UAE Driving Licence OCR API

What Makes the UAE driving licence Hard to Parse

The UAE driving licence is issued by the traffic authority of each emirate (for example the RTA in Dubai and the police traffic departments in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah). UAE driving licences are issued per emirate and printed in Arabic and English. Besides the licence number, cards carry a traffic code (traffic file) number that links the driver to their traffic record, and the emirate that issued the card determines the layout. Rental desks, delivery platforms and insurers need the English fields in a consistent structure regardless of which emirate issued the licence.

One API Call, Named Fields

The StructOCR Driver License OCR API returns the licence number, the holder's name, nationality where printed, date of birth, issue and expiry dates, the issuing authority and the permitted vehicle categories. Dates are returned 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 UAE

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": "ARE",
    "region": "DUBAI",
    "document_number": "1234567",
    "personal_number": null,
    "surname": "AL MANSOORI",
    "given_names": "AHMED",
    "sex": null,
    "date_of_birth": "1990-01-15",
    "place_of_birth": null,
    "date_of_issue": "2022-03-01",
    "date_of_expiry": "2032-02-28",
    "date_of_first_issue": null,
    "issuing_authority": "RTA DUBAI",
    "address": null,
    "vehicle_class": "LIGHT VEHICLE"
  }
}