Built to beat
bike theft.
Nothing else.
300,000 bikes are stolen in the UK every year. For most owners, that's the end of the story — no recovery, no justice, no bike. We exist to change that number.
BikeRegister is the database that every UK police officer uses when they recover a bike. It's the check that stops buyers funding the stolen bike market. And it's the certificate that reunites an owner with a bike they'd given up on.
The problem was simple. The solution took years.
"When police recover a stolen bike and there's no registration, they have absolutely no way of finding the owner. The bike sits in a property store. The owner never knows it was found."
— The gap BikeRegister was built to closeThe problem
Bike theft in the UK had an obvious but ignored flaw: there was no reliable, nationally recognised way to prove you owned a bike. Serial numbers existed, but they were recorded nowhere useful. Police recovered stolen bikes regularly — and had no idea who they belonged to.
Meanwhile, the secondhand bike market was quietly absorbing thousands of stolen bikes every year. Buyers had no way to check. Sellers had no reason to worry. The cycle was self-sustaining.
The insight
The solution wasn't a lock or a tracker. It was a database. If every police officer in the country checked the same place when they found a bike — and if every buyer checked the same place before handing over money — the market for stolen bikes would shrink. Theft would become harder to profit from.
That database is BikeRegister. We built it, worked to get it adopted by every UK police force, and made the buyer-facing check free so there was no barrier to using it.
Where we are now
7.5 million registered bikes. All 45 UK police forces. Tens of thousands of buyer checks every month. Bikes recovered from car boot sales because a QR sticker led back to a registration. Owners who got phone calls from officers they never expected to hear from.
The problem isn't solved. 300,000 bikes are still stolen every year. But the odds have shifted — and for registered bikes, they've shifted significantly.
Three things that make the database work
A database is only as useful as the people who use it. We built BikeRegister to be useful to three groups simultaneously — and each group makes it more valuable for the other two.
Buyers check before they buy
Any buyer can check a serial number, frame ID, or registration plate against the database for free. No account. No friction. A stolen result before money changes hands. This is what removes the demand side of the stolen bike market — and it only works if buyers know to do it.
Owners register before theft happens
Registration takes under three minutes and costs less than a decent bike lock. An owner who registers creates the proof of ownership that makes recovery possible. The certificate. The record. The link between a serial number and a person the police can call.
Police check every recovered bike
Every one of the 45 UK police forces uses BikeRegister when they recover a bike. It is the first database they check. This is what closes the loop — a registration that nobody ever searches is just data. Police integration turns it into a recovery mechanism.
Every recovered bike gets checked here first
When a UK police officer recovers a bike — at a car boot sale, on a stop-and-search, in a lock-up — the first thing they do is check it against BikeRegister. Not because they have to. Because it's the most reliable database available.
That check takes seconds. If the bike is registered, the system returns an owner. The officer makes a call. The owner gets their bike back. Without the registration, the bike goes into property storage and is eventually disposed of.
Police integration is what makes BikeRegister more than a website. It's what makes it a recovery system. And it's the one advantage no competitor can replicate — because it took years of relationship-building with every force in the country to establish.
How we got here
Building a nationally trusted database takes time. This is the short version.
Four things we won't compromise on
These aren't aspirational statements. They're the decisions that shaped every product choice we've made.
Accuracy over marketability
We say "police-linked" not "police approved." We say "reported stolen" not "stolen." The database is only as trustworthy as its language. We don't claim more than we can stand behind — legally or factually.
Free to check, always
The buyer-facing check is free and will stay free. If buyers have to pay to check, they won't check. If they don't check, the market for stolen bikes survives. The free check isn't a loss leader — it's how the whole system works.
Police relationship first
Every commercial decision is made with one question first: does this damage our credibility with police forces? It hasn't so far. It won't. The day we become unreliable to officers is the day the database stops being useful to anyone.
Simple enough for anyone
The buyer checking a bike in a car park in Rotherham on a cracked phone needs the same frictionless experience as the cycle shop running 40 checks a day. Complexity is our problem to solve, not theirs.
The team behind the database
A small team with a specific focus. We're not a cycling lifestyle brand — we're a database company that happens to care deeply about what happens when a bike gets stolen.
We're a small team. That's deliberate. A large team would need to justify its size with complexity. We'd rather stay lean and keep the product simple.
The database is only useful if your bike is in it
Everything we've built — the police integration, the buyer checks, the recovery certificates — relies on one thing: owners registering before their bike is stolen. That part is down to you.