How COE bidding works
Plain answers to the questions people ask most about Singapore's Certificate of Entitlement. Each answer links to the LTA page it comes from.
What is a COE?
A Certificate of Entitlement (COE) gives you the right to own and use a vehicle in Singapore. You need one to register a vehicle, and you get one by bidding in LTA's COE open bidding exercises.
How long does a COE last?
A COE lets you use a vehicle on the road for 10 years.
When it expires you can deregister the vehicle, or renew the COE for 5 or 10 years by paying the Prevailing Quota Premium (PQP). How often and for how long you can renew depends on the vehicle's category, so check LTA's renewal page for your case.
Source: LTA OneMotoring, Certificate of Entitlement (COE), LTA OneMotoring, COE renewal
What are the COE categories?
There are five. Category A: non-fully electric cars with engines up to 1,600cc and maximum power output up to 97kW (130bhp), and fully electric cars up to 110kW (147bhp). Category B: non-fully electric cars above 1,600cc or 97kW (130bhp), and fully electric cars above 110kW (147bhp). Category C: goods vehicles and buses. Category D: motorcycles. Category E: open, usable for any vehicle except a motorcycle.
These car definitions apply to COEs from the first bidding exercise of May 2022. Earlier rounds used different rules.
Source: LTA OneMotoring, COE open bidding results, LTA, COE quota for May 2026 to July 2026
How does COE bidding work?
LTA holds two open bidding exercises a month. Each normally opens on a Monday at 12 noon and closes on the Wednesday at 4pm, moving when public holidays fall on those days.
Your bid is a reserve price: the most you are prepared to pay. While bidding is open, LTA shows a Current COE Price, which is the highest unsuccessful bid plus $1. When the exercise closes, everyone who bid at or above that price gets a COE, and all successful bidders in a category pay the same price, called the Quota Premium (QP).
Source: LTA, Schedule of COE Open Bidding Exercises 2026, LTA OneMotoring, Certificate of Entitlement (COE)
When are COE results announced?
Shortly after bidding closes at 4pm on the closing day. LTA first shows provisional results while they are being finalised, then the final quota premiums and bid counts.
This site checks for new results about every 30 minutes from 4pm to 9.30pm on bidding days, and publishes each round's page once the results appear.
How is the COE quota decided?
LTA updates the quota every three months. Since February 2018 the allowed growth in the vehicle population has been 0% a year for Categories A, B and D (0.25% for Category C), currently until 31 January 2028, so new COEs come almost entirely from vehicles being deregistered.
Since February 2023, each quarter's quota is based on the rolling average of deregistrations over the previous four quarters. LTA then adjusts it: 10% of deregistrations from Categories A, B and C go to Category E, and from February 2025 LTA is progressively injecting up to about 20,000 additional COEs across categories over a few years.
Source: LTA, COE quota for May 2026 to July 2026, LTA OneMotoring, Certificate of Entitlement (COE)
What is the PQP?
The Prevailing Quota Premium (PQP) is the moving average of the COE price (quota premium) over the last three months in which bidding was held. It is what you pay to renew a COE. Months with no bidding, such as April to June 2020, are left out of the average.
Source: LTA OneMotoring, COE renewal, LTA OneMotoring, Certificate of Entitlement (COE)
Where does this site's data come from?
Every figure is published by LTA. Bidding history comes from LTA's COE bidding results on data.gov.sg: per-exercise results from 2010, and older results back to 2002. The newest round is read from LTA's OneMotoring open bidding page on the day it closes, then replaced by the data.gov.sg figures once those are published.
Source: data.gov.sg, COE bidding results, LTA OneMotoring, COE open bidding results