French Driving Licence (Permis de Conduire) OCR API

What Makes the French permis de conduire Hard to Parse

The French permis de conduire is issued by the French state (applications are handled online through ANTS). Since 2013 France issues the pink EU credit-card permis de conduire, valid for 15 years. Its data sits behind the EU numbered fields (1 nom, 2 prénoms, 3 date and place of birth, 4a/4b issue and expiry, 4c the issuing préfecture, 5 the licence number, 9 the categories), and like other EU cards it has no address field. The older pink paper permis is still accepted until the 2033 exchange deadline, so onboarding flows see both.

One API Call, Named Fields

The StructOCR Driver License OCR API returns the licence number (field 5), nom and prénoms (fields 1 and 2), date and place of birth (field 3), issue and expiry dates (4a, 4b), issuing authority (4c) and categories (field 9). French cards print dates as DD.MM.YYYY; the API returns them as YYYY-MM-DD. Send a JPG, PNG, WebP or PDF as Base64 JSON or as a multipart upload; there is no SDK to embed in your app, although official Python and Node.js SDKs are available. Step-by-step code is in the Python guide. Usage is billed per successful scan with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Where Teams Use It in France

Integration & AI Prompts

Install the official SDK and pass a photo of the licence. Full request and response details are in the driver license API reference.

# pip install structocr
import os
from structocr import StructOCR

client = StructOCR(api_key=os.environ["STRUCTOCR_API_KEY"])
result = client.scan_driver_license("licence.jpg")

if result.get("success"):
    data = result["data"]
    print(data["document_number"], data["surname"], data["date_of_expiry"])

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "drivers_license",
    "country_code": "FRA",
    "region": null,
    "document_number": "13AA00002",
    "personal_number": null,
    "surname": "MARTIN",
    "given_names": "CAMILLE",
    "sex": null,
    "date_of_birth": "1993-07-01",
    "place_of_birth": "LYON",
    "date_of_issue": "2019-03-11",
    "date_of_expiry": "2034-03-11",
    "date_of_first_issue": null,
    "issuing_authority": "PRÉFECTURE DU RHÔNE",
    "address": null,
    "vehicle_class": "AM, A1, B1, B"
  }
}