New Zealand
New Zealand runs a single national plate scheme — black characters on white, issued in sequence to every vehicle in the country — which makes it one of the cleaner ANPR markets anywhere. The catch is everything around the standard plate: personalised plates of up to six characters in almost any combination, distinct trailer and motorcycle formats, and older black plates still carried by classic cars.
A parking building in Auckland will mostly see standard plates, but the misreads that break automation come from the exceptions — a personalised plate that spells a word, a trailer plate on a boat trailer, a grimy plate in winter light. Our models handle the standard sequence and the exceptions alike, with an honest confidence score on every read — 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 New Zealand 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 NZ plates are issued nationally in sequential series of letters and digits, currently six characters long. Personalised plates can be nearly any combination up to six characters, while trailers and motorcycles carry their own shorter formats.
Because there is no regional coding to extract, the value is in clean, reliable reads: the API returns the characters exactly as printed, distinguishes plate formats where they can be inferred, and reports confidence per read so your gate logic knows when to ask a human.
01
Black-on-white national series, issued in sequence.
02
Custom combinations up to six characters, read as printed.
03
Smaller motorcycle plates with their own format.
04
Trailer series seen on boat, utility and caravan trailers.
05
Silver-on-black plates still carried by older vehicles.
06
Trade plates used by dealers and workshops.
API response
Responses include the plate exactly as printed, a per-read confidence score, and optional vehicle details — brand, model, body type and colour — from the same image.
POST /v1/detect
{
"success": true,
"data": {
"plates": [
{
"text": "KGF823",
"confidence": 0.98,
"country": "NZ",
"bounding_box": {
"x": 394, "y": 408,
"width": 160, "height": 60
}
}
],
"car": {
"brand": "Toyota",
"model": "Corolla",
"body_type": "hatchback",
"color": {
"name": "blue",
"hex": "#1F3A93"
}
}
},
"processing_time_ms": 139
}Use cases
An API key in minutes and pay-as-you-go pricing — sized for single-site operators as much as national chains.
Ticketless entry and pay-by-plate validation for parking buildings and surface lots.
Automatic access for residents and registered visitors.
Recognise members on arrival and trigger the right wash programme automatically.
Automate depot check-in, rental returns and yard tracking with existing cameras.
Flag known drive-off plates as vehicles arrive at the forecourt.
Get an API key, send a photo, and receive the plate 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