Should you hide your license plate when selling a car?
What a visible plate gives away on a car listing, when it matters, and how to blur it in under a minute before you post on Marketplace or Autotrader.
What a visible plate gives away
A license plate is the one piece of text in a car photo that points at a real record. In most countries anyone can look up a plate's make, model, year, colour and MOT or inspection history for free, and with a little more effort its registered area. On a listing that already shows your street, your driveway and the time of day you are home, the plate completes the picture.
It also lets the photo be reused. Scammers copy listings wholesale and re-post them with a lower price; a plate that matches the real car makes the fake convincing. Blurring the plate costs nothing and removes the one detail a copied listing cannot fake.
When it matters, and when it doesn't
Private listings on Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, eBay, Craigslist and Autotrader: blur it. Buyers do not need the plate to judge the car, and serious ones will see it at the viewing. Auction sites that verify the vehicle by plate are the exception: follow their rules.
Dealers usually blur plates for a different reason: consistency and privacy of the previous owner, since a trade-in's plate still belongs to someone's history. Either way the number plate adds nothing to the sale.
The one-minute fix
Open the editor, drop in every photo of the car, and the license plate in each is found and blurred automatically. Check the preview, download the set as single files or one ZIP, and upload those to the listing instead of the originals. The exports are full resolution, with the camera's location data removed.
If a photo shows the plate at a sharp angle or half hidden behind a bumper, draw a region over it by hand; it is blurred the same way. A pixelated style or a solid block works too if you prefer the look.
Blur, don't crop
Cropping the plate out usually means cropping the bumper, the lights or the stance out with it, and buyers notice a photo that hides the corners. A blurred plate keeps the whole car in frame and reads as a normal, careful listing.
Keep the originals for yourself: insurance, the logbook handover and the buyer at the viewing all want the real car, plate included.
Next: Blur a license plate on your phone (iPhone and Android)