NYC parking ticket lookup: find any ticket by plate or ticket number

A plate search shows every open ticket on the vehicle — parking tickets, red light camera, school-zone speed camera, and bus lane camera violations. You need three things: the plate number, the state that issued it, and the plate type (passenger, commercial, etc.).

• On this site: use our free ticket lookup — enter your plate and we pull the city's official records, then show the historical dismissal rate for each violation next to it.
• On the city's site: NYC CityPay (nyc.gov) offers the same search and is where you ultimately pay or dispute.
• Plate searches only show tickets already entered into the Department of Finance system — a ticket written today may take days to appear.

Plate lookup is the right tool if you lost the paper ticket, lease or rent the car, bought a used car, or drive with out-of-state plates and suspect a mailed camera ticket never reached you.

The ticket (summons) number is the 10-digit number printed at the top of the orange summons and on any Notice of Liability mailed for camera violations. Searching by ticket number pulls up that single ticket with its violation code, fine amount, penalties, interest, and payment or hearing status.

A ticket-number search is the most precise option when you have the paper in hand and want to confirm what the city has on file — including whether the officer's description of your vehicle matches. Mismatches matter: our defect checker walks through the misdescriptions that legally require dismissal.

If a ticket shows in judgment, read our guide on what happens when you don't pay — there is still a path to challenge it, but the steps are different.

Here is what the pay-or-fight decision looks like across 27,187,126 decided NYC parking and camera hearings in the public record: 26.2% ended in full dismissal and another 32.3% ended with the fine reduced. But the average hides enormous variation — some violations are dismissed at more than half of hearings, others at fewer than 1 in 10.

That is why our lookup shows the historical dismissal rate for your exact violation code, drawn from the city's own hearing records. Browse every code on the violations stats page, or look up your plate and see the numbers for your actual tickets. These are group historical statistics, not a prediction for any individual case.

New tickets can take several days (occasionally weeks) to be entered, and camera notices are mailed to the registered owner's address on file — which fails quietly if you moved. If a search comes up empty, don't assume you're off the hook: the 30-day dispute clock runs from the issue date, not from when you find it. Our guide on tickets that don't show up covers exactly what to do while you wait.