The three kinds of inspection station
New York requires an annual safety and emissions inspection. Two of the three inspection licences the Department issues will not help you get one.
The distinction, in one table
| Code | Licensed as | Current | Who it inspects |
|---|---|---|---|
ISP | Public Inspection Station | 8,021 | The public. Your vehicle. |
ISD | Dealer Inspection Station | 222 | The vehicles the dealer sells. |
ISF | Fleet Inspection Station | 181 | The operator’s own fleet. |
Nothing on a shopfront distinguishes them. The codes exist because the Department licenses the activity, not the building: a dealership that inspects the cars it sells is doing something narrower than a garage that inspects whatever drives in, and the licence says which.
The pairing that actually matters
7,643 facilities in New York hold both a repair shop licence and a public inspection station licence. Those are the places that can inspect your car and, if it fails, fix it without sending you somewhere else.
That combination is invisible in the Department’s own lookup, which returns one licence at a time. It is visible here because every search groups all the licences on a facility number. The facilities holding the most licences.
How to check before you drive there
- Get the facility number if you can — it is on the DMV record and often on the certificate displayed inside.
- Failing that, search the business name in the box above.
- Read the licence table on the result. If
ISPis there and current, the station may inspect your vehicle.
One caution, and it is real. The Department publishes this file annually and notes that « facilities expired less than 6 years are included in the data set ». A licence shown here as current was current when the file was published, not necessarily today. If the answer decides whether you drive across the county, ring the station, or check the Department’s own facility lookup, which is live.
Where the public stations are
| County | All DMV licences | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Suffolk | 4,088 | 10.1% |
| Nassau | 3,020 | 7.5% |
| Erie | 2,802 | 6.9% |
| Queens | 2,400 | 5.9% |
| Westchester | 2,033 | 5.0% |
| Monroe | 2,018 | 5.0% |
| Kings | 1,925 | 4.8% |
| Onondaga | 1,507 | 3.7% |
| Orange | 1,195 | 2.9% |
| Bronx | 1,103 | 2.7% |
| Oneida | 1,062 | 2.6% |
| Albany | 925 | 2.3% |
| Niagara | 793 | 2.0% |
| Dutchess | 782 | 1.9% |
| Broome | 649 | 1.6% |
| Richmond | 615 | 1.5% |
| Rockland | 608 | 1.5% |
| Saratoga | 594 | 1.5% |
| Chautauqua | 579 | 1.4% |
| Ulster | 550 | 1.4% |
Counties by the size of their DMV register; the county page breaks out how many of each licence are held there. All counties.
Need an inspection, or a shop that can do both?
Tell us where you are and what the vehicle needs. We pass the request to facilities holding a current licence — 8,021 public inspection stations across the state, 7,643 of which also repair.
We take no commission and we vouch for no garage. We have no arrangement with any facility today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. What we do with this.