Self-Serve License Plate Recognition API

One API call turns a vehicle photo into structured data — plate number, car brand, model, and color. Get a key, top up a wallet, and ship. No sales calls, no seat licenses, no minimum contracts.

97%+ Read Accuracy < 200ms Response

150 free API calls per month. No credit card required.

Built for Real-World Plates, Not Lab Conditions

Generic ANPR models are trained on clean, front-on plate crops. Then they meet a stacked-character truck plate behind a tinted cover at dusk — and guess.

Why generic ANPR fails

  • 50 US state designs plus DC and territories — each with its own fonts, colors, and graphic backgrounds
  • Stacked characters on truck, trailer, and motorcycle plates that single-line OCR turns into garbage
  • Vanity plates that break every format assumption a template-based reader relies on
  • Plate frames, covers, and dealer surrounds that clip or distort the characters that matter
  • Rain, snow, glare, night shots, and motion blur — the conditions your cameras actually see

How we built for it

  • Models trained on real traffic imagery across US, Canadian, UK, Australian, New Zealand, and Kazakhstani plates
  • Stacked and multi-line character layouts read natively — not bolted on as post-processing
  • Vanity and personalized plates read exactly as printed, with a calibrated confidence score on every read
  • Vehicle cross-check built in — brand, model, and color come from the same request, so plate swaps stand out
  • When the model is not sure, it says so: confidence gates return null instead of a guess

How It Works

Three steps from photo to structured data — no ML expertise required on your side.

01

Upload an Image

POST a photo to the detect endpoint — from a camera snapshot, a phone, or frames pulled off your existing CCTV.

02

AI Processing

A pipeline of specialized models runs detection, classification, and OCR — plates localized and read, the vehicle identified.

03

JSON Results

Plate text, confidence scores, car brand, model, body type, and color — back in under 200 milliseconds.

Capabilities

Everything the system extracts from a single vehicle photograph — delivered as clean JSON.

Plate Detection & OCR

Plates are localized, cropped, and read in a single pass — day or night, at an angle, in motion.

  • Real-time detection and OCR
  • Stacked characters and vanity plates
  • US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, Kazakhstan
  • Confidence score per read

Vehicle Identification

Beyond the plate — the same request classifies the vehicle itself for richer matching and audit trails.

  • Brand recognition — 181 brands
  • Model recognition — 2,003 models
  • Body type, color, and view angle
  • Honest nulls when confidence is low

Deployment & API

A REST API you can call from anything — or the full system deployed on your own infrastructure.

  • REST API, sub-200ms response
  • Cloud or on-premise (Docker)
  • Plate-only mode for ~2.5x faster reads
  • Works with your existing cameras

Under the Hood

A Four-Stage ML Pipeline, One API Call

Every image passes through a chain of specialized models. Vehicles are detected first, plates are localized and read via OCR, and the vehicle itself is classified by brand, model, and color — all within a single request.

< 200ms

Inference per image

97%+

Plate read accuracy

2,003

Car models recognized

Try the Live Demo →

Vehicle Detection

Detection

Localize all vehicles in frame using real-time object detection.

License Plate Localization

Detection

Crop and align the plate region from each detected vehicle.

Plate OCR

Recognition

Read characters from the plate image — including stacked and vanity layouts.

Car Brand & Model Classification

Classification

Identify make, model, body type, and color from the vehicle photograph.

PyTorchYOLOv8PaddleOCROpenCVFastAPIDockerONNX

Pay-As-You-Go Pricing

No subscriptions, no seat licenses. Top up a wallet and pay per recognition — the rate drops as your volume grows.

Every account starts with 150 free API calls per month. No credit card required.

See full pricing details →

Pro

$0.02per request

Up to 10,000 plates / month

$100 minimum top-up

  • 60 requests / min
  • Standard API access
  • Email support
Most popular

Growth

$0.015per request

10,000 – 50,000 plates / month

$150 minimum top-up

  • 100 requests / min
  • Webhooks
  • Priority email support

Professional

$0.01per request

50,000 – 200,000 plates / month

$500 minimum top-up

  • 200 requests / min
  • 99.9% uptime SLA
  • Dedicated support

Enterprise

from $0.007per request

200,000+ plates / month

Custom terms

  • Custom rate limits
  • On-premise deployment
  • Custom SLA & volume discounts

Who It Runs For

Anywhere a vehicle passes a camera and a decision follows — gate access, billing, enforcement, or audit. The same API powers all of them.

Parking Operators & Lot Owners
HOAs & Gated Communities
Valet & Car Wash Apps
Fleet & Repossession Software
Property Management
Parking Startups

Developer-First API

One curl command to your first plate read. Full reference docs and camera integration guides when you go deeper.

Quick start
# Read a plate with one request
curl -X POST https://api.example.com/v1/detect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -F "[email protected]"

# Response
{
  "success": true,
  "plates_found": 1,
  "plates": [
    {
      "text": "7TKR952",
      "confidence": 0.98,
      "position": { "x1": 412, "y1": 690, "x2": 578, "y2": 734 }
    }
  ],
  "car": {
    "brand": "Toyota",
    "model": "Camry",
    "body_type": "sedan",
    "color": { "name": "white", "hex": "#F2F3F5" }
  },
  "response_time_ms": 142
}

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know before your first API call.

Yes. We offer fully offline, on-premise deployment of the recognition models — Docker containers, air-gapped environments, and dedicated GPU hardware are all supported. It is available on Enterprise terms; contact us and we will scope your setup.

Still have questions? Contact us

See It Read Your Plates

Get an API key and run your first recognition in minutes — or send us sample images from your cameras and we will share the results.

150 free API calls per month. No credit card required.

Contact

Tell Us About Your Project

Cameras, volumes, countries, timeline — send us a note and we will reply within one business day.