Where was it issued?
Which system applies
AARTO applies in the municipalities named in the 2026 proclamations and nowhere else. Pick the one printed on your notice; if it is not listed, you are on the Criminal Procedure Act route.
62 municipalities · type to narrow
Until you choose, treat every AARTO figure on this page as conditional. It is wrong for most of the country.
Checking what you owe
No single service holds every South African traffic fine. Which one can see yours depends on which system issued it and which authority captured it — which is why the same driver can be clear on one portal and owing on another. This page explains the rails rather than pretending to be one.
What this page is
This page explains the services. It is not one.
There is no lookup box below, and there will not be one. This site holds no records, has no connection to any issuing authority, and asks for no identifier of any kind — not an identity number, not a licence number, not a notice reference, not a number plate. What it can usefully do is tell you which service can actually see your matter, and why the answer differs.
The services
Four places a South African traffic fine can show up
No single one of them sees everything, and the gaps between them are not random — they follow the boundary between the two systems and the boundary between authorities.
- The national AARTO authority’s own serviceThe body the Act establishes to administer AARTO — the Agency, renamed the Authority throughout by the amending Act — runs the national service for AARTO matters, and that is the one to go to first if your notice is an AARTO notice. It sees AARTO matters. Nothing issued outside an AARTO municipality reaches it, which is the single most common reason a reader concludes they are clear when they are not.
- The national vehicle and driver registerThe NaTIS register behind licensing. It is where a demerit-point position would live, and where an enforcement order’s block on issuing a licence, permit or disc actually bites when you go to renew. You reach it through a licensing authority rather than by searching it yourself.
- A municipality’s own eServices portalThe larger metros run their own online services, and a matter that metro issued is generally visible only there. A matter issued by one metro does not appear on another’s, and a metro outside AARTO is running the Criminal Procedure Act route entirely — different documents, a different authority, and no infringement notice to look up.
- Established commercial platformsPrivate services that query several sources on your behalf, usually for a fee, and some of which also take payment. They are genuinely useful for finding a matter you did not know about, and they are not authoritative: what they can see is limited to the sources they query, and a clear result from one is not a statement that you owe nothing. Nothing on this site is one of them, and this site recommends none by name.
What each search returns
A number-plate search and an identity search answer different questions
They are not two ways of asking the same thing, and using the wrong one is how a matter goes unnoticed until a licence renewal is refused.
← swipe to see the whole table →
| Search | What it returns | What it misses | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| By number plate | Matters attached to the VEHICLE | Anything issued against you personally on another vehicle — a hired car, a company car, a car you have since sold | The register is organised around the vehicle, so a plate search answers a question about the car rather than about you. |
| By identity number | Matters attached to the PERSON, including the demerit-point position where one exists | Matters an authority attached to the vehicle and never to a named driver | This is the search that answers "what do I owe". It is also the identifier a fake message will ask you for, which is why you go to the service yourself rather than through a link. |
| By notice number | That one matter, and its current stage | Everything else | The most reliable of the three, and the only one that needs nothing about you at all. |
Behaviour of the services, not a statutory statement. What IS statutory is the demerit-point enquiry: the Act gives you a right to ask for your own position, the regulations prescribe the form and the response time, and the schedule prices it.
Asking for your own demerit-point position
This is a prescribed procedure with a prescribed form and a prescribed fee — once off, or as a standing subscription for six or twelve months. Fleet operators have their own banded scale.
- Demerit-point enquiry, once off
- R60
- Demerit-point enquiry, six months
- R120
- Demerit-point enquiry, twelve months
- R240
From 30 June 2026 · Schedule 2, paragraph 5.3; section 33; regulation 21. Whether demerit points do anything where you are is a separate question, and in most of the country the answer is no.
← swipe to see the whole table →
| Vehicles in the fleet | Six months | Twelve months |
|---|---|---|
| 2–20 | R1 200 | R2 000 |
| 21–40 | R2 400 | R4 000 |
| 41–60 | R3 600 | R6 000 |
| 61–100 | R6 000 | R9 600 |
| 101 and over | R7 000 | R11 200 |
From 30 June 2026 · Schedule 2, paragraph 5.4; section 33 (Form AARTO 27). A banded scale, not a per-vehicle one — the band a fleet falls in sets the whole fee.
The boundary
Why the same driver is clear on one service and owing on another
Not a data-quality problem. It is the shape of the law: AARTO applies in the municipalities the proclamations name, and the Criminal Procedure Act applies everywhere else — and the two do not share a register.
AARTO applies in 62 municipalities. A matter issued anywhere else is not an AARTO matter at all: there is no infringement notice, no courtesy letter, no enforcement order, and nothing for an AARTO service to show. The reverse is equally true — a court roll will not carry an AARTO infringement, because an AARTO infringement is not a prosecution.
So the practical answer to "am I clear" is: clear on which system, for which authority. The scope selector at the top of this page resolves the first half. The authority named on your own paperwork resolves the second.
Outside AARTO
What you are looking for if your matter is not an AARTO matter
Different documents, a different authority, and no national schedule of amounts.
Outside an AARTO area
CPA- Written notice
- The ordinary out-of-court route. A written notice is served on you with an option to admit guilt and pay the amount endorsed on it, without appearing in court.Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, section 56
- Summons
- Where a summons issues instead, the same admission-of-guilt option may be endorsed on it.Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, sections 54 and 57
- The amount
- Not fixed by the Act. It is determined by the magistrate for that district, or set case by case within a ceiling — so there is no single number for this route, anywhere in the country.
- The ceiling
- Fixed by a separate ministerial notice in the Gazette, which is not held here. This site does not print a ceiling it has not read.
Outside AARTO
Outside AARTO there is no national fine schedule at all
The Criminal Procedure Act supplies the mechanism for an out-of-court traffic penalty — a written notice or a summons, endorsed with an option to admit guilt and pay — but it fixes no amount. The amount is determined by the magistrate for the district, or set case by case within a ceiling that a separate ministerial notice fixes. There is therefore no such thing as “the South African traffic fine” outside an AARTO area, and a single national figure cannot be quoted honestly.
Figures for this route that circulate on other sites come from a ministerial notice more than a decade old, and this site does not repeat them. The amount that applies to you is the one endorsed on your notice or summons by the authority that issued it.
Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, ss.56, 57 · Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act 46 of 1998, N/A — as amended by Act 4 of 2019; consolidation to 30 June 2010 vendored, Amendment Act 4/2019 full text vendored
Why the difference matters more than the amount
The two routes are not two prices for the same thing. The AARTO route is administrative: it has its own documents, its own clocks, its own fees and an escalation chain that runs whether or not you engage with it. The Criminal Procedure Act route is a criminal-procedure one, where paying the endorsed amount admits guilt and disposes of the charge. Reading one with the other’s rules is the most common mistake in this market, and it is the reason the scope selector sits at the top of every page here that carries a figure.
Verification status
Nobody has signed these figures off
Every value on this site is recorded as research: transcribed from the cited instrument, and not yet checked by the reviewer who is accountable for it. That is a statement about this site, not about the instruments. Where a figure decides something for you, read it against the citation printed beside it.