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🗺️ ALPR Cameras by US State — A Free Dataset
116,655 licence plate readers, mapped. We queried OpenStreetMap for every ALPR camera in all 50 states and DC, normalised by population, and published the whole thing — CSV, JSON, and the query, so you can check us.
Key findings
We counted 116,655 ALPR cameras tagged in OpenStreetMap across all 51 US jurisdictions on 17 July 2026 — a national rate of 34.3 per 100,000 residents. Raw counts mostly just track population, so the useful number is per-capita, and there the picture changes completely: Georgia leads at 70.4 per 100k — double the national rate, and Flock Safety is headquartered in Atlanta. Kansas is second at 62.8 despite holding 0.9% of the US population — and Kansas accounts for 3 of the 24 documented officer-stalking cases nationally. New York, despite 3,958 cameras, sits at just 19.9 per 100k. At the bottom: Alaska has zero tagged, and Maine, Vermont, Montana and New Hampshire all sit near 4 per 100k. The one caveat that governs everything here: OpenStreetMap is crowdsourced, so these counts measure deployment multiplied by volunteer mapping effort. Every figure should be read as one imperfect measurement, not a census.
DeFlock renders a map of ALPR cameras. Eyes Off Indiana publishes state-level statistics for one state. Nobody was publishing the national breakdown as a citable table — so we pulled it. Everything below is derived from a public OpenStreetMap tag and official Census population estimates. The query is on this page and the raw data is free. Don't trust the numbers; re-run them.
By Ned Walsch · Collected 17 July 2026 · OSM data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
The method — reproduce this in 30 seconds
There is no proprietary data here and no scraping. OpenStreetMap has a public tag for these devices, surveillance:type=ALPR, and Overpass will count them inside any boundary it knows about. Paste this into Overpass Turbo, swap the state name, run it:
[out:json][timeout:90];
area["name"="Georgia"]["admin_level"="4"]["boundary"="administrative"]->.a;
node["surveillance:type"="ALPR"](area.a);
out count;
Change out count to out body to get every camera's coordinates instead of the total. Many nodes also carry operator, direction and manufacturer, so you can filter to one vendor or work out which way a camera faces. That's it — that's the whole dataset, and it's why we're comfortable publishing it: you don't have to believe us.
Read this before you cite anything below
surveillance:type=ALPR tag captures any plate reader a volunteer identifies — police, private, tolling, parking enforcement — whereas most published estimates count law-enforcement deployments specifically. Or OSM may over-count in places, through duplicate nodes or optimistic tagging of devices that aren't plate readers. We can't resolve this from the data, so we're flagging it rather than picking whichever reading flatters the dataset. It's the strongest argument on this page for treating these as one imperfect measurement to be cross-checked, not an authority.The data: all 51 jurisdictions, ranked by saturation
Sorted by cameras per 100,000 residents, because raw counts mostly just rediscover which states have the most people. Bar shading is relative to the highest rate.
| # | State | Cameras (OSM) | Population | Per 100k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | 7,872 | 11,180,878 | 70.4 |
| 2 | Kansas | 1,866 | 2,970,606 | 62.8 |
| 3 | Ohio | 5,961 | 11,883,304 | 50.2 |
| 4 | Illinois | 6,197 | 12,710,158 | 48.8 |
| 5 | Missouri | 2,925 | 6,245,466 | 46.8 |
| 6 | Indiana | 3,203 | 6,924,275 | 46.3 |
| 7 | Texas | 14,257 | 31,290,831 | 45.6 |
| 8 | California | 17,870 | 39,431,263 | 45.3 |
| 9 | Alabama | 2,243 | 5,157,699 | 43.5 |
| 10 | Colorado | 2,394 | 5,957,493 | 40.2 |
| 11 | Tennessee | 2,894 | 7,227,750 | 40.0 |
| 12 | New Mexico | 848 | 2,130,256 | 39.8 |
| 13 | Louisiana | 1,654 | 4,597,740 | 36.0 |
| 14 | Delaware | 375 | 1,051,917 | 35.6 |
| 15 | Kentucky | 1,582 | 4,588,372 | 34.5 |
| 16 | Florida | 7,972 | 23,372,215 | 34.1 |
| 17 | Wisconsin | 2,011 | 5,960,975 | 33.7 |
| 18 | Michigan | 3,377 | 10,140,459 | 33.3 |
| 19 | Virginia | 2,883 | 8,811,195 | 32.7 |
