Carrier411 Alternative: Free Carrier Checks vs. $99/mo

Carrier411 alternative: what a free check gets you, and what it doesn't

Carrier411 is a broad carrier-monitoring platform: 20+ years of FMCSA data, safety ratings, BASIC scores, inspection history, and a self-reported fraud database, starting at $99/month with a 30-day trial. CarrierScrub is a free, no-account, single-carrier authority-and-insurance check with a fixed, published verdict. They're not the same product yet. Here's exactly where each stands.

Every Carrier411 claim on this page is sourced from a live fetch of their own site on 8 September 2026, cited below. Pricing changes without notice on both sides -- check the date before treating a figure as current.

Pricing: one has a published flat rate, one is entirely free to start

	Carrier411	CarrierScrub
Published price	$99/mo, no contracts (their site, 8 Sep 2026)	Free single lookup, no account
Free trial / free tier	30-day free trial	The single-carrier lookup is free permanently, not a trial
Account required to use it at all	Yes -- and several business types are blocked from creating one	No account for the free single lookup
Signed-in plans	-	$0/mo (Pay-as-you-go) / $79/mo (Small Brokerage) / $249/mo, includes API access (Agency)
Batch upload	Not found on their public site	CSV/XLSX, up to 500 rows per upload

What each actually checks

Carrier411 checks broadly: operating authority, insurance, FMCSA safety ratings, BASIC percentile scores, inspections, violations, crashes, out-of-service orders, and census data, plus its own FreightGuard fraud-report archive. That's real breadth built over 20+ years.

CarrierScrub checks two things today, both real and both sourced straight from FMCSA's own operating-authority and insurance filings: is the authority active, and is insurance on file at or above the required amount, plus a same-phone-number registration-history check the plan doc calls the sharpest signal it has found (a new USDOT number registering days after a revocation at the same phone). Everything else -- safety rating, OOS, crashes, BASICs -- is marked PENDING on every result rather than shown as a clean pass. See the full verdict rules for the exact thresholds.

What CarrierScrub doesn't have yet

FMCSA safety rating, out-of-service orders, crash history and BASIC percentiles -- Carrier411 has all four; CarrierScrub shows these as PENDING rather than a guessed GO.
A self-reported fraud-report database (Carrier411's FreightGuard, 200,000+ reports as of their own count) -- useful, but also exactly the kind of self-reported system reviewers say has been used to file false reports. CarrierScrub has no equivalent; every reason code it shows traces to a specific FMCSA filing and date instead.
20+ years of historical carrier data. CarrierScrub's data starts from its own nightly ingest, not a multi-year archive.

Who each is actually built for

This isn't a knock on Carrier411's coverage -- it's a description of two different jobs. Carrier411 is a paid, gated platform built for brokerages that want the full FMCSA history and a fraud-report archive, and are fine with a sales-eligibility screen and a monthly fee. CarrierScrub is built for the specific moment before you tender a load: type a number, get a dated GO/CAUTION/STOP with the reasons, for free, in seconds, no account, no trial clock running.

Questions

Is CarrierScrub a free Carrier411 alternative?

For a single carrier's authority and insurance status, yes: CarrierScrub's lookup is free with no account and no trial. It is not a full alternative to Carrier411's broader platform yet -- see "What CarrierScrub doesn't have yet" below.

How much does Carrier411 cost?

Carrier411's own site states $99 per month, no contracts, with a 30-day free trial, as of 8 September 2026. That's the one published rate; the site does not break out separate tiers.

Can carriers or dispatchers use Carrier411?

No. Carrier411's own terms state it is not a service for trucking companies, and explicitly blocks account creation for trucking companies, dispatch services, attorneys and law firms, business consultants, authority services, compliance services, staffing agencies and outsourcing services. CarrierScrub's free lookup has no such restriction -- anyone can run it, including a carrier checking its own record.

Is Carrier411 accurate?

Reviews on file (Trustpilot, as of this writing) include complaints about data lagging FMCSA's own record, carriers flagged incorrectly, and billing disputes. That's what reviewers report, not a finding of ours -- CarrierScrub doesn't audit other vendors' data. Every CarrierScrub result links back to the underlying FMCSA source so you can check it yourself.

Does CarrierScrub do everything Carrier411 does?

No, and it isn't trying to yet. Carrier411 has 20+ years of FMCSA safety, BASIC, inspection and crash data plus a self-reported fraud-report database (FreightGuard). CarrierScrub today checks operating authority and insurance only, with those other sections explicitly marked pending rather than guessed. See the full breakdown above.