During our Roadtrip in Central Europe, we went through Hungary and had trouble finding relevant and up-to-date information about the electronic motorway vignette.
Indeed, there is no toll road in Hungary but a fee to pay in the form of vignette.
Find step by step the procedure to follow for buying this sticker on the internet before your arrival in the country and avoid any fine.
Sommaire
Sticker vignette or electronic vignette ?
For several years Hungary has adopted an electronic vignette system (e-matrica).
Gateways scan the license plates at the entrances of the motorways in question and check whether the tax has been paid for the vehicle or not.
There is no more sticker to stick on the windshield like in Switzerland or Austria for example.
How to choose the Vignette ?
There are two criteria to take into account when choosing the sticker: the period of validity and the corresponding category of vehicle.
The shortest sticker (and also the cheapest) is valid for 10 days.
The following sticker is valid for 1 month.
And finally the annual vignette that should not often affect you is valid for a year.
It is possible to buy several vignette if the duration do not match your trip, it will be necessary to pay attention to the dates of beginning and end in these cases.
For categories, you will be most of the time in the D1 category for a standard car.
How much does the vignette cost in Hungary ?
Prices are given in Forint, the Hungarian currency.
As I write this article, the 10-day vignette for a standard car (D1) costs 9 €.
This vignette allows you to use all the motorways of the country as many times as you like. Not very expensive when compared to overpriced French tolls (Paris-Marseille: 60 €)
You can find this table and various information on this website.
Toll-free road sections
At present, the following roads are free:
- the following sections of Expressway M0 :
the section between Main Road 1 and Motorway M5,
the section between Expressway M4 (Expressway 4 sign) and Motorway M3,
Megyeri Bridge (the section between Main Roads 2 and 11),
- Motorway M31,
- the Pécs Southwest bypass section of Motorway M60 between roads 58 and 5826,
- Motorway M8,
- the section of Expressway M9 between Main Roads 6 and 51,
- the Kaposvár bypass section of Expressway M9 (Main Road 61 sign),
- the section of Expressway M4 (Expressway 4 sign) between Vecsés and Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport.
Procedure on how to buy the Hungarian sticker online
To begin, it is necessary to buy the sticker before entering the toll motorway network to avoid any fine (about 45 € if paid within 30 days).
If you do not want to buy the sticker online, you can find a list of sales points at this address: http://toll-charge.hu/sales_points/index/eng only be careful not to enter a paid part of the road to reach the sales points…
To start buying the vignette go to this page: https://ematrica.nemzetiutdij.hu/
Since the payment is in a currency other than the euro, additional fees may be added by your bank.
Here we are at the end of this procedure, you have all the necessary information to choose and buy your sticker online.
Now you can travel freely on the Hungarian motorways and enjoy this beautiful country!
[…] Be careful, an electronic vignette is necessary to drive on most of the motorways of Hungary. We had trouble finding information on the procedure to follow so we wrote a detailed article about it: How to buy the Hungarian motorway vignette ? […]
Be aware that even paying you could have problems as I’m dealing with now. I had a car rented from Slovakia and now, after 6 months they’re claiming two fines from Hungarian motorway. The “fanny” is that was paid. But how there isn’t stamp you must keep the receipt for at lest ONE YEAR. Believe it ONE YEAR!! how you may thinking, who keeps that for so long? So now I really don’t know what to do. Any suggestions ???
I’m sorry to hear that. That’s a shame that they are waiting so long to ask you this… Don’t you have any mail from when you bought the vignette ?