In the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, traffic offences are governed by Law 451, the city’s misdemeanour code, and administered by the Dirección General de Administración de Infracciones (DGAI), whose administrative controllers rule on defences and limitation periods. It is the jurisdiction with the most fines per plate that we observe: speed cameras and exclusive-lane enforcement reach both city vehicles and those that enter every day from Greater Buenos Aires.

Context and authority

Voluntary payment offers a fifty-percent discount on the minimum amount for forty days from notification; filing a defence before a controller or requesting a hearing forfeits that benefit. Lookups and payments are available on the City Government portal, through channels such as Boti and electronic payment methods; amounts are expressed in fixed units (UF).

The limitation period is two years, in line with the National Traffic Law 24.449. For a company, the relevant clock is not the limitation period but the voluntary-payment window: a fine that reaches the operator after forty days already costs twice as much.

What the API returns for this jurisdiction

The traffic-fines API queries the city registry by plate and returns each fine with the detail needed to operate without opening the portal:

  • Fine number and issuing authority, preserving leading zeros, dashes and the original format.
  • Date, location when published and description of the offence.
  • Reported amount, status and voluntary-payment window with its due date.
  • Licence points to be deducted when the source reports them.
  • Coverage flag: whether the source answered completely, partially or remained pending.

What the data shows

Proprietary dataBuenos Aires CitySeptember 1, 2025 – August 31, 2026
Lookups with at least one open fine
25%
Fines offering voluntary early payment
64%
Fines that deduct licence points
3%
Median age of fines without a recorded resolution
210 days
Median amount band
ARS 100,000 – ARS 250,000

Mix by infraction category

  1. Speeding48%
  2. Red light and right of way2%
  3. Parking11%
  4. Seat belt, helmet and phone2%
  5. Lanes and manoeuvres23%
  6. Other infractions14%

Monthly distribution of fines

  1. Jan9%
  2. Feb8%
  3. Mar10%
  4. Apr10%
  5. May10%
  6. Jun10%
  7. Jul6%
  8. Aug1%
  9. Sep11%
  10. Oct10%
  11. Nov8%
  12. Dec8%

Sample: 20.000–50.000 fine records, 50.000+ lookups · See the data methodology

25% of plate lookups in the period found at least one fine in the City. Almost half of the fines are speeding offences and about a quarter concern lanes and manoeuvres, a pattern consistent with automated enforcement on avenues and exclusive lanes.

The median amount band is ARS 100,000 – ARS 250,000; 64% of the fines offered voluntary payment at lookup time and 3% deducted licence points. The median age of fines without a recorded resolution is 210 days: many are far past the discount window before anyone looks at them.

September, October and March are the months with the most fines in the sample; summer is quieter.

Case study: fleets that look up plates in Buenos Aires City

Proprietary dataFleet cohortSeptember 1, 2025 – August 31, 2026
Fleet lookups with at least one open fine
37%
Fleet accounts in the sample
50
Distinct plates looked up by fleets
2,040

Sample: 20.000–50.000 fine records, 50.000+ lookups · See the data methodology

The fleet cohort, 50 accounts with twenty or more plates each and 2,040 plates in total, shows the effect of operating in the City: 37% of their lookups had at least one city fine, well above the average of all lookups.

For a last-mile delivery operator or a company with vehicles assigned to employees, the cost is not only the fine: it is the lost discount and the administrative time for every fine discovered late. With the lookup integrated into the fleet system, each unit is checked when assigned and on a weekly cycle, and the operator receives the fine with its voluntary-payment due date while it is still worth half.

The figures are cohort aggregates, rounded and without identifying accounts; see the data methodology.

How to integrate

The client sends the plate and receives an immediate acceptance; the full result is obtained through status polling or a webhook, and each fine arrives with a stable identifier to reconcile it with the internal system.

JSONIllustrative example, not a contract.
{
  "plate": "ABC123",
  "jurisdictions": [
    "AR-C"
  ]
}

We recommend deduplicating by fine number and authority, not by plate and date, and following the guide on vehicle lookup quality to handle partial results. The API page details access.

Limits and considerations

  • The API reports what the city registry publishes; it does not compute discounts or dates the source does not expose.
  • Fines already notified but not yet published do not appear until the source incorporates them.
  • A lookup with no records does not exempt a vehicle from provincial or municipal fines outside the City.
  • Our data reflects lookups by users who suspected they had fines; it does not describe the city’s vehicle fleet.
  • Payments, defences and hearings are handled before the DGAI, not through the API.

Sources and further reading