Tolls and vignettes
Do I need a vignette to drive in Europe?
Verdict
Only in the eight countries that sell motorway time.
Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania want a vignette on the car before you join the motorway. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Greece charge by distance instead, at a barrier or by camera. Drive from Salzburg to Verona and you swap systems inside a tunnel.
The toll is rarely the problem. The middlemen are.
Vignette prices 2026: the eight countries that sell time
Prices are for a car up to 3.5 tonnes, checked on the operator's or the ministry's own site on 18 September 2026.
| Country | Shortest option | One year | Official site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 1 day, €9.60 | €106.80 | asfinag.at |
| Switzerland | none sold | CHF 40 | via.admin.ch |
| Czechia | 1 day, CZK 230 | CZK 2,570 | edalnice.gov.cz |
| Slovakia | 1 day, €8.10 | €90 (365 days) | eznamka.sk |
| Slovenia | 7 days, €16 | €117.50 | evinjeta.dars.si |
| Hungary | 1 day, HUF 5,550 | HUF 61,760 | nemzetiutdij.hu |
| Bulgaria | 1 day, €5.30 | €64.50 | bgtoll.bg |
| Romania | not verified | not verified | erovinieta.ro |
Format varies more than the price does. Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria are plate-based and digital; nothing goes on the glass. Switzerland still sells a real sticker alongside the e-vignette, and you choose.
Romania is the one I could not price at source. CNAIR's tariff pages would not load on any attempt on 18 September 2026, and I will not copy a rovinieta price off a reseller and call it official. Buy it at erovinieta.ro, CNAIR's own portal, and read the figure there.
Austria: where the vignette is valid at once
- At a counter: valid at oncePetrol stations, tobacconists and motoring club counters sell the digital vignette valid immediately, and the 2026 sticker while this year lasts.
- Online, 1 day or 10 days: valid at once€9.60 for a day, €12.80 for ten days, from ASFINAG's own shop.
- Online, 2 months or a year: valid after 18 days€32.00 or €106.80, and it only starts on the 18th day after you buy it.
The 18-day trap
This one catches people who did everything right. Buy the two-month or annual digital vignette online and it is not valid for 18 days: fourteen days of EU distance-selling withdrawal rights plus four days of postal buffer. The Austrian consumer ministry says the waiting period cannot be waived on an online purchase. The one-day and ten-day vignettes are the exception, valid at once even online (re-checked on oesterreich.gv.at on 30 September 2026).
Leaving within a fortnight? Don't buy the annual one online. I'd take the ten-day vignette, or buy at a petrol station counter before the border.
Switzerland and Slovenia: no short option at all
CHF 40 buys the 2026 Swiss vignette and nothing else, valid from 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027, so a single afternoon on the A2 costs the same as a year of them. Slovenia has no daily either: seven days for €16 is the floor.
The reseller swarm around every official vignette site
Search for any of these vignettes and the official site is rarely the first result. It is surrounded by sites with names built out of the words you typed: vignette plus the country, e-vignette plus a suffix, the official name with a different ending. Most are real. The vignette arrives and it works. You have simply paid two or three times the price for a form you could have filled in yourself in four minutes.
Memorise the domain, not the design. Czechia's is a .gov.cz address. Switzerland's e-vignette lives on via.admin.ch, like every other Swiss federal service. Slovenia's is a subdomain of dars.si, the motorway company. Bulgaria's bgtoll.bg belongs to the Road Infrastructure Agency. Anything else is a reseller, whatever the flag icons say.
I buy each one the week before I leave, from the table above, and I never use a search engine to get there.
What being caught costs, country by country
- Austria: replacement toll, payable within four weeks€200
- Austria: if you ignore it, the demand letter€365
- Austria: contest that, and the penalty notice€300–€3,000
- Switzerland: fine, plus the CHF 40 vignette you still oweCHF 200
- Czechiaup to CZK 20,000
- Slovakiaup to €200
- Slovenia€300
- Hungary: surcharge, paid within 60 daysHUF 27,790
- Hungary: surcharge after 60 daysHUF 95,730
- Bulgaria: compensatory fee, since 1 August 2026€46.50
Austria's replacement toll for a car rose from €120 on 1 January 2026. Hungary works on a surcharge instead of a fine, and Bulgaria's fee settles the matter without one. All of it is camera-enforced against the plate. In a hire car the notice reaches the rental company, which pays it, charges you, and adds an administration fee of its own on top.
France, Italy, Spain and Portugal: paying by the kilometre
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Greece run barriers. For a visitor the answer is nearly always the same: take the ticket, pick a lane marked with a card symbol, tap, go. Croatia's operator lists cash and Visa, Mastercard and Maestro at every plaza. Greece charges a flat fee per station rather than by distance: Attiki Odos around Athens is €2.80 for a car, and staffed lanes take cards.
Spain has no vignette at all, and its own government portal says so in one line. The AP motorways that still charge take euro cash, a card, or a Via-T tag. Poland barely charges cars any more: since 1 July 2023 vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes pay nothing on the state-run motorways. Three concession stretches still do charge, and the A4 between Katowice and Kraków wants PLN 18 at each of its two plazas, PLN 36 for the full run, and only until 16 March 2027, when the state takes the road back and cars stop paying.
Low-emission zones are a separate bill entirely, and they are the one that actually stops you at a city boundary: see France, Italy and Spain. The trip planner on ParkingInEurope lists the zones on a route.
