Dutch Driving Licence (Rijbewijs) OCR API

What Makes the Dutch rijbewijs Hard to Parse

The Dutch rijbewijs is issued by the holder's municipality, with cards produced under the RDW. The Dutch rijbewijs follows the EU numbered-field layout: 1 surname, 2 first names, 3 date and place of birth, 4a and 4b issue and expiry dates, 4c the issuing municipality, 5 the licence number and 9 the categories. Field 4d carries the holder's citizen service number (BSN), a sensitive identifier many teams should not store unless they have a legal basis for it. Like the German card, the rijbewijs has no address field.

One API Call, Named Fields

The StructOCR Driver License OCR API returns the licence number (field 5), surname and first names (fields 1 and 2), date and place of birth (field 3), issue and expiry dates (4a, 4b), issuing municipality (4c) and categories (field 9). Dutch 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 the Netherlands

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": "NLD",
    "region": null,
    "document_number": "5551234567",
    "personal_number": null,
    "surname": "DE VRIES",
    "given_names": "SANNE",
    "sex": null,
    "date_of_birth": "1991-02-27",
    "place_of_birth": "UTRECHT",
    "date_of_issue": "2021-06-14",
    "date_of_expiry": "2031-06-14",
    "date_of_first_issue": null,
    "issuing_authority": "BURGEMEESTER VAN UTRECHT",
    "address": null,
    "vehicle_class": "AM, B"
  }
}