Total DVLA Number Plates

 

There are usually somewhere between 25 and 35 million number plates for sale on the DVLA Personalised Registrations website which may seem a lot but the fact is there could be an awful lot more.

The DVLA withdraw most of the new issue registrations from sale after the first month. We don't know how or why the survivors are selected but do know the maths to work out how many there should be;-

Current Style Number Plates

23x23x1x1x24x24x24 = 7,312,896 new releases every 6 months since “51” (times 14) = 102,380,544 up to and inc. “08”.

Prefix Style Number Plates

1x9x10x10x23x23x23 = 10,950,300

Plus
1x9x10x23x23x23 = 1,095,030

Plus
1x9x23x23x23 = 109,503
Sub Total = 12154833 on every new release from “A” to “Y” (times 21) = 255,251,493

Total = 357,632,037

There are only 30 about million cars on the road.
Even if you said that, to date, 60 million plates had been used to include lorries, bikes, scrapped vehicles and private number plate purchases etc. the remainder would still be enough to put most punters off searching.
(It would have been even better for Regfinder though)

If you wanted to include the Suffix range then the total = 612,883,530 give or take.