Tolls to use the highways in Austria, Czechia and Slovakia

Sorry - hit send too soon.

I thought i read somewhere that you need to purchase something when you enter certain countries to use the toll roads? Is that correct?

Thanks in advance!

• Road Trip

Day 1 - Drive to Bratislava - tour for a few hours - Drive to Vienna
Day 2 - Tour Vienna
Day 3 - Drive to Prague
Day 4-7 - Tour Prague
Day 8 - Drive to Chesky Krumlov - Drive to Krems
Day 9 - Drive to Melk - Drive to Szentendre
Day 10 - Drive to Budapest and drop off car.

In Austria, you need a vignette which is a sticker affixed to the windshield. They authorities are phasing in digital vignettes, so ask at your car rental agency if your car already has one. It is likely it does.

As a general comment, you are making this trip much more complicated by driving. Use the trains instead.

Final comment, it is Slovakia, not Slovenia.

Jtp, you can edit your own posts if you hit "send" too soon. I do this regularly when I spot typos after I posted.

For Austrian Autobahns ("Highway" is a vague undefined word. "Autobahn" = Motorway in English and is legally defined with distinct signs), you pay tolls by days, not per Km. You pay by buying a "vignette" and sticking it on your car windscreen. You can buy them at the border.

You might want to verify with the Hungarian car rental that they allow the car to go into the Czech Republic. Some companies don't want their cars taken there which indicates there may be some legal glitches or situations they want to avoid.
We have taken that route--by trains. Backtracking to Hungary can be expensive and inefficient. Many people prefer to fly open jaw into once city and out of another--traveling in a straight line.

We drove around Slovenia pretty extensively and never encountered any tolls.

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes we considered taking the trains very seriously. We are a traveling as a group - a total of 7 and decided a car (while not ideal) would give us some flexibility, esp when traveling in the Wachau valley.

Great suggestion about where we can take the car - my friend's husband booked the car - but I will confirm. I know we had something similar when we rented a car in German and took it to visit friends in Prague (we got pre-approval to take it there).

I will also check with the rental agency about the tolls by country.

Thank you so much!!

Here is an article from Gemut about vignettes. Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia all require vignettes, at least for motorways.
https://www.gemut.com/car-rental-europe-basics/4012-driving-in-europe-vignettesdriving-stickers.html

@ David, Slovenia also uses vignettes, so you would never encounter a toll. If you rented a car in Slovenia, it would have one attached automatically. If you rented from outside of Slovenia and did not buy one and attach it when you entered the country, you dodged a bullet. Big fine for not having one attached to the windshield.

And for your route all drivers require an IDP in conjunction with their home driving license which if you are from the US is available from AAA, in Canada from CAA, in other countries' locations if you say you are somewhere different.

Needs a photo, or they can provide, runs around or under $20 US/CDN. You need it before you leave home - you can't get one in your destination.

Thank you for the great advice!