The aim of this paper is to propose a generalized Cardy formula for three-dimensional hyperscaling violation black holes. We first note that for the hyperscaling violation metrics, the scaling of the entropy in terms of the temperature (defined as the effective spatial dimensionality divided by the dynamical exponent) depends explicitly on the gravity theory. Starting from this observation, we first explore the case of quadratic curvature gravity theories for which we derive four classes of asymptotically hyperscaling violation black holes. For each solution, we compute the mass as well as the mass of the soliton counterpart obtained through a double Wick rotation. Assuming that the partition function has a certain invariance involving the effective spatial dimensionality, a generalized Cardy formula is derived. This latter is shown to correctly reproduce the entropy where the ground state is identified with the soliton. Comparing our formula with the one derived in the standard Einstein gravity case with source, we stress the role played by the effective spatial dimensionality. From this observation, we speculate the general form of the Cardy formula for hyperscaling violation metric with an arbitrary value of the effective spatial dimensionality. Finally, we test the viability of this formula in the case of a cubic gravity theory.