11 registration series, sourced from SENATRAN (Secretaria Nacional de Trânsito), órgão máximo executivo de trânsito da União, Ministério dos Transportes; normative authority CONTRAN (Conselho Nacional de Trânsito).
Brazil runs two plate systems side by side. Since 2018 new vehicles get the white Mercosur plate — a black serial in the pattern LLL9L99 with no separator at all, under a blue band carrying BRASIL and the national flag. Older vehicles still wear the grey Placa Nacional Única introduced in 1990 — three letters, four digits, and a riveted strip naming the state and municipality — which stays legal until the vehicle is scrapped.
Type any Brazil registration — valid plates render below, on their real designs.
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Everything on this page — formats, validity, colours, the renders themselves — is one request away.
GET /v1/plates/br/match?plate=…
GET /v1/plates/br/match?plate=BRA2E19
{ "plate": "BRA2E19",
"valid": true, "exact": true,
"matches": [{ "id": "br-mercosul-standard-2018",
"render_url": "…svg?serial=BRA2E19" }] }
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Converting an old grey plate to the Mercosur format replaces its second digit with a letter, A through J (0→A … 9→J) — so ABC1234 becomes ABC1C34. The substitution is reversible: strip the letter back to a digit and you have the vehicle's original registration.
Resolução CONTRAN nº 741/2018, Anexo III
For nine months in 2018 the new Mercosur plate carried the state's flag and arms and the municipality's name at its right edge — killed by a single line in a November 2018 resolution. A Mercosur plate with a state flag on it is a 2018 artefact and nothing else.
Resolução CONTRAN nº 729/2018; revoked by nº 748/2018 art. 4
The current serial is issued at random nationwide — it names no state, no city, no date. The grey plate it replaced named the state and municipality in words, on a separate riveted strip.
Resolução CONTRAN nº 969/2022, Anexo I 1.2
the default series issued to private road vehicles
The three letters were the state, by allocation: each DETRAN drew on a reserved block — Paraná opened the system with AAA to BEZ, São Paulo held BFA to GKI, Rio de Janeiro KMF to LVE — so the letters told you where a car was first registered.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
Since December 2018 the seven characters say nothing at all: allocation is national and the plate shows no geography — a deliberate break after three decades of state-coded letters. The one fixed rule of the grammar: the last character must be a numeral.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
Not a new allocation but an old one in disguise: every converted plate carries a letter A–J at the fifth position, the direct encoding of the digit it replaced on the vehicle's original grey plate.
The fifth character is the old plate's second digit in disguise — 0 became A, 1 B, through 9 J — so ABC-1234 returned as ABC1C34, its original number still readable underneath. The reverse doesn't hold: newly issued plates may carry A–J too.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
Issued only between March and November 2018, mostly in Rio de Janeiro — the only Brazilian plate since 1990 to show geography again: a state flag, a coat of arms, and the municipality's name at the right edge.
The letters were already meaningless — the geography moved into print: state flag, coat of arms and the municipality's name at the plate's edge, for just nine months of 2018. It is the last Brazilian plate that says where it is from.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
reduced-size series for motorcycles where format/design differs
Motorcycles decoded exactly like cars: the three letters came from the registering state's reserved block, so a bike's first home state was readable at a glance.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
Bigger plate, same cipher: the letters still come from the registering state's allocated block, unchanged from the smaller pre-2012 motorcycle plate.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
Same national, non-geographic pool as the car plate: no character reveals the state, and one near-square plate serves motorcycles, mopeds, trikes and quadricycles alike — Brazil gives mopeds no grammar of their own.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
The car conversion cipher on two wheels: the fifth character encodes the old plate's second digit, A for 0 through J for 9 — the original PNU number is still there if you count.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
vintage/oldtimer regimes (German H, ES historico)
Brazil's black plate: white characters and no Mercosur emblem — the trade-off a collector car makes to keep its original look.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
civil government fleets with distinct series
Same letters, different messenger: on the white official plate the tarjeta strip did the decoding — BRASIL for a federal vehicle, the state's name for state fleets, state initials plus municipality for town halls.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
diplomatic corps (embassy) issuance, usually its own decode
Blue ground, and the corps spelled out on the tarjeta: CMD for a head of mission, CD diplomatic, CC consular, OI international organisations, ADM administrative staff, CI cooperation experts. The Mercosur plate abolished the tarjeta — and with it, this entire read.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.