Vietnam Licence Plates API
Read a Vietnamese licence plate: province before and after the 2025 merger, car or motorbike, special series (LD, KT, NG…) and plate colours.
The licence plate API reads Vietnamese plates such as 30A-123.45, 29-B1 123.45, 51LD-12345 or 80-011-NG-01. It returns the normalised plate, the local code with the province it was issued in (one of the 63 provinces before July 2025) and the province it belongs to now (one of the 34), the vehicle type (car or motorbike, under 50cc for two-letter motorbike series), the 4- or 5-digit format and the meaning of special series: LD, DA, KT, CD, RM, HC, MĐ, T and the foreign series NG, QT, CV, NN.
After the merger every old code was kept (Circular 51/2025/TT-BCA): a 34 plate (Hải Dương) now belongs to Hải Phòng and 61 (Bình Dương) and 72 (Bà Rịa – Vũng Tàu) to Ho Chi Minh City; nobody has to change plates. province= does the reverse and lists all the codes of a province, old or new, and list=true returns the whole table.
A plate number alone does not say whether the plate is white, yellow or blue, so the response lists the possible colours for that series. Military plates (two letters first, red) are recognised but their unit codes are not decoded. The API only reads the format; it does not look up owners or registrations.
Parameters
| Name | In | Type | Required | Default | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plate | query|path | string | yes | Plate number, e.g. 30A-123.45; or /v1/vn-plate/{plate}. | |
province | query | string | no | Reverse lookup: the codes of a province (old or new name). | |
list | query | boolean | no | true: the whole code table. |
Example
curl "https://apibox.io.vn/v1/vn-plate?plate=61A-555.55" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"const res = await fetch('https://apibox.io.vn/v1/vn-plate?plate=61A-555.55', {
method: 'GET',
headers: {
Authorization: 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY',
},
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);import requests
res = requests.get(
"https://apibox.io.vn/v1/vn-plate?plate=61A-555.55",
headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"},
timeout=30,
)
print(res.json())<?php
$ch = curl_init('https://apibox.io.vn/v1/vn-plate?plate=61A-555.55');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => ['Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'],
]);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
print_r(json_decode($response, true));Response
{
"input": "61A-555.55",
"valid": true,
"kind": "civil",
"formatted": "61A-555.55",
"local_code": "61",
"series": "A",
"number": "55555",
"vehicle": "car",
"format": "5-digit (since 2010)",
"series_meaning": null,
"possible_colors": [
"nền trắng, chữ đen: cá nhân, doanh nghiệp, tổ chức trong nước",
"nền xanh, chữ trắng: cơ quan Đảng, Nhà nước, đơn vị sự nghiệp công lập, lực lượng công an",
"nền vàng, chữ đen: xe kinh doanh vận tải"
],
"region": {
"code": "61",
"old_province": "Bình Dương",
"new_province": "Hồ Chí Minh",
"new_province_code": "79",
"merged": true
}
}Use cases
- Parking, toll and fleet apps: validate and normalise plates
- Show the province of a plate in car marketplaces
- Group vehicles by the new provinces
- Check plate numbers typed in forms
FAQ
Did plate codes change after the 2025 province merger?
No. All codes were kept and assigned to the merged provinces (Circular 51/2025/TT-BCA from 1/7/2025). Existing plates remain valid.
Can I find the owner of a plate?
No. This API only interprets the plate format; owner data is not public.
Why is a plate “ambiguous”?
Written without separators, 29B11234 can be a motorbike (B1 + 1234) or a car (B + 11234). Write 29-B1 1234 or 29B-112.34 to be explicit.
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