UK number plate year identifiers

The rule, which is arithmetic rather than a table

Plates change twice a year, on 1 March and 1 September. You do not need the chart below if you remember two lines:

• Under 50 — the digits are the year, and the plate was issued March to August of it. 24 is March to August 2024.
• Over 50 — subtract 50 for the year, and the plate was issued that September to the following February. 74 is September 2024 to February 2025.

The consequence worth noticing is that a September plate spans a calendar year. A 73 car might have been registered in 2023 or in 2024, and no amount of staring at the plate will tell you which — which is why an identifier names a period here rather than a year.

00, 01 and 50 were never issued: the scheme began in September 2001 with 51.

The full chart

Every identifier from the start of the current format to the one after this half-year, oldest first. These are the same periods the search uses when it turns a date into a filter, so a plate dated here is a plate the filters agree with.

Before September 2001

Two earlier schemes put the age letter somewhere else on the plate, and older marks carry no age at all — four styles in total, which is what the search distinguishes between.

Prefix, August 1983 to July 2001

One letter at the front, and the year runs August to July rather than March to August: P123 ABC was registered between August 1996 and July 1997.

Suffix, 1963 to July 1983

The same idea with the letter at the end: ABC 123R is August 1976 to July 1977.

Dateless

Marks issued before 1963 carry no age information at all. That is most of why they are valuable: a dateless mark can go on a vehicle of any age without declaring it.

Not every private mark is dateless — plenty are ordinary prefix or current-style marks, and those still carry their original age letter or digits. It is only the dateless ones that hide a vehicle's age, and they cannot be used to make a car look newer than it is.

The search knows all four styles apart, so you can filter by plate style as well as by identifier — and a prefix or suffix plate correctly returns "no age information" rather than being silently treated as unmatched. A partial plate in any of these styles is searchable the same way: the wildcards do not care which scheme a mark belongs to.

What the identifier does not tell you

It dates the mark, not the metal. A car built in August and sold in September wears the September plate, and a memory tag tells you no more about the build than the digits do.

A transferred private mark breaks the link entirely. A 2019 car wearing a dateless mark reads as ageless on the plate, and the only honest source for its age is the first-registration date on the record — which is a separate filter here for exactly that reason.

Searching by age

An age identifier is strong enough to search on its own: it pins two characters of the plate, the same as typing ??22???. So every 73 plate on the record is a search, and so is a 73 plate narrowed to one colour.

If what you actually know is a date rather than an identifier — "it was about three years old" — use the first-registration filter instead. It covers every plate style rather than only current ones, and it is what a sentence like Honda Civics registered between 2001 and 2005 is read into.

Common questions

What year is a 73 plate?

September 2023 to February 2024. An identifier over 50 is a September issue: subtract 50 to get the year it starts in, so 73 is the September 2023 half-year and runs into the following February.

How do you work out the year from a number plate?

Take the two digits in the middle of a current-style plate. Under 50, they are the year itself and the plate was issued between March and August of it — 22 is March to August 2022. Over 50, subtract 50 for the year and the plate was issued between that September and the following February — 72 is September 2022 to February 2023.

When do UK number plates change?

Twice a year, on 1 March and 1 September. The March identifier is the last two digits of the year and the September one is that number plus 50, which is why a September plate spans a calendar year boundary and a March plate does not.

What did number plates look like before 2001?

From 1983 to 2001 the age letter came first — a P prefix means August 1996 to July 1997. From 1963 to 1983 it came last, so a trailing R means August 1976 to July 1977. Before that, and on dateless marks, there is no age information on the plate at all.

Does the age identifier tell you when the car was built?

No — it tells you when the mark was issued, which is normally close to when the vehicle was first registered. A car built in one half-year and sold in the next carries the later plate. And once a private mark has been transferred onto a vehicle, the plate says nothing reliable about that vehicle's age at all.

Searches to start from

• Every 73 plate on the record
• Blue cars on a 22 plate
• The same half-year typed as a pattern — ??22???
• The first identifier ever issued — 51
• Honda Civics registered between 2001 and 2005
• Red Fords registered in London after 2020