2 minutes at FMCSA's own SMS website — ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms. Enter your USDOT number, and the public page shows all 7 BASIC categories, inspections, violations and crashes over a rolling 24-month window. Your exact percentile scores are not public — you log in with your DOT PIN to see them. A driver's own record is a separate thing: the PSP report, $10 at psp.fmcsa.dot.gov. Nothing else costs money — any site charging for a "CSA lookup" is reselling this free data.
This guide is purely about how to check — the right URLs, the exact clicks, and who sees what. If you want to understand what the scores mean, how the 65%/80% intervention thresholds work and how percentiles are calculated, that is covered in our CSA Scores Explained guide.
There is exactly one federal source for CSA data: the Safety Measurement System (SMS) run by FMCSA. It is free and needs no account for the public view. FMCSA feeds it with data from roughly 3.5 million roadside inspections a year, so whatever a broker, insurer or safety consultant "knows" about you, they read it here.
Here is the part that confuses everyone. Since the FAST Act (2015), FMCSA removed property carriers' BASIC percentiles and alert symbols from public display. So the public page and the logged-in view are genuinely different documents:
| What you want to see | Public SMS view (no login) | Logged in with DOT PIN |
|---|---|---|
| Inspections, violations, crashes (24-month window) | Yes | Yes |
| Which BASICs contain recorded violations | Yes | Yes |
| Out-of-service rates vs national average | Yes (via SAFER) | Yes |
| Exact BASIC percentile scores (0–100) | No — hidden since FAST Act | Yes |
| Alert / above-threshold flags (65% / 80%) | No | Yes |
| Measure values behind each percentile | No | Yes |
The DOT PIN is the credential FMCSA issues for your own record. If it is lost — a classic situation when the company was opened by a filing service years ago — it can be recovered; the process is in our DOT PIN recovery guide. Note that since May 14, 2026 access to your FMCSA record is managed through Motus, the system that replaced URS and the FMCSA Portal (Login.gov identity plus a face scan — details in the Motus guide).
"Check my CSA score" means three different things depending on who is asking, and this is where paid-site scams live:
SMS refreshes on a roughly monthly snapshot cycle over a rolling 24-month window. Two consequences worth knowing. First, a violation from this week may not show in the measures until the next snapshot. Second, your percentile can move without anything happening to you — old events aging past 24 months drop off, time weights decay, and the peer group you are ranked against shifts. If you want the mechanics, see the methodology breakdown; if you want the score lower, see CSA improvement strategies.
Wrong violations do not fix themselves, and they keep hurting your BASICs for 24 months. The official dispute channel is DataQ — dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov: you file a Request for Data Review with evidence, the state that recorded the event reviews it, and a successful challenge removes or corrects the violation, after which SMS recalculates in a following snapshot. Full walkthrough with evidence tactics: how to dispute violations through DataQ.
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FMCSA's SMS site — ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms. Search by USDOT number; no account needed for the public view.
Yes — SMS, SAFER and L&I are all free federal resources. Paid "CSA lookup" sites resell the same data.
The FAST Act (2015) removed property carriers' percentiles from public view. Log in with your DOT PIN to see them.
Drivers have no public CSA score — order your PSP report, $10 at psp.fmcsa.dot.gov: 5 years of crashes, 3 years of inspections.
Roughly monthly snapshots over a rolling 24-month window. Old events drop off at 24 months.
Your credential for the carrier's own FMCSA record; since May 14, 2026 access is managed through Motus. Lost PINs are recoverable.
File a Request for Data Review at dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov with evidence. Successful challenges remove or correct the violation.
No. Lookups are read-only and anonymous. Check monthly after each snapshot — it costs nothing.