Short answer: a motorbike riding without plates — or with plates not issued by the authorities, or plates that do not match the registration certificate — is a violation in the 4,000,000–6,000,000 VND band under Article 14(3) of Decree 168/2024/NĐ-CP. Six points come off the licence, and where the plates are not genuine, they are confiscated. Not having plates is priced like the serious identity violation it is.
What counts as a plate violation
Article 14(3) of the decree packs the whole family into one band: riding without plates on a vehicle required to have them; riding with plates that do not match the registration certificate; riding with plates not issued by the competent authority; plates in the wrong position or fitted wrong; plates with unreadable characters, or repainted, stickered or altered characters; plates bent, covered, or changed in colour or shape. The common thread is that the plate identifies the bike to the system — anything that removes, fakes or obscures that identity is the same offence.
The follow-up measures make the position unmistakable. Fake or unauthorised plates are confiscated under Article 14(5)(a). And where a bike has no registration certificate at all and the plates are fake or mismatched and the rider cannot prove the machine’s lawful origin, the vehicle itself can be confiscated under Article 14(5)(b) — the fine stops being the expensive part.
Why the band is this heavy
The plate is how the system reaches everything else: camera fines, insurance, stolen-vehicle checks, accident responsibility. A plate-less bike is invisible to every automated control Vietnam has spent the last decade building, which is why the fine sits with red-light running and counterflow rather than with paperwork slips. Riders sometimes inherit the problem innocently — a plate lost in a fall, a new bike between purchase and registration — but the band does not distinguish; the cure is re-issuing the plate quickly, and the registration rules allow riding only within the temporary registration’s stated scope and time.
The production side is priced above the rider: making fake plates, or trafficking plates not produced by the state’s authorised producers, costs individuals 10,000,000–12,000,000 VND and confiscation under Article 31 of the decree.
For renters
A rental bike should have a clean, readable plate matching the registration copy under the seat. A bent, painted-over or obviously home-made plate on a rental is not cosmetic — it is a 4-to-6-million-dong identity violation that follows the bike’s owner first and the deposit terms second. Walk away from bikes whose plates look improvised; the paperwork story behind an improvised plate is rarely better.
Information, not legal advice. Verified against Decree 168/2024/NĐ-CP on 2026-09-22.