Read a utility meter from a photo
Meter faces are the one place the phone tools genuinely struggle. Seven-segment digits and mechanical dials do not look like printed text, and glass adds glare on top.
This tool runs in the browser. The app does the same from your camera, keeps a history, and works offline.
The rule that catches most wrong readings
On a great many electricity and gas meters, digits shown in red, or set behind a red border, or placed after a decimal point, are tenths — and your supplier does not want them. Read the black digits left to right and stop at the red one.
The same applies to most water meters: black digits are cubic metres, red ones are litres, and a standard reading is the black digits only. Submitting the red digits is the single most common cause of a wildly wrong bill: one extra red digit multiplies the reading by ten, three red litre digits on a water meter by a thousand.
This tool does not apply the rule for you. It reads a greyscale image and cannot tell a red digit from a black one, so it returns every run of three or more digits it finds, longest first — the full strip, fractions included. Count the black digits on the meter, keep that many from the left of the result, and drop the rest. Cropping the red section out of the photo before you scan does the same job.
Meter types, and which are hard
| Type | What to read | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Digital, single rate | All digits before the decimal point | Easy |
| Digital, two rate | Two readings, usually cycling or labelled R1 and R2 | Wait for the display to cycle and photograph each |
| Mechanical, black and red | Black digits only | Easy, once you know the rule |
| Dial meter | Each pointer, left to right; if between two numbers take the lower | Hard — no automatic reader is reliable here |
Getting a photo that reads
- Kill the glare. Meter windows are glass or scratched plastic. Shade with your hand rather than using flash, which reflects straight back.
- Square on. Meters sit in cupboards at awkward angles, and skew is what turns a 6 into an 8.
- Wake the display. Digital meters sleep. Press the button and shoot while it is lit.
- Keep the photo. Whatever any reader tells you, a dated photograph of the meter is your evidence in a billing dispute. That is the real reason to take it.
Frequently asked questions
The result has more digits than the black ones on my meter.
That is expected: the tool reads the whole strip, red digits included. Keep as many digits from the left as your meter shows in black, and drop the rest.
It misread my dial meter.
Dial meters need a human. Read each pointer left to right and take the lower number whenever a pointer sits between two digits.
Guides for this
The tool reads the number. These cover where it lives, why a read fails, and what to do with the result.
How to Read My Electric Meter From a Photo
How to read my electric meter correctly from a photo: which digits count, why red numbers are ignored, dial meters, Economy 7 rows, and where OCR trips up.
Water Meter OCR: Reading a Meter From a Photo
Water meter OCR is harder than it looks: fogged glass, red sweep hands and odometer digits mid-roll. What to photograph, and which digits actually get reported.
Do this with a camera instead
Your phone will offer its camera right here — the file picker above includes Take Photo. What the app adds is swiping over just the black digits on the photo it just took, so the red ones never get read, plus a paid history that keeps last month's reading to compare against. It works with no connection and skips the 7 MB engine download.