RFID technology has many potential applications that would ease object identification seamlessly. One of its potential benefits to government is the adoption of RFID tag as embedded smart material within vehicle license plate. However, adoption of RFID in vehicle license plate is fragile from various RFID attacks while efforts to improve its security will lead to additional cost. Enhancing RFID security without extra cost poses new challenges to researchers in the area. This study aims to provide a state of the art on RFID authentication protocols under low cost restriction as a foundation for decision maker for further
development stage of RFID based vehicle license plate. In depth analysis is performed by assessing the protocols according to three features namely data protection, tracking prevention, and forward security. Finally, it is concluded that the protocols are vary in satisfying three aspects of security features.