Do personalised plates affect your car insurance?

A personalised number plate can make your car feel more unique. Here’s a guide to getting one, registering it and its potential impact on your car insurance.

When Peter Barkwill turned 60, his wife wanted to buy him a memorable gift. He already had his dream car – a special-edition Land Rover Discovery launched to mark the model’s 25^th anniversary. So Mrs Barkwill decided her husband needed another way to set his vehicle apart, and sourced a private number plate featuring his initials and a reference to the company he ran for 26 years.

“It was a lovely gift to receive,” Peter says. “One of the things I most like about it is that you can’t age a car when it has a personalised number plate. Also, I think it gives a car a bit more panache.”

How to get a personalised number plate

There are three ways to get a personalised number plate, the most popular being via the DVLA website. Here, you enter personal details such as your initials into a search tool and the website suggests possible plates from its database of more than 60 million unused registration numbers.

The DVLA also offers nine number plate auctions per year, when specific registrations are open to bids. These often include plates that are particularly desirable, so bids can build quickly. Even so, it’s a good way to get your hands on a personalised plate that may otherwise slip through your grasp.

A second option is to go to a dealer who trades in personalised number plates. This is a good choice if you can’t find what you want on the DVLA’s website – though you may pay more for the registration number of your dreams. 

Finally, you can look out for private sellers, who occasionally advertise personalised number plates on selling sites or in classified ads. This is a much less common option but may just yield the plate you’re searching for.

How much does a personalised number plate cost?

The cost of a personalised number plate varies depending on its desirability. Prices on the DVLA website start at £250, including the £80 assignment fee that enables you to put it on your car.

Prices tend to rise as plates get more desirable, or the number of characters reduces. So, for example, a number plate spelling an obvious word or referring to a car make or model may carry a premium, as would one with very few characters.

The most expensive personalised number plate in the UK is “1 F”, which sold for £926,000 in November 2025. Other high-priced examples include “JB 1”, which sold for £608,600 in July 2025, and “25 O”. The latter held the record as the highest-priced personalised plate in the UK for more than 10 years, having sold for £518,480 in November 2014.

How to register or transfer a personalised number plate

It’s easy to register or transfer a personalised number plate to your vehicle. Full guidance and relevant forms are provided on the DVLA website. Many vendors will include the cost of assigning the plate in the price.

It is similarly straightforward to transfer a personalised plate to a different vehicle or hold it on “retention” if you don’t have a suitable car to use it on. You can retain a plate indefinitely but need to renew it every 10 years if it isn’t on a vehicle, or your right to use the registration expires.

The risk of expiry is on Peter’s mind, nearly a decade after he got his personalised number plate. “When I retired, I went through a phase of changing my cars so they were suitable for my new lifestyle,” he says. “Because I wasn’t sure which vehicle I’d keep for the long term, I put my number plate on retention.

“As the years have gone by, I haven’t got around to reassigning it and now I’m thinking of changing my car again. I will need to be more assiduous at making the transfer to my next vehicle.”

Does a personalised number plate increase insurance costs?

There is no single answer to the issue of personalised number plates and their effect on insurance premiums, since every insurer operates differently.

Murad Rangoon from LV=, who provide car insurance through Age Co, advises customers to tell their insurer if they switch to a private number plate to ensure their policy is up to date. LV= doesn’t charge an admin fee for this, and does not treat the private plate as a modification, which means there is no impact on your insurance premium. 

Since, for most people, the physical number plates on their vehicles will have cost about £20 to create in a store such as Halfords, they don’t need to be specifically covered by car insurance. If they were damaged or lost, you’d simply replace them, as you would a faulty lightbulb or windscreen wiper.

If you have a very high-value personalised registration plate on a car that gets stolen or is written off, you’ll need to act quickly to put the plate on retention before the claim completes. If not, there’s a risk the number plate gets lost with the car.

What’s the benefit of a personalised number plate?

Peter has enjoyed having a personalised number plate so much that he bought one for his son as a birthday present. “He was delighted with it, as I was with mine,” he reports. “Personally, I think it holds particular appeal if you have a more expensive vehicle as it makes the car feel even more special. I think it’s a very nice thing to have.”

This perfectly captures the benefit of a personalised number plate. It may not bring anything new to the experience of driving your car. But it does make it feel distinctive – and there’s a lot to be said for that.