License Plate Combinations Calculator

About this calculator

This calculator counts how many unique plates a license plate format can produce using the basic combinatorics counting rule: each letter position has 26 possible values and each digit position has 10, so the total is 26^(letters) × 10^(digits). A common US format with 3 letters and 4 digits, for example, yields 26³ × 10⁴ = 175,760,000 possible plates.

DMVs and vehicle registration authorities use this kind of capacity calculation when designing a plate scheme, to make sure a format won't run out of unique combinations before it needs to add a character or switch formats — which is exactly why many regions have moved from all-numeric to mixed alphanumeric plates as their vehicle fleets grew.