A license plate detection and recognition system receives training data comprising images of license plates. The system prepares ground truth data from the training data based predefined parameters. The system trains a first machine learning algorithm based on the ground truth data to generate a license plate detection model. The license plate detection model is configured to detect one or more regions in the images. The one or more regions contains a candidate for a license plate. The LPDR system generates a bounding box for each region. The LPDR system trains a second machine learning algorithm based on the ground truth data and the license plate detection model to generate a license plate recognition model. The license plate recognition model generates a sequence of alphanumeric characters with a level of recognition confidence for the sequence.