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Blur a number plate

Cover a licence plate before you post a driveway listing, dashcam clip, or street photo with parked cars. Heavy cover on stills, or a black bar. Pad past the strip and the dealer frame.

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Cover a plate in three steps

1
Open the photo or clip
Choose the file from your phone or computer, or paste it. It opens in this tab. Nothing is sent to BlurThis. Use the Video tab for a dashcam clip.
2
Cover the plate
Drag a box with margin on all sides. Use a heavy Blur or Pixelate. On stills, Black bar is the solid option. On video, mark Blur In and Blur Out.
3
Check and download
Zoom until you cannot read a character, including the country strip. Then download. Open the downloaded file at full size before you send it. Sharing the original by mistake is a common fail.

Pad past the strip, then zoom

A plate from the pavement is often a skinny parallelogram. A box that looks closed in preview can still show the country strip, blue EU band, or first character. Pad on all sides past the dealer frame and any reflective border. Zoom the export until you cannot name a glyph. Plate characters are short and high contrast, so light blur fails the same way a light smear fails on an OTP.

On stills, an opaque black bar is the solid choice. On video there is no opaque bar in this tool, so use heavy blur or pixelate, a wide path box, or several timed covers. Limits: Video: 50 MB in, 90 seconds out, 720-pixel longest edge. No opaque black bar on video.

When plate cover matters most

Marketplace listings: car on your driveway plus house number, street sign, or parking permit in the same shot
Dashcam uploads: someone else’s plate sent to a large audience or insurer portal
Holiday and hire cars: rental sticker, building number, and plate together identify a location
Fleet and delivery photos: rear doors often show both a plate and a company phone

Also check house numbers, parking permits, and street signs beside the vehicle. A covered plate with a readable door number still pins an address. For broader listing hygiene (IDs, mail, package labels), see marketplace listing privacy.

Stills vs dashcam clips

Still photos: Image tab, heavy cover or black bar, PNG export, zoom check. Clips: Video tab, trim to the pass-by, place Blur In and Blur Out, scrub at normal speed. No auto plate tracking. Moving plates need a wide box or stacked timed regions. Workflow detail: how to blur part of a video online and the video blur tool.

Short secrets in screenshots (not plates) belong on the text tool. Faces in the same driveway shot: blur a face.

Number plates: common questions

Does it find plates automatically?

No. You drag the box. That keeps you in control of angled or half-hidden plates.

Blur or black bar on a plate?

Heavy cover. Plate characters are high-contrast and short. Light blur or pixelate can still leave shape. Black bar on stills. No opaque bar on video. Why a bar beats a smear.

Can I blur a plate in dashcam video?

Yes on the Video tab. No auto tracking. Use a wide box or several timed covers. Video: 50 MB in, 90 seconds out, 720-pixel longest edge. No opaque black bar on video. How video blur works.

Is this free, and is the photo uploaded?

Yes. No account, no watermark, no sign-in. Editing runs in this tab on your device. No. Your file stays in this browser tab. We never get a copy. A wait while the file opens is not an upload.