Portugal's motorway tolls and how to master them

Travelling to Portugal by car or renting one when you get there? You need to know about the motorway tolls!

Tourists and travellers from the UK in Portugal were shocked to realise that the Portuguese government was levying a toll on all motorways in order to boost their coffers. Since all of the non-toll motorways had been built without toll plazas, the only way to collect money was through image recognition technology that reads number plates.


This has caused huge confusion for anyone visiting the country and either hiring a car or bringing over their own vehicle. Local, non-motorway roads are now choc-a-bloc with cars avoiding the tolls which makes for a very pleasant driving experience if you choose to pay. However, you need to be aware of some things first:

Normal toll motorways
These still exist and you'll find a mixture of automatic and traditional tolls throughout the country. The traditional tolls work with a ticket system: take the ticket at one end and then surrender it at the other end where you pay, either through a machine or to a real person. Be aware that tolls are quite pricey - the journey from Lisbon down to the A22 on the Algarve coast for example will cost you over €20. A normal toll has nothing to do with electronic tolls, other than Via Verde. So, although you have bought an EasyToll or Tollcard (see below) you'll still need to pay these charges if it's a "proper" toll motorway.

Automatic toll motorways
These are easily identified by the gantries that span the road. When you see one of these, you'll already have passed signage that tells you how much you are going to pay for that stretch of motorway. You may remark that it looks very cheap - sometimes less than €1 - but you will find that as you cross different administrative boundaries, the local authorities collect the tolls for their stretch of motorway. A run from Faro to the west coast for example may go through six or eight toll gantries (I've not counted them).

OK - so far so easy. But how do you pay? This is the tricky bit. You are supposed to pay between two and five days after you incur the charge - easy on your inward journey from the airport, say. But rather tricky if you are driving to the airport to drop off your car.

Use a Via Verde transponder - some car hire companies get around this by issuing a transponder tag which is linked to the car registration and automatically clocks up the tolls. The hire company then charges you what you have incurred. How do you know it's right? Well, essentially you don't. Unless you write down every toll charge as you pass through the gantry and then tot them up, plus add in the rental fee for the tag and anything else they choose to throw at you, then you'll be in the dark. The potential for error and fraud is high, but it's a better alternative than some. You can also buy a temporary visitor's Via Verde device. However, watch the costs! You pay for them in cash and load them with an initial deposit.

Pay at a Post Office - well, bear in mind that you can't pay until two days later, you should then be trying to work out how you can get your car back without incurring tolls. In fact, what happens is that, if you go to a Post Office, you are likely to be paying for the previous renter's return journey to the airport at a minimum! They will not have been able to pay it.

Link your credit/debit card to the registration of the vehicle (EasyToll) - I would strongly advise that you only do this if you are driving your own car. You may find otherwise that the tolls are totting up after you have left the country.

To link your car's registration to a credit card, you need to find a location where the relevant machines are present. This is generally at border crossings into the country. So, for example, there are machines as you begin your journey on the A25 motorway at Vilar Formoso.

Others may be found on the A28 at Viana do Castelo; the A24 at Chaves; the A22 at Vila Real de Santo António.

Registration of this sort collects tolls from your card for 30 days and the system issues you a ticket to prove that you have made that connection. After 30 days, what do you do? Well, you'll need to find another way to pay or you'll need to go to one of these border crossing points. Probably your best bet is ...

The Tollcard - you buy it for foreign licence plate cars only (so you can't use it with your hire car). It's valid for one year and you buy it with a predetermined amount of money on it. You can buy the card online, at Post Offices or at motorway service areas. It's validated by SMS from your phone and it's linked to your licence plate. You will have to pay for the SMS text message which will be sent from your phone to Portugal. You can activate multiple cards in order to build up a balance for your use and you can check that balance online. You'll receive an alert when the balance runs out.

Update: Just a note that if you do use the Tollcard, the mix of letters and numbers on the code can be misleading. They use I and O as well as 1 and 0. Don't mix them up as I did!

OK - so what happens if you don't pay your toll for some reason? You get fined 10 times the toll with a minimum of €25. How far they will pursue you for it if they don't have your credit card details is a question that perhaps some readers can answer. Bear in mind that they have your registration and may pursue you when you come back to the country in the future.

All in all, the tolls system is confusing - this page answers many of your questions. We bought the EasyToll option, but we think that may have not been the right choice since we are here for seven weeks. Bearing in mind it's valid only for 30 days, we'll now need to choose another method. Looking at the options, for us the Tollcard is the best and easiest choice. So, we'll be seeking out the Post Office in due course!