Cameras / California / San Francisco
License plate readers in San Francisco, CA
Volunteers have documented 467 automated license plate readers inside San Francisco. That is the 4th-largest total among the 329 California cities indexed here, and 2.4% of the statewide total. At 10.0 readers per square mile, San Francisco sits in the most densely covered 5% of the 2,231 US cities indexed nationally. Nearly all of them — 94% — are Flock Safety units. Volunteers also recorded non-government operators here, including St Francis Wood HOA. Where a mount was recorded, volunteers logged 326 on poles and 9 on street lamps.
Updated August 14, 2026.
467
readers documented
10.0
per square mile
4th
of 329 indexed California cities
2.4%
of California’s documented total
Dot colors follow the manufacturer legend below. Boundary: U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 Cartographic Boundary Files. Locations: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Who makes them
- Flock Safety441 · 94%
- Motorola Solutions4 · 1%
- Neology2 · 0%
- Other vendors5 · 1%
- Unknown15 · 3%
What volunteers recorded
- Monitoring public roads
- 436 cameras are tagged as watching public streets or traffic.
- Recorded operators
- San Francisco Police Department (324), Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transport (8), St Francis Wood HOA (5). Who operates these cameras nationally →
- How they’re mounted
- pole (326), street lamp (9), Falcon Mobile Unit (2), wall (1), light (1)
- Coverage area
- 46.7 square miles of land inside city limits.
Nearby
Learn more: What a Flock camera looks like · How ALPRs work · California ALPR law
These locations were documented in the field by OpenStreetMap volunteers and refresh automatically every six hours. They are evidence of where cameras have been seen — not a complete or official inventory, and cameras may have been added or removed since documentation. Corrections happen upstream: edit OpenStreetMap and this page will update. Read more in our methodology.