openalpr/openalpr

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

11452 stars · 2502 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

OpenALPR is an open-source Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) library written in C++ that analyzes images and video streams to detect and read license plates. It ships with a command-line utility and bindings for C#, Java, Node.js, Go, and Python, supporting US and European plate formats.

Use cases

• read license plate numbers from images
• detect license plates in video streams
• recognize license plates from security camera footage
• build a parking access control system
• identify vehicle plates for law enforcement hotlists
• extract plate text as JSON from photos

When to choose

• you need self-hosted, offline license plate recognition without subscription fees
• you want a C++ library with bindings for multiple languages
• you need a simple CLI to batch-process plate images
• you only need US or EU plate formats and basic OCR accuracy

When to avoid

• you need recognition for plates outside US/EU regions
• you want vehicle make, model, and color detection, which is only in the commercial Rekor products
• you need actively developed features or modern deep-learning accuracy
• your project cannot comply with the AGPL-3.0 license

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

computer-vision image-processing ocr machine-learning computer-vision image-processing security windows cpp python go jvm dotnet cli license-plate-recognition alpr anpr lpr video-streams vehicle-recognition linux macos nodejs

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="openalpr/openalpr")