The paper analyzes the existing technique of VLPR, and then proposes a kind of license plate recognition system based on FPGA. The paper introduce the idea of designing system and the method of designing circuit by using FPGA in detail. And it also shows the actual test results. Compared with the previous system based on PC and DSP, the FPGA system is characterized in smaller size, faster computing speed and higher accuracy of recognition. After the test of more than 100 license plate images captured under different environments, the results show that the recognition accuracy is above 98%.