License plate recognition: Datasets & Models
Automatically locate vehicle license plates in images or video and read the alphanumeric characters using OCR. Works across parking, tolling, and access-control scenarios in the automotive space.
License plate recognition
This workflow performs license plate detection on images or video frames, locating the plate region on each vehicle before applying OCR to transcribe the alphanumeric characters into machine-readable text. It accepts still images or video streams from cameras used in parking, tolling, and access-control setups, and outputs both the plate bounding box and the read plate number.
Try it out
Powered by general detection model
Run on custom image
Drop an image here or click to upload
Why automate license plate recognition
Manually reading and keying in plate numbers from camera footage is slow, error-prone, and impossible to scale across busy lots, toll lanes, or gated facilities. Automating license plate recognition with computer vision lets you match vehicles to reservations, trigger gate access, log entries and exits, and flag watchlist vehicles in real time without a human in the loop. It also produces a consistent, timestamped audit trail that manual logging can't match. For automotive and mobility operators, that means fewer disputes, faster throughput, and reliable enforcement.
Key benefits
You get consistent, searchable plate data from the cameras you already have, whether at parking entrances, weighbridges, or drive-through lanes. The detection-plus-OCR pipeline scales from a single gate to hundreds of camera feeds, and results integrate cleanly with access control, billing, and inventory systems via structured output. Because the model is retrainable on your own footage, accuracy improves for your specific plate formats, regions, and camera placements.
How to use it
- Upload an image: Drop any photo into the widget above to try license plate recognition for free, right on this page.
- Preview instant results: The model detects license plate, car, truck, motorcycle, bus within seconds and returns an annotated image with structured predictions, so you can immediately see how well it works. Adjust the detection classes and re-run until the results fit your scenario.
- Like what you see?: With a free Roboflow account, you can deploy this workflow with the Serverless Cloud API, customize it in your workspace, or train OCR / document model on your own images for production accuracy.
- Get started for free: No code or training data required to begin: upload, review the results, and make it part of your stack in a single click.
Recommended model for license plate recognition
When you're ready to build a production model for license plate recognition, we recommend training OCR / document model. Unlike the ready-to-use model in the demo above, you fine-tune it on your own labeled images for higher accuracy, then deploy to a Serverless Cloud API endpoint.
Not sure where to start?
Describe your License Plate Recognition project to Roboflow Agent.