| 20 | Oklahoma | 1,249 | 4,095,393 | 30.5 |
| 21 | Arizona | 2,311 | 7,582,384 | 30.5 |
| 22 | Arkansas | 933 | 3,088,354 | 30.2 |
| 23 | South Carolina | 1,594 | 5,478,831 | 29.1 |
| 24 | North Carolina | 3,124 | 11,046,024 | 28.3 |
| 25 | Utah | 956 | 3,503,613 | 27.3 |
| 26 | Mississippi | 781 | 2,943,045 | 26.5 |
| 27 | Iowa | 820 | 3,241,488 | 25.3 |
| 28 | Rhode Island | 267 | 1,112,308 | 24.0 |
| 29 | Washington | 1,906 | 7,958,180 | 23.9 |
| 30 | Nebraska | 468 | 2,005,465 | 23.3 |
| 31 | Connecticut | 850 | 3,675,069 | 23.1 |
| 32 | Minnesota | 1,339 | 5,793,151 | 23.1 |
| 33 | Nevada | 717 | 3,267,467 | 21.9 |
| 34 | New York | 3,958 | 19,867,248 | 19.9 |
| 35 | Idaho | 331 | 2,001,619 | 16.5 |
| 36 | North Dakota | 126 | 796,568 | 15.8 |
| 37 | Pennsylvania | 2,017 | 13,078,751 | 15.4 |
| 38 | New Jersey | 1,464 | 9,500,851 | 15.4 |
| 39 | Massachusetts | 1,026 | 7,136,171 | 14.4 |
| 40 | South Dakota | 133 | 924,669 | 14.4 |
| 41 | Maryland | 833 | 6,263,220 | 13.3 |
| 42 | District of Columbia | 86 | 702,250 | 12.2 |
| 43 | West Virginia | 202 | 1,769,979 | 11.4 |
| 44 | Oregon | 460 | 4,272,371 | 10.8 |
| 45 | Wyoming | 61 | 587,618 | 10.4 |
| 46 | New Hampshire | 65 | 1,409,032 | 4.6 |
| 47 | Vermont | 28 | 648,493 | 4.3 |
| 48 | Montana | 49 | 1,137,233 | 4.3 |
| 49 | Maine | 58 | 1,405,012 | 4.1 |
| 50 | Hawaii | 59 | 1,446,146 | 4.1 |
| 51 | Alaska | 0 | 740,133 | 0.0 |
| UNITED STATES | 116,655 | 340,110,988 | 34.3 |
What we checked before publishing
A dataset is only as good as its failure modes, so here is what we tested and what it showed. All of it is re-runnable.
| Check | Why it matters | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Is Alaska's zero real? | A zero usually means a broken query, not an empty state. | Real. Alaska's boundary resolves and returns 27 surveillance nodes of other types — there are simply no ALPR tags. The zero is an absence of mapping, not an error. |
| Does tag case cost us cameras? | If some mappers write alpr and we query ALPR, we'd undercount silently. | No. A case-insensitive regex against Georgia returned an identical count to the exact-match query. The tag is used consistently in uppercase. |
| Does the count drift? | If OSM changes hourly, a static number is misleading. | Yes, and materially. Georgia read 7,872 when we pulled it and 7,885 four hours later — thirteen cameras added in an afternoon. This is a living dataset. Cite the date or re-run the query. |
| Do other tags overlap? | If ALPRs are also tagged another way, we'd miss them. | Partially unresolved. Georgia carries 6,820 nodes tagged surveillance:zone=traffic, which covers speed and traffic cameras and may overlap ALPRs in ways we haven't disentangled. We did not merge them — this count is the ALPR tag only. |
What stands out — and what it does and doesn't prove
Georgia, at double the national rate
Georgia tops the per-capita table at 70.4 per 100k, against a national rate of 34.3. It's also where Flock Safety is headquartered. That is a striking coincidence, and it is worth saying plainly that a coincidence is all this dataset can establish. Two ordinary explanations fit equally well: a company sells hardest in its home market, which is unremarkable; or a hometown company generates local publicity, which motivates local volunteers to go mapping. Both produce exactly this number. We can't distinguish them from here — and the second one would mean Georgia is merely the best-mapped state, not the most-surveilled.
Kansas: 0.9% of the population, 12.5% of the stalking cases
Kansas ranks second at 62.8 per 100k. Separately, our catalogue of documented misuse includes three Kansas officers — Victor Heiar (Kechi), Lee Nygaard (Sedgwick) and Kyle Rector (Bonner Springs). Three of twenty-four cases, from a state with under one percent of the country's people.
The bottom of the table
Alaska: zero. Then Hawaii (4.1), Maine (4.1), Montana (4.3), Vermont (4.3), New Hampshire (4.6). Maine is, as far as we can establish, the only state that bans private ALPR use outright — which is tempting to point at, until you notice that every other state down here is rural and none of them has that law. Rurality alone predicts this cluster. The law may contribute; this dataset cannot show it does.
