Austria Vignette 2026: Prices, Rules and Where to Buy

Austria's vignette is the time-based toll for every motorway (A) and expressway (S) in the country, run by the state operator ASFINAG. Unlike Bulgaria or Romania, ordinary roads are free: the obligation starts where the motorway does.

Where to get it is simple: ASFINAG sells the vignette itself, through its official shop and app and a dense network of physical partners, petrol stations and automobile clubs. This page gives you everything around that purchase, the tariff, the timing rules and the traps, plus the neighbouring vignettes for the rest of your route, which you can buy right here.

Do You Need a Vignette in Austria?

For every motor vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes using a motorway or expressway, yes, and that includes motorcycles, which is unusual: most vignette countries exempt them, Austria does not.

Who Is Exempt from the Austrian Vignette?

Effectively one group. Holders of an Austrian disability pass (Behindertenpass) with the entry that public transport is unreasonable for them receive a free digital annual vignette, and with it free multi-trip cards for the A9, A10, A13 and S16 section tolls, though not for the A11 Karawanken. The scheme runs through the Austrian authorities and is checked against the plate register.

That is the list. Motorcycles pay, trailers ride free on the car's account, electric cars pay in full, and vehicles over 3.5 tonnes are not exempt but in a different system altogether. Austria pairs one of Europe's highest vignette-compliance rates, 98 per cent by ASFINAG's own count, with one of its shortest exemption lists.

Official 2026 Vignette Prices

Prices are set by law, adjusted to inflation once a year, and identical through every official channel. The 2026 tariff, valid for the vignette year 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027:

The annual vignette runs the full 14-month vignette year, not 365 days from purchase. The 1-day vignette exists only in digital form.

How the Validity Actually Counts

Three counting rules, all from ASFINAG's own worked examples, decide whether your vignette covers the drive home:

• The 10-day vignette includes its start day. Valid from 10 January means it expires at midnight on 19 January, not the 20th. Plan the return leg on the calendar, not on your fingers.
• The 2-month vignette runs calendar months, not 60 days. Valid from 10 January, it ends at midnight on 10 March, which is 59 days in some months and 62 in others.
• The 1-day vignette is a calendar day, not 24 hours. Bought for immediate use at 15:07, it expires the same day at 23:59. Buying it the evening before an early start wastes most of it.
• The annual vignette belongs to the vignette year, not to you. The "26" vignette runs 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027 whenever you buy it: purchased in August, it still dies on 31 January. And to have a digital annual live for the 1 February changeover, ASFINAG's own cutoff for online purchase is 14 January.

If you do buy this year's fire-red sticker, the mounting rules are strict enough to void a careless one: it must be glued directly to the inside of the windscreen, outside any tint strip, with the backing removed, and it may be stuck once only. Films, suction mounts and tape make it invalid, and on a motorcycle it belongs on a non-removable part such as the fork or tank, never on a top box. Most drivers have already moved on: nearly four in five annual vignettes are digital.

The 18-Day Rule: Buy Online at the Right Time

This is the single most important Austrian quirk, and it exists because of EU consumer protection: online purchases carry a 14-day withdrawal right, plus a buffer for post. The result:

So the practical rule: short trip, buy the 1-day or 10-day online with immediate validity; longer coverage on short notice, buy at a physical sales point at or before the border.

The digital vignette carries three conveniences the sticker never had: with Austrian interchangeable plates one vignette covers up to three vehicles sharing the plate, a broken windscreen changes nothing because the registration lives on the plate, and the plate itself can be changed once per validity period without giving a reason for an €18 handling fee, free where a qualifying reason applies.

What the Vignette Does Not Cover: Special Toll Sections

Austria's major Alpine tunnels and passes are Sondermautstrecken, separately tolled sections. Your vignette does not apply there; you pay per crossing at the toll plaza or online. In return, a vignette is not required while you are on the special-toll section itself.

Approximate 2026 car prices per single crossing:

Driving Munich to Italy over the Brenner therefore means a vignette for the A12/A13 approach plus the Brenner toll; Germany to Croatia over the Tauern means a vignette plus the A10 tunnels; and onwards to Slovenia the Karawanken toll on top.

