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OCR API Reference

Welcome to the Plate Recognizer OCR API! Our API allows you to seamlessly extract text identifiers from images with high accuracy and efficiency. It supports multiple recognition types, including VIN, trailer identification numbers, odometers, shipping container information, and boat registration numbers.

Important: Processing Time

The OCR API uses advanced AI models for text extraction. Processing times are typically 20–30 seconds per image. Please account for this when designing your integration, especially for real-time or high-throughput use cases.

Interactive API Reference

Browse every OCR endpoint, request parameter, and response schema in our interactive API Reference. It is generated directly from the API, so it always reflects the current behavior.

OCR Cloud API​

OCR Cloud extracts text identifiers (VIN, trailer ID, odometer, shipping container, and boat registration number) from images through our hosted API. Every OCR endpoint is documented in the interactive API reference, which is generated directly from the API and always up to date. It covers:

  • Authentication and API tokens
  • Extracting text from an image, with all request parameters and the supported type values
  • Response schema and attributes
  • Usage statistics
  • Error codes

Open the interactive API reference to explore requests and responses, or get your API token from your OCR dashboard.

Webhooks​

OCR supports webhooks, allowing you to receive an HTTP POST request to a target URL of your choosing whenever an image is processed.

To manage your webhooks or add a new webhook target, head to the OCR webhooks page, where you'll find the webhook configuration options.

note
  • The Target URL should return a valid HTTP status code 200. If the Target URL consistently returns an error code, the webhook will be deactivated and an email will be sent to the account owner.
  • To quickly test out this feature, you can use webhook.site. It generates a unique target URL and displays all the requests made to that URL.

Payload​

The payload is a JSON object sent to the target URL containing the OCR results. Here is an example:

{
  "hook": {
    "target": "https://your-webhook-url.com/endpoint",
    "id": 123
  },
  "data": {
    "processing_time": 128.758,
    "results": [
      {
        "identifier": {
          "type": "text",
          "props": {
            "code": [
              {
                "value": "12345"
              }
            ],
            "orientation": [
              {
                "value": "horizontal"
              }
            ],
            "confidence": 0.8
          }
        }
      }
    ],
    "filename": "image.jpg",
    "version": 1,
    "camera_id": null,
    "timestamp": "2025-03-22T13:26:01.683008Z",
    "file_url": "https://example.com/path-to-uploaded-image.jpg"
  }
}

The payload contains the following fields:

  • hook: Information about the webhook.
    • target: The target URL the webhook was sent to.
    • id: The unique identifier of the webhook.
  • data: The OCR processing results (same format as the response in the interactive API reference).
    • file_url: URL of the uploaded image.