California personalized & vanity plates
What California lets you spell on a plate, and how to check availability yourself.
Plate Gator can't check California availability automatically
California's personalized plate checker is gated by Google reCAPTCHA. Plate Gator does not use CAPTCHA solvers, so this state must be checked by hand.
So the only way to know for sure is to ask California directly — the preview above still works, but Plate Gator will not run a live check for California.
California plate format rules
- Length
- 2–6 characters.
- Allowed characters
- Letters A–Z and numbers 0–9 only.
Standard personalized passenger plates are 2 to 6 characters (motorcycle 2 to 5); Environmental and 1960s Legacy plates extend to 7. 1/I, 0/O and Q may not be used interchangeably, and anything conflicting with a currently issued series is refused. The Kids plate variant permits one heart, star, hand or plus-sign symbol, which is not a typeable character.