Prague to Vienna by car: two vignettes, one afternoon

Driving from Prague to Vienna takes two vignettes, a Czech one and an Austrian one, and nothing else. Both are digital, both live on your licence plate, and both can be bought on your phone before breakfast. The route itself is simple: the D1 to Brno, a short hop on the D52, an ordinary road through Mikulov, then the Austrian A5 into Vienna. The only real thinking is about dates.

How many vignettes do you need from Prague to Vienna?

A car driving from Prague to Vienna on the motorway needs exactly two vignettes: the Czech e-vignette for the D1 and D52, and the Austrian digital vignette for the A5 Nord Autobahn. There are no barriers for a car on either side. Cameras read your plate and check it against each country's register, so nothing goes on the windscreen and nobody waves you down at the border.

Most of the drive is the D1 across the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. Long, not exactly scenic. Pack snacks, not coins.

Which Czech stretches of the route need a vignette?

The Czech e-vignette is needed on two tolled stretches of this route: 176 km of the D1 from Průhonice to Kývalka (exits 6 to 182) and 13 km of the D52 from Rajhrad to Pohořelice-sever (exits 10 to 23), according to the official toll map on edalnice.gov.cz. Everything else you drive in Czechia is free. That covers the first kilometres of the D1 out of Prague, the D1 around Brno, the Pohořelice bypass and the ordinary road through Mikulov to the border.

Sounds like a loophole? It isn't. There is no motorway from Prague to Brno that avoids the tolled D1, and the free pieces are free because they carry local traffic. For a car in 2026, the state price list on edalnice.gov.cz gives CZK 230 for a 1-day vignette and CZK 300 for 10 days. Our Czech vignette page has the 30-day and annual prices and the discounts for gas-powered cars and plug-in hybrids.

What do you need after the Austrian border?

After the border at Mikulov and Drasenhofen you are on the Austrian A5 Nord Autobahn, and it needs an Austrian vignette from the first metre. ASFINAG's own FAQ lists the few vignette-free motorway stretches in Austria, short pieces of the A1, A12 and A14 at the German border plus the A26 in Linz, and the A5 is not among them. It is not on ASFINAG's list of section tolls either, so the vignette is the whole Austrian charge.

ASFINAG's online shop sells a car the 1-day vignette at €9.60 and the 10-day at €12.80 (checked September 2026), and both can be bought with immediate validity. One small change is coming: ASFINAG says 2026 is the last year it sells the adhesive sticker, and from 2027 only the digital vignette will exist. Nobody will miss scraping it off the glass with a bank card. The Austria vignette page covers the longer durations and the alpine tunnel tolls, none of which are on this drive.

What does the whole drive cost in vignettes?

The vignettes for a one-way Prague to Vienna drive in 2026 cost CZK 230 plus €9.60 on daily passes, or CZK 300 plus €12.80 on 10-day passes that also cover the drive back. State fees only, sources in the last column.

Official 2026 state fees for a car up to 3.5 t, checked September 2026. Download this table as CSV.

When do the two vignettes start and stop?

Both 1-day vignettes on this route are calendar-day passes, not 24-hour ones. eDalnice says a Czech vignette bought with immediate validity starts at the moment of payment and ends at 23:59:59 the same day, and ASFINAG sells its 1-day vignette for one calendar day, midnight to midnight.

For a daytime drive, fine. For the Sunday-evening run back to Prague, it's a trap. Leave Vienna at nine, lose an hour to roadworks, and the date changes somewhere on the D1 with a Czech daily pass that has just expired. The 10-day Czech pass costs CZK 70 more. Buy that and stop doing arithmetic.

Planning ahead works too: eDalnice lets you push the start of any Czech vignette up to 30 days, and it then begins at midnight on the day you pick.

Does an electric car need vignettes on this route?

An electric car pays nothing in Czechia and full price in Austria, but the Czech zero rate is not automatic for foreign plates. The eDalnice price list shows CZK 0 for electric and hydrogen cars and says that rate applies automatically only to vehicles registered in the Czech Republic. A car registered abroad needs an exemption notification, filed before it uses the toll motorway.

Austria has no such line. ASFINAG says all cars, motorbikes and camper vans up to 3.5 tonnes need a vignette, with no mention of fuel. So an electric car from Munich does the paperwork for Czechia and buys a normal vignette for the A5.

What if you drive Prague to Vienna every month?

Regular drivers should look at the Czech annual vignette first, because it runs 365 days from the start date you choose, not to a fixed date. eDalnice's own example: bought on 2 June 2026 with immediate validity, it lasts until 1 June 2027 at 23:59:59. At CZK 2,570 it beats buying 10-day passes from about the ninth trip, and the CZK 480 30-day pass covers one busy month.

Austria's longer passes need more planning. ASFINAG says the 2-month and annual digital vignettes, bought online by a private consumer, only become valid on the 18th day. Order them early, or you will be buying a 10-day pass to bridge the gap.

What usually goes wrong on this drive?

Most problems on the Prague to Vienna drive start at the keyboard: a mistyped plate, the wrong country of registration, or a start date one day off. Both vignettes live on the plate you type, and a vignette on the wrong plate protects nobody. Check both confirmation emails before you leave the car park.

The other classic is the scenic detour via Jihlava and Znojmo to "skip the motorways". It still uses the tolled D1 as far as Jihlava, so the Czech vignette is needed anyway, and the expressways that carry you into Vienna on the Austrian side are vignette roads too. If it does go wrong, the Czech government portal portal.gov.cz puts the fine at up to CZK 20,000, and ASFINAG's 2026 substitute toll for a car is €200. Our guide to driving without a vignette explains how each country collects. Picking up a hire car in Prague? Read vignettes for a rental car before assuming anything is included.

How do you sort both vignettes before you leave?

Buy both vignettes the evening before and pick 10-day passes unless your dates say otherwise. You can buy directly from eDalnice and ASFINAG at the state fee, on two portals in two currencies. Or do it once: order your official digital vignettes for Czechia and Austria here, with the state fee and our service fee shown separately before you pay, registered against your plate and confirmed by email. Carrying on past Vienna? Our Vienna to Budapest guide covers the next border, and the list of which European countries need a vignette covers the rest.

Prague to Vienna vignette FAQ