Why Russia is selling vanity license plates on Gosuslugi and potential earnings

XXX, OOO, AMR and other artwork on your car«s license plates — any level of showing off for your money. Plates can cost from a few thousand to tens of millions of rubles (approximately $10,000 to $100,000 at current rates) — it all depends on your wallet and desires. Why does the state allow free trade of registration plates and will the law on selling plates through »Gosuslugi« solve the problem, investigated VORONEZH1.RU.

A Number at the Price of a New Lada

Offers for 2026, choose to taste: a harsh Chelyabinsk number — 120,000 rubles (about $1,200 at current rates), a refined St. Petersburg one — 165,000 rubles (about $1,650), a hot Krasnodar one — 750,000 rubles (about $7,500). And that«s just the beginning!

Here, for example, an «exclusive»: three sixes plus three Rs for one and a half million rubles (about $15,000), not including re-registration. Judging by data from open sources, this beauty has been spotted on a Land Cruiser Prado, Infiniti FX37, BMW X6. Now it adorns someone«s Mercedes-Benz. The seller is a resident of Voronezh, but his phone is registered in Dagestan for some reason.

Yes, for that money you could buy a used car. Or even a new one — something like a Lada Vesta in dealerships costs just about one and a half million rubles.

But some unique individuals are willing to pay millions for a plastic plate. All for three identical digits or letters — so that on the road they are «feared, respected, and left alone.» It«s like an indulgence for the right to behave on the highway as one pleases and always be in the right.

An example from Voronezh: a BMW with «prestige» plates EKH causes an accident with three victims, but another driver is blamed, whose two-year-old daughter was injured. Another example: a lawyer — the son of a judge — on three Xs raced along a dedicated lane disguised as a taxi until he was caught up by prosecutors.

And the business of selling plates can«t even be called shadow — it»s all in plain sight. As is who and why buys «prestige» license plates.

Are Coincidences Not Coincidental?

According to the Rules for Registration of Vehicles, approved by Government Decree No. 1764 of 21 December 2019, license plates in Russia «are assigned without reserving specific series or combinations of symbols for legal entities, individuals, or individual entrepreneurs» — this is verbatim from paragraph 41 of the governmental regulation. That is, formally, a car«s number in our country is generated randomly, and you cannot »order« something special from the state.

In essence, regional subdivisions are simply local operators who follow instructions from above. From above — the Main Directorate for Road Traffic Safety (GUOBDD) of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The federal information system of the State Traffic Inspectorate is under the jurisdiction of this directorate.

But then where do plates with letters AAA, CCC, XXX and other beauties on the cars of administrations, law enforcement agencies, and other important structures come from? As if by a random draft.

The problem is that the state contradicts itself. Paragraph 41 of the Government Decree excludes the assignment of license plates to a citizen or organization — while Article 8 of Federal Law No. 283-FZ of 3 August 2018 «On State Registration of Vehicles» allows «retaining the state registration number assigned to a vehicle.» A number can be reserved for a year at an inter-district registration and examination department (MREO) of the traffic police. And this opens the door to that very business of trading beautiful plates.

The Law Doesn«t Forbid It. But It Wanted To…

Online profiteers insist that their scheme is legal. Formally — no argument: there is indeed no ban on trading license plates, the law allows transferring them from car to car. One common scheme is based on deliberately fictitious deals for both parties involving the resale of a car, but this is not a criminal offense or even an administrative violation — it«s civil-law relations. Both sides are happy — the state has no questions.

Nevertheless, the state has tried to shut down the attraction of prestige plates, where tens of millions of rubles circulate, and take control of the situation. After all, this is essentially a giant business that doesn«t pay taxes.

The idea of auctions for selling beautiful license plates has been worked on in the government since 2010. In 2019, the police and the Ministry of Economic Development discussed an option for obtaining license plates — including beautiful ones — through «Gosuslugi»: so that a driver could choose a number when registering a car by submitting an application and paying a fee. At that time, if a regular number was planned to have a tariff of 5,000 rubles (about $50 at current rates), the base rate for «exclusives» with identical letters and digits was proposed at 600,000 rubles (about $6,000) — with the right to apply increasing or decreasing coefficients for regions. The most popular numbers were to be sold at auctions. Money from implementing this entire business plan would go to federal and regional budgets — to improve road quality. A slew of ideas. But whether the pandemic interfered or other force majeure circumstances — the wagon was driven into the depot.