Worth knowing before you pay full rate: most sections sell part-route tariffs (half the Tauern route is €7.50; short Brenner segments start at €1.00) and multi-trip cards that pay off from about six crossings a year, with the Karawanken offering a 14-trip monthly card at €40.40. The digital section toll registers your plate so the barrier opens by itself, and ASFINAG's FLEX option bills each passage afterwards. For any route, ASFINAG's own Mautplaner tool answers exactly which products the drive needs.

Where You Do Not Need a Vignette at All

To spare border towns, a few motorway sections are legally exempt from the vignette:

• A1 from the Walserberg border (Germany) to the Salzburg Nord exit
• A12 from the Kufstein border (Germany) to Kufstein-Süd
• A14 from the Hörbranz border (Germany) to Hohenems in Vorarlberg
• A26 in Linz, a fourth exempt stretch that only becomes vignette-liable once its link to the A7 opens

These let you reach Salzburg, Kufstein and the Vorarlberg valley without a vignette. Miss the last free exit, though, and the automatic cameras treat you like any other driver without one.

Fines: the Ersatzmaut Went Up in 2026

Enforcement is automatic camera checks plus ASFINAG patrols, and there is no grace period. Caught without a valid vignette, you are offered the Ersatzmaut (replacement toll), which settles the matter on the spot:

The detail almost every guide gets wrong: the Ersatzmaut and the fine are alternatives, not a sequence. Under the toll act, paying the substitute toll extinguishes the offence entirely; the €300 to €3,000 range exists only for drivers who do not pay it. Enforcement itself is a relocatable camera network that moves sites every couple of weeks plus around a hundred ASFINAG supervision officers, who can collect on the spot and, if payment is refused, stop the journey there.

How to Check a Vignette: the Vignettenevidenz

Austria runs the most open vignette register in Europe. The Vignettenevidenz on the ASFINAG site takes a licence plate and its country of registration and returns what is on file: vehicle class, digital vignette or section-toll ticket, and the exact validity window. Anyone can query any plate, which makes three checks trivial:

• After buying, confirm the plate went in exactly right, because the registration is character-exact.
• Before a rental trip, check whether the car already carries a valid vignette instead of trusting the paperwork.
• For a sticker, the checks are physical: the tilt hologram with the federal eagle, the year in the hologram, and no residue on the backing film. A sticker that peels or was re-stuck is invalid regardless of how genuine it is.

Switzerland's equivalent check only works if the buyer flagged the vignette publicly viewable; Austria's works for every digital vignette, every time.

Transit Traps: Tyrol Closes Its Exits

One Austrian rule catches through-traffic completely off guard, and it has nothing to do with the vignette. On summer weekends and holidays, from May to November between 07:00 and 19:00, the province of Tyrol closes selected motorway exits and side roads to transit traffic around Innsbruck, Kufstein, the Fernpass and Reutte. The target is sat-nav shortcut traffic: when the A12 or A13 jams and your navigation offers a clever village detour, following it is a fineable offence unless your actual destination lies inside the zone. Police and provincial officers turn shortcut traffic back onto the motorway by the hundred thousand each season; residents, local guests and deliveries are exempt.

Add the Brenner reality check: the Luegbrücke south of Innsbruck has run on reduced lanes since 2025, with two-lane operation on most summer days but single-lane windows outside them. On this corridor, patience on the A13 is not just the legal option, it is usually the faster one.

Driving On? The Rest of Your Route

Austria is rarely the whole trip. The countries around it run their own vignette systems, none of which honour the Austrian one, and those we do sell, with your plate registered in minutes:

• Czechia for the Vienna to Prague run
• Slovakia for Vienna to Bratislava and onward east
• Hungary for Vienna to Budapest and the Balkan route
• Slovenia for the Karawanken corridor to Ljubljana and the coast
• Switzerland for westbound Alpine routes

New to the whole concept? Our plain-English vignette guide explains how these systems fit together in two minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions