ID documents prove who you are. A driving licence says you can drive. A passport says you can travel. They're also used for age checks (buying alcohol, getting into clubs) and KYC verification by banks and online services.

Because they matter so much, governments spend enormous amounts of money making them hard to copy. Every modern ID card is packed with security features specifically designed to make counterfeiting impractical.

So how do you actually tell a real UK driving licence from a fake? We've broken it down into the key differences below.

Difference 1: Card Material — Polycarbonate vs PVC

Genuine Document

UK Driving Licences are produced on polycarbonate — a rigid yet slightly flexible material that accepts both full-colour printing and laser engraving. Cards issued before 2006 used Teslin, a more pliable substrate.

Fake Document

Polycarbonate card stock is difficult for counterfeiters to source. PVC is widely available and compatible with all consumer-grade card printers, making it the default choice for fakes.

How to tell the difference:

A polycarbonate card is stiff, lies completely flat, and produces a distinctive metallic or hollow sound when dropped onto a hard surface. Laser-engraved text gives the surface a tactile quality — ridges, raised lettering and numbering you can feel with a fingernail.

PVC cards printed via retransfer tend to have a slight bow. They are noticeably more flexible than a genuine polycarbonate licence.

Difference 2: Detail & Colour Reproduction

Genuine Document

Genuine UK Driving Licences begin as pre-printed blank templates produced by lithographic printing — a high-precision process that renders extremely fine detail. All static elements (those identical across every card) are lithographically printed to an exacting standard. The blue-to-pink colour gradient is deliberately chosen: the human eye detects variance in this range easily, yet it is very hard for counterfeiters to match.

The licence artwork includes microtext invisible without magnification, complex guilloche patterns, and other established anti-counterfeit design elements.

Fake Document

Most counterfeiters lack the equipment and capital to produce pre-printed template blanks. Instead, the entire card image — including the photo and personal details — is printed in a single pass on a desktop card printer.

Even the most expensive desktop card printers (up to £15,000) cannot match the colour depth and fine detail of the original lithographic process.

How to tell the difference:

Place any counterfeit UK driving licence alongside a genuine one and the gap in colour accuracy and detail is immediately visible.

Gradients appear banded or muddy. Text lacks crispness, and colours bleed into surrounding areas of the background design.

Difference 3: Security Features

Genuine Document

UK driving licences are developed by specialist identity-document producers who incorporate layers of overt and covert security features specifically to make faithful replication impossible.

The following features are either prohibitively difficult or prohibitively expensive to reproduce — even for well-funded counterfeiters.

Feature Real Document Fake Document

Laser Engraving

Personal details — name, address, credentials — are etched into the card surface by a high-precision laser.		 Text is engraved in a crisp, deep-black proprietary typeface with distinctive custom letterforms (A, E, S, etc.).

Certain elements such as the cardholder surname appear as physically raised text.

 Text is flat-printed in a standard near-black typeface.

Some counterfeiters attempt laser engraving with a desktop fibre laser, but inaccurate calibration and unsuitable card material mean the "raised" text can often be scratched away.

Optically Variable Image

Selected elements are printed with colour-shifting ink.		 The steering-wheel icon and other small elements use a proprietary ink that shifts colour when the card is tilted toward a light source. Desktop printers cannot reproduce this effect. Some counterfeiters use off-the-shelf colour-shifting inks on pre-printed templates, but the result is visibly different from the genuine article.

Hologram Overlay

A transparent holographic layer applied after personalisation.		 Highly detailed holographic elements — steering wheel, speedometer, road imagery — animate and shift as the card is tilted. Counterfeiters cannot replicate this accurately. They rely on adhesive holographic stickers applied by hand, which are immediately distinguishable under inspection.

Ultraviolet Elements

A detailed road-and-crest image printed in multicolour UV inks, visible only under ultraviolet light.		 UV elements are rendered in multiple colours and are consistently positioned across the pre-printed template blank. Difficult but not impossible to replicate if the counterfeiter uses a pre-printed template blank with UV-reactive inks.

How to tell the difference:

Virtually every counterfeit UK driving licence is detectable on sight when placed next to a genuine card. Fakes differ in appearance, texture, sound and even weight.

If you have any doubt about a driving licence presented to you, examine the card closely and compare it directly against a known genuine example.

Further Reading & Videos

25 simple ways to check whether an ID is real or fake (video)

A practical walkthrough of the most reliable visual and tactile tests for spotting counterfeits.

Microprint comparison (video)

Demonstrates how to identify fake IDs by examining and comparing the microprint quality on the card surface.