It primarily serves southern El Cerrito, northern Albany, and Kensington, along with nearby portions of Berkeley and Richmond.

[2] As with El Cerrito del Norte station, the escalator walls feature tile mosaics by Alfonso Pardiñas.

[5] UC Berkeley music professor Jorge Liderman committed suicide at the station on February 3, 2008.

[7] Thirteen BART stations, including El Cerrito Plaza, did not originally have faregates for passengers using the elevator.

[8] In 2018, BART and the city of El Cerrito signed a memorandum of understanding to begin planning for transit-oriented development to replace surface parking lots at the station.