E-vignettes: why they are tied to the number plate

A vignette is a time-based charge: you pay for a period rather than for the distance, and drive as much as you like within it. For a long time the proof was a sticker on the windscreen, checked by looking at it, at the border or by the roadside.

With the electronic vignette there is no sticker any more, or it is only one of two options. Instead, the plate is entered in a central register at purchase, together with the country of registration, the vehicle category and the period of validity. Cameras along the road and mobile patrols read the plate and query the register.

That has advantages for you: you can buy around the clock, even on the road, and there is no sticker to put on the windscreen and scrape off later. If the windscreen is replaced, nothing is lost. The price is that everything hangs on a single detail you type in yourself.

That leads to a difference you need to know. The sticker belonged to the vehicle whose windscreen it was stuck to, whatever plate it carried. The e-vignette belongs to a plate. Treat one like the other and you either pay twice or drive without.

In central and south-eastern Europe the electronic vignette is now the norm:

The details differ: which periods are offered, from when a vignette is valid, which roads it covers, and whether individual sections cost extra. Hungary, for example, sells county vignettes as well as the national one. And in Austria a digital vignette bought online as a private individual is not valid immediately because of the statutory right of withdrawal, only after a waiting period; bought at a sales point, it is valid at once.

Additional section tolls can in some cases also be paid digitally in advance against the plate, in Austria for example on some tunnel and pass routes. The same care then applies as with the vignette. Paying by card or cash at the toll booth needs no data entry, but in peak season it means a longer queue.

The list of countries changes. Countries move from the sticker to the register, occasionally from the vignette to distance-based tolls. So check before the trip what applies in every country on the route — and expect things to work differently further south, where you pay for distance rather than time.

The plate you enter at purchase is the vignette. One swapped letter, a zero instead of an O, a missing character, the wrong country — and the vignette applies to a vehicle that does not exist or belongs to someone else. As far as the camera is concerned, you are driving without one.

Whether a mistake can be fixed depends on the country. Switzerland, for instance, lets you correct a typo in its portal shortly after purchase, and later transfer the vignette to a new plate only in certain cases, such as when the same vehicle with the same keeper gets a new plate; if vehicle and plate change together, no transfer is possible. Other countries are similarly strict or stricter. What is possible is set out by the official source — read it before you pay, not afterwards.

So copy the plate from the registration document, not from memory, and exactly as the form asks — usually without spaces or hyphens. Check the confirmation straight after buying, before you set off, and keep it as a file and on paper. Before paying, check:

When you buy a car, the seller's e-vignette is worthless to you: it applies to their plate. If you drive home on transfer or export plates, you need a vignette for exactly that plate, in every country on the route that requires one. Conversely, a vignette bought for the transfer plate stops being any use once the car gets its new plate at home.

A sticker vignette on the windscreen of the car you bought, on the other hand, belongs to the vehicle. As long as it is valid and the windscreen is not replaced, it stays valid, even on a different plate.

You often only know the transfer plate on collection day. The e-vignette can then be bought at short notice, online or at a sales point before the border, with two caveats. First, it must be valid immediately; in Austria, buying as a private individual, that means at a sales point, not online. Second, the form has to accept the plate. If it does not, do not try a similar spelling; ask at an official sales point or the operator's helpline instead.

Search for “buy vignette” and you often end up with intermediaries first. Some are official sales partners, many are not: they sell the same vignette at a mark-up, pass on your data and add one more step where a typo can creep in unnoticed. Some sites are simply fraudulent. You are safe buying from the official source itself or from the sales partners it lists on its website, such as filling stations and motoring clubs. The official sources are:

Checks are made with fixed and mobile cameras and at the roadside, often just past the border. Nobody needs to stop you for it. The consequences follow different mechanisms: Austria demands a substitute toll, a fixed amount, and only starts penalty proceedings if it is not paid in time. In Switzerland the fine comes on top of having to buy the vignette. Hungary levies a surcharge that rises if it is not paid promptly.

Demands often arrive weeks or months later, addressed to the keeper of the plate — on a transfer plate, that is you. Many official sources offer an online check of whether a valid vignette exists for a plate; use it before the trip to confirm your purchase went through, and after a demand to see whether it is right. Keep the purchase confirmation until the vignette has expired, and for a good while after that.