Australia
Australian number plates are issued by each state and territory, and each runs its own scheme: New South Wales’ two-letter, two-digit, two-letter series, Victoria’s ABC-123 lineage, Queensland’s 123-ABC — plus the ACT, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. On top of the standard issues sit large catalogues of personalised and custom-colour plates sold by the state plate businesses.
That means a Sydney car park sees plates in different formats, colours and sizes every minute — including slimline plates made for European bumper recesses. Generic OCR tuned to one format misreads the rest. Our models are trained across every state scheme and the popular personalised styles, return the issuing state with each read, and attach an honest confidence score — 97%+ accuracy at under 200ms.
Live demo
Upload a vehicle photo and watch the API return the plate text, confidence score and vehicle details in real time. Your first 150 calls each month are free — no credit card required.
Upload image
Try it with Australian plates
Drag and drop a vehicle photo here, or browse files
JPEG, PNG, or WebP — max 10MB, min 640×480
API response
// Upload an image to see the live response.
Coverage
Standard series differ in pattern and colour from state to state, and every jurisdiction also sells personalised ranges — custom text, colour combinations, and slimline sizes designed for imported vehicles with narrow plate recesses. Heavy vehicles, trailers and caravans carry their own formats again.
The API reads all of them as printed — standard, slimline, personalised and heavy-vehicle formats — classifies the issuing state or territory, and never forces a read into the wrong state’s pattern. Low-quality reads come back with a low confidence score, not a confident mistake.
01
Current series for NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, ACT and NT.
02
Narrow plates fitted to European and imported vehicles.
03
Custom text combinations sold by the state plate businesses.
04
Premium colour-on-colour styles read as printed.
05
Smaller motorcycle plates with condensed spacing.
06
Trailer series in each state’s format.
07
Truck and heavy-vehicle series across jurisdictions.
API response
Responses include the plate exactly as printed, the issuing state or territory, a per-read confidence score, and optional vehicle details from the same image.
POST /v1/detect
{
"success": true,
"data": {
"plates": [
{
"text": "BX 12 CD",
"confidence": 0.97,
"country": "AU",
"state": "NSW",
"bounding_box": {
"x": 402, "y": 410,
"width": 168, "height": 62
}
}
],
"car": {
"brand": "Toyota",
"model": "Hilux",
"body_type": "pickup",
"color": {
"name": "silver",
"hex": "#C4C4C4"
}
}
},
"processing_time_ms": 151
}Use cases
Self-serve API access with pay-as-you-go pricing — no procurement cycle between you and your first read.
Ticketless entry, pay-by-plate validation and overstay management for commercial car parks.
Automatic gates and roller doors for apartment buildings and gated estates.
Recognise members on arrival and start the wash or the ticket before the driver gets out.
Depot gate automation and yard management with plates read from existing cameras.
Identify known drive-off plates the moment a vehicle pulls up to the pump.
Get an API key, send a photo, and receive the plate, state and confidence back in under 200ms — 150 free calls every month.
Also available
No per-country contracts or add-ons — the same endpoint reads plates from every supported market.
Every plate read can include brand, model, body type and color of the vehicle from the same image — explore the Car Recognition API