License plate readers, state by state

Each state row links to a page breaking that state’s cameras down city by city. A city receives its own page once volunteers have documented at least ten cameras inside its Census-defined limits; below that threshold, a count says more about mapping activity than about surveillance.

A state appears in the table only once at least one reader has been documented inside it, so a state with none has no row at all. Alaska is the only one in that position today — nobody has mapped an ALPR there yet, which records the state of the map rather than the state of the roads. The search covers the whole country, territories included, so an empty state means nothing has been reported there, not that we stopped looking.

Because every figure is volunteer field documentation — gathered as described in the methodology — counts change with every six-hour refresh as contributors add, correct, and remove cameras, and an undercount is always more likely than an overcount. For the legal context behind the numbers — which states cap retention, require warrants, or restrict sharing — see our state-by-state guide to license plate reader laws.

The same cameras are also sliced other ways: by who makes them, by who operates them, and in bulk on the download page. If you are new to the technology, Learn explains how these systems work and what the law says about them.