More interesting is New York: 3,958 cameras, seventh by raw count, but only 19.9 per 100k — well below the national rate and barely a quarter of Georgia's. Whatever is driving saturation, it isn't simply urban density.
The number grew
A figure of roughly 75,000 US cameras has circulated widely for this same OSM registry. Our pull counted 116,655 — about 56% higher. The likeliest explanation is straightforward growth: ALPR became a mainstream story across 2025 and 2026, and stories bring volunteers. It might also reflect different boundary handling. Either way it's the argument for publishing a method instead of a number — re-run the query and see what today says.
What this is actually for
Frequently asked questions
What exactly does this dataset count?
Nodes in OpenStreetMap tagged surveillance:type=ALPR, within each US state's administrative boundary, counted on 17 July 2026 via the Overpass API. Population is the US Census Bureau's Vintage 2024 state estimates. The rate column is simply cameras divided by population, times 100,000. Every number is reproducible — the query is on this page, and the raw CSV and JSON are free to download.
Is this a count of every ALPR camera in America?
No, and this is the single most important caveat on the page. OpenStreetMap is crowdsourced: a camera appears in this dataset only if a volunteer found it, identified it, and tagged it. So each number reflects two things multiplied together — how many cameras exist, and how much mapping effort has happened there. A state with an active DeFlock community will look denser than an equally-surveilled state where nobody has gone looking. Treat these as a floor, never a census. The real deployment count is higher everywhere, and unknowably so.
Why does Georgia top the per-capita table?
Georgia has 70.4 ALPR cameras tagged per 100,000 residents — roughly double the national rate of 34.3, and the highest of any state. Flock Safety is headquartered in Atlanta. That is a genuinely striking coincidence and we are flagging it as exactly that: a coincidence worth investigating, not a demonstrated causal link. There are at least two innocent explanations. Flock may simply have sold hardest in its home market, which would be unremarkable commercial behaviour. Or Georgia may have more people mapping cameras — the same publicity that surrounds a hometown company can motivate volunteers. Both would produce this result. We can't separate them from this dataset alone, and anyone who tells you they can from a single correlation is overreaching.
What's going on with Kansas?
Kansas is second per-capita at 62.8 per 100,000 — nearly double the national rate, from a state with 0.9% of the US population. Separately, our catalogue of documented ALPR stalking cases includes three Kansas officers: Victor Heiar in Kechi, Lee Nygaard in Sedgwick and Kyle Rector in Bonner Springs. That's 3 of 24 cases — 12.5% of the national total — from 0.9% of the population. We want to be careful here, because the obvious reading is probably wrong. Kansas may not have more misuse; it may have more detection. Cases surface when someone audits, when a victim is told they can check, or when a local reporter files a records request. A state that catches three officers may be doing oversight better than a state that has caught none. The honest conclusion is that both numbers are unusual and neither explains the other.
Maine is near the bottom — does that mean anything?
Maine has 4.1 cameras per 100,000 people, fourth-lowest in the country. Maine is also, as far as we can establish, the only state that bans private ALPR use outright. That's suggestive and we'd love to claim it, but the confound is obvious: Maine is rural, sparsely populated and cold, and the low-density states clustered at the bottom of this table — Vermont, Montana, New Hampshire, Wyoming — mostly don't have that law. Rurality alone predicts the result. The law may well contribute; this dataset can't show that it does.
Your Flock guide says ~75,000 US cameras. This says 116,655. Which is right?
Both, at different times, and the gap is itself informative. The ~75,000 figure is one that has circulated widely for the US portion of the OSM ALPR registry. Our own pull on 17 July 2026 counted 116,655 across all 51 jurisdictions — about 56% higher. The most likely explanation is simply growth: DeFlock's community has been mapping aggressively, and ALPR became a mainstream news story in 2025 and 2026, which brings volunteers. It may also reflect different query boundaries. Either way it demonstrates the point of publishing the method rather than the number — you can re-run the query today and see what it says now. We've updated the Flock guide to reflect this count and dated it.
Why publish this when DeFlock already has a map?
Because a map answers 'where' and a table answers 'how much', and nobody was publishing the second one nationally. DeFlock does excellent work and renders the same underlying tag — this is not a competitor to it, it's an aggregation of the same public data into a form you can cite in a council meeting, drop into a spreadsheet, or check a claim against. Eyes Off Indiana does something similar for one state and does it well. This is the fifty-state version, free, with the query attached so you never have to trust us.
Can I use this data?
Yes. The underlying OpenStreetMap data is licensed ODbL, which requires attribution to OpenStreetMap contributors. This aggregation is free to reuse — cite Max Intel and the collection date if it's useful to you, and re-run the query if the numbers matter, because they will have changed. If you're a journalist or a researcher and want the per-county breakdown or a different cut, the method here scales to any boundary OSM knows about, which is most of them.