In spring 2024, deputy from «A Just Russia» Yana Lantratova returned to the topic and proposed selling beautiful license plates at official auctions to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko. She cited the combination SBO, on which shadow traders began earning millions since the start of the special operation in Ukraine. However, it didn«t go beyond talk again. In August, it became known that work on the project for state sale of car plates was suspended. »Kommersant« then provided an exhaustive explanation from First Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Alexander Gorovoy — that, »in the realities of the present time,« this is not a priority task. Only, as it turned out, President Vladimir Putin has a different view on all sorts of »I drive as I want.«

…And Thought of It Again

— Selling beautiful numbers. Why not? What«s wrong with that? I don»t see why a decision hasn«t been made yet, — this is Vladimir Putin, verbatim, at a meeting with leaders of political party factions in the State Duma on 18 September 2025.

This time, the issue of prestige plates was raised by the leader of the «New People» party faction, Alexei Nechaev. He cited Uzbekistan, where the state officially trades «the right kind» of license plates — and has an annual income of about 2.5 billion in ruble equivalent (approximately $25 million at current rates). And this with 4 million cars in the republic — a nice bonus for the budget. In our country, as the deputy calculated on the fly, there are over 50 million cars — imagine the scale of budget injections. And a month and a half after the meeting of deputies with Putin — on 30 October — the State Duma registered bill No. 1056580-8 on amendments to the Federal Law «On State Registration of Vehicles» authored by Alexei Nechaev and 14 of his faction colleagues, including actor Dmitry Pevtsov.

The bill is short and proposes two amendments: give car owners the right to reserve a license plate «from among the available ones» (quote) for a fee on the «Gosuslugi» portal and to retain the assigned number forever. The financial and economic justification notes that, «according to expert estimates, legalizing the sale of registration plates could bring the federal budget about 25 billion rubles a year (approximately $250 million at current rates).»

«But Transferring — Forbid»

That it«s time to turn the sale of license plates into a state channel is also believed at the National Automobile Union (NAS). They present their own arithmetic:

— For the calculation, we took numbers from the Moscow region with codes 77, 97, 99, 177, 197, 199, 777, 799: with identical digits, with mirror digits, with repeating digits (121 and others), — explains Vice President of NAS Anton Shaparin to a Voronezh1 correspondent. — Numbers with special letter combinations (CCC, MMM, VOR, AAA, UMR, OOO and others) were not taken into account, as their cost can sharply exceed average market indicators. Also, numbers tied to car models (for example, 129 for Mercedes R129) were not considered. As a result, we got about 500,000 memorable number combinations, or about 64,000 for each regional code.

It«s clear that there is some unknown number capacity that hasn»t been used yet, so our calculations are approximate. However, they are indicative. If we assume that memorable numbers in Moscow conditionally cost 200,000 rubles (about $2,000 at current rates) (though the real price can be much higher), then the total cost of such numbers exceeds 100 billion rubles (about $1 billion). For regions, take a conditional cost of a beautiful number at 100,000 rubles (about $1,000) — and for each regional code, that«s over 6 billion rubles (about $60 million). Missed budget revenues…

Shaparin says they have repeatedly sent their calculations and proposals to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but the result is known. At the same time, NAS proposes a slightly different approach than the «New People» currently. The first rule, agreed in the auto union, yes — should be selling numbers through «Gosuslugi»:

— At the first stage, it can be without an auction — just by setting a fixed price for each memorable digital combination. And later — when there is already an understanding of demand and supply for individual combinations — an auction model can be introduced.

But here«s the sensible rule number two, believes Anton Shaparin, is a strict ban on transferring numbers. This measure will close the loophole used by sellers on the shadow license plate market:

— No storing of beautiful license plates — earned through backbreaking labor, gifted, bought, resold. If the car«s owner changes — that»s it, the state registration plate returns to the general database, it can be sold again and income received for the treasury. Money that the state needs! If you want to stand out — buy anew.

***

That selling beautiful plates through the state treasury won«t clean the roads of rudeness is clear: this problem is in people»s heads. But at least the country will get money. The State Duma Committee on Transport and Development of Transport Infrastructure scheduled consideration of the «New People» bill in the first reading for February 2026. However, the legal department added a fly in the ointment, reminding: the procedure for state registration of vehicles, including through «Gosuslugi,» is established by the Government. That«s first. Secondly, lawyers point out, the concept of »reserving numbers« is not clarified in the text. And finally, it»s unclear where the money will go.

In the explanatory note, the deputies make a footnote that they developed their project — again a quote — «in execution of the instruction of the President of the Russian Federation of 20 September 2025 No. Pr-2124» following the meeting with leaders of political party factions. That is, 2 days after Alexei Nechaev presented Vladimir Putin with an impressive calculation on prestige plates. True, on the Kremlin website, in the list of the head of state«s instructions, there is no document with that number.