China License Plate Lookup
The database ships inside the plugin; queries never leave your device
Enter a keyword and press search. Everything runs locally; nothing is uploaded
How to Use
📖 Tool Introduction
Look up where a Chinese vehicle plate was issued, across 31 provincial abbreviations and 394 city letter codes.
The first character of a plate is the province abbreviation and the letter right after it is the city code. A Guangdong plate beginning with the abbreviation for Guangdong and the letter B belongs to Shenzhen, while the same pattern with the Beijing abbreviation and the letter A means the city proper. That pattern holds nationwide, so knowing the abbreviation and letter is usually enough to place a vehicle.
A full plate works too: the tool pulls out the abbreviation and the letter and ignores whatever digits follow. Entering just an abbreviation lists every city code that province issues, which is handy when you are trying to match a letter you cannot place. Codes are shown as the letter alone, so scanning the list takes a moment rather than a lookup.
What you get back is where the plate was registered, not where the car is now. Vehicles travel and can be re-registered elsewhere, so treat the result as a hint rather than a location.
New energy, police, military and trailer plates each follow their own rules, and the tool flags those cases. The data ships inside the plugin, so nothing is uploaded and no query leaves your device. Because the whole table is local, a lookup returns instantly and works with the network switched off entirely, which is useful at a checkpoint or in a basement car park with no signal.
Province abbreviations are worth learning for their own sake. They are single characters taken from the province name or its history, and they turn up on road signs, freight documents and parking apps. Once you know the abbreviation you can tell roughly where a vehicle was registered from across a street, which is why the tool lists every city code for a province when you enter the abbreviation alone.
✨ Key Features
- All 31 provincial abbreviations and 394 city letter codes
- Accepts a full plate: the abbreviation and letter are extracted and the remaining digits ignored
- Entering just a province lists every city code it issues
- Results give both the full province name and the city
- New energy, police, military and trailer plates are called out separately
- Data lives locally: no network, no upload, your input stays private
🚀 How to Use
- Type a plate on the left: a full plate with digits, or just the abbreviation and letter
- Or type only a province abbreviation to list every city code it issues
- Press search, or hit Enter
- The result shows the full province and city; a letter that is not found may simply be unused or retired
- Copy result puts the registration details on your clipboard
⚠️ Things to Note
- Data source: Compiled from published plate issuing rules: 31 provincial abbreviations and 394 city letter codes
- Registration, not location: The result is where the plate was registered. Vehicles travel and can be re-registered elsewhere, so treat it as a hint, never as a position
- Special plates: New energy plates carry one extra digit, and police, military, trailer and cross-border plates follow their own rules rather than the civilian abbreviation plus letter pattern
- Codes shift: Cities under pressure add extra letters, and retired codes follow boundary changes, so an occasional entry may lag the current situation
- Privacy: The data ships inside the plugin and everything runs locally. The plate you type is never sent anywhere