France and Italy: free-flow tolls that arrive after you get home
Free-flow sections have no barrier and no warning. Cameras read the plate at motorway speed and the payment is your job afterwards.
France has three: the A79 in the Allier, the A13 and A14 between Paris and Normandy, and the Boulay interchange on the A4. The ministry's deadline is 72 hours, paid at the operator's site (sanef.com for the A13, A14 and A4, aliae.com for the A79) or in cash at a Nirio shop. Miss it and the notice carries a €90 surcharge, cut to €10 if you settle within 15 days. Leave it two months and a €375 fixed fine lands on top.
Italy's free flow is the Pedemontana Lombarda north of Milan. Its own terms give you 15 consecutive calendar days from the day of travel to pay at pedemontana.com. Croatia is going the same way: Crolibertas will let cars be charged by plate recognition across all 1,338 tolled kilometres, though its own site publishes no start date yet.
The pattern I watch for is a gantry with no booth under it. If you drive under one, the clock has started.
Portugal: the motorways that bill your hire car months later
Portugal's ex-SCUT motorways (the A22 in the Algarve, the A24, A25, A28 and their relatives) have no booths at all, and a foreign plate with nothing registered against it simply accrues a debt. The rental desk usually says nothing, then charges the card months later with fees attached.
Infraestruturas de Portugal runs the fix, and its site now answers at pttolls.com (portugaltolls.com redirects there).
| Product | What it costs | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| EASYToll | €1, plus €0.32 a journey | Links your bank card to the plate, valid 30 days |
| TOLLcard | €5, €10, €20 or €40, plus €0.32 a journey | Prepaid |
| Go Toll (Via Verde) | €0.77 a month | Charged only in months you drive |
None of them covers the two Lisbon bridges. Skip all three and the transport regulator's rule applies: pay within five working days at an authorised point, or the fine is 7.5 times the toll and never less than €25, per passage. A week in the Algarve can turn a €14 motorway bill into three figures.
What a toll badge is actually worth
A French Ulys badge costs nothing to set up, €2.20 in any month you use it, and nothing in months you do not. It opens the yellow t lanes in France, works on the free-flow sections automatically, and takes an option for Spain and Portugal or for Italy.
For two weeks and one crossing of France, a contactless card at the barrier does the same job. I fit the badge when the trip includes the A13, the Pedemontana or Portugal, the places where there is no barrier to stop at and no cashier to hand a card to. That is what you are buying: not the queue you skip, but the bill you never have to remember to pay.
Next on the road
Parking on the way
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Sources
- oesterreich.gv.at — Vignette for motor vehicles up to 3.5 t (2026 prices, digital vignette rules)
- ASFINAG — Toll sticker: the 2026 sticker and the switch to digital only from 2027
- Konsumentenfragen.at (Austrian consumer ministry) — the 18-day waiting period on a digital vignette bought online
- European Consumer Centre (EVZ) — Austria: replacement toll of €200 from 1 January 2026 and the penalty range
- ch.ch (Swiss Confederation) — motorway vignette: CHF 40, validity, CHF 200 fine
- Swiss Federal Office for Customs and Border Security — vignette and e-vignette FAQ (via.admin.ch webshop)
- eDálnice (Czech state e-shop) — vignette price list valid from 1 January 2026
- eDálnice — supervision and fines: up to CZK 20,000
- NDS (Slovak motorway operator) — electronic vignette prices and validity
- eZnamka (NDS) — fine of up to €200 for driving without a valid e-vignette
- Uradni list RS — Uredba o cestninskih cestah in cestnini (Slovenian vignette prices by toll class)
- DARS E-vinjeta — FAQ: €300 fine, e-vignette is digital only
- Nemzeti Útdíjfizetési Szolgáltató — e-matrica prices and surcharges from 1 January 2026 (PDF)
- BG TOLL (Road Infrastructure Agency) — new vignette prices and compensatory fee from 1 August 2026
- CNAIR — the rovinieta and bridge tolls are paid through www.erovinieta.ro
- Ministère de la Transition écologique — free-flow tolling: 72 hours to pay, €90 surcharge, €375 fine
- Sanef — how to pay the free-flow toll on the A13 and A14
- VINCI Autoroutes — Ulys badge subscription fees (€2.20 per month used, no set-up fee)
- Autostrada Pedemontana Lombarda — free-flow payment within 15 consecutive days
- PT Tolls (Infraestruturas de Portugal) — EASYToll, Tollcard and Go Toll for foreign-registered vehicles
- AMT (Portuguese transport authority) — electronic tolls: payment deadlines and fines from 7.5× the toll, minimum €25
- Administración General del Estado — Spain applies no vignette; toll payment methods
- e-TOLL (Polish Ministry of Finance) — tolls abolished for light vehicles on state motorways from 1 July 2023
- Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska — A4 Katowice–Kraków tolls and payment methods
- Hrvatske autoceste — toll rates and accepted payment methods
- Crolibertas (HAC, Bina Istra, Autocesta Zagreb–Macelj) — about the new free-flow toll system
- Attiki Odos — toll rates and payment methods
- Tolls and how to pay — Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska: the A4 Katowice–Kraków tariff in force from 1 April 2026
- End of tolls for cars and motorcycles on the A4 Katowice–Kraków — GDDKiA: the state takes the road over on 16 March 2027
We don't sell vignettes or toll badges and don't link to resellers.