Need to know: The Algarve toll road

If you’ve never wondered about the Algarve toll roads, you’re not alone. I’m used to toll roads around Europe – from the UK’s first toll motorway on the way to my parents’ to France’s unexpectedly efficient network – where you drive up, wave a credit card or some cash, and drive on. Easy.

But I hadn’t even really thought about tolls in Portugal before my daughter’s first trip to the Algarve as a baby, until the friends we were holidaying with (who had arrived a day before we landed) told us their car hire company had told them they had to avoid motorways entirely because it would cost too much.

UPDATE: There are no longer any toll roads in the Algarve – all charges, including the main A22, were abolished in 2025.

Both a quick internet search and several return visits proved that wasn’t the case – Portugal’s toll roads are not ruinously expensive. And happily you can now drive toll free across the region, including on the A22, which previously had tolls.

While driving in the Algarve is now simpler, it’s worth knowing that tolls apply to various roads around the rest of Portgual, if you’re planning a road trip in Portugal, or are bringing your own vehicle to drive around.

A few of the largest, such as the A1 (Lisbon to Porto) has a physical toll plaza where you’ll pay at a booth.

However, many others have no toll booths. As they often weren’t originally built as a toll road, there’s no room for people to sit and take your money. Instead, there’s an ingenious solution, where you get a transponder for your car which is linked to an arrangement of sensors and cameras over the road.

As you drive under the sensors, the two devices link (you’ll hear a beep) and it registers that you’ve driven along the stretch and automatically debits the money from the Portuguese bank account that’s associated with the account.

If you don’t have a Portuguese bank account, this is where it can get trickier. Rental car companies have been introducing the transponders to their fleets since the introduction of the tolls in 2012, and on my most recent trips, they’ve been standard but charges can vary.

The companies I’ve used charged a fee per day to activate the transponder, and any tolls are linked to the credit card you used to hire the car, so you just pay for what you owe – usually a few days after your trip, but almost always within a couple of weeks.

The stretches of road are charged differently and based on the type of vehicle, but in most cases, the more you drive, the more you’ll pay. Which seems fair.

If you’re planning to hire a car to explore the Algarve with kids, one of my favourite sites is Zest Car Rental 

Other companies may charge differently – I overheard another conversation where the renter was charged 20 Euros for toll charges, which included 15 Euros of credit to spend on tolls. Whether that got refunded if you didn’t use it, I’m not sure, so it’s definitely worth checking with the individual company.

If you don’t want the costs of the Portugal toll transponder, or it’s not an option at all, you can pay at a Post Office or a marked ‘Payshop’ after you’ve used the toll road.

However, you have to wait 48 hours before you can settle what’s owing, and you have to do it within five week days. It also costs 25 cents administrative fees for every time the roads were used, up to a maximum of 2 Euros.

If you’re using the motorway on the way to your resort from the airport, that’s fine – plenty of time to work out where to pay, although there are mixed reports of both complicated bureaucracy and clued-up staff accustomed to bewildered tourists.

If you want to use the motorway on the way back to the airport, that’s the problem… unless you have a friend in the country who can pay after you’ve left.

Alternatively, you can simply avoid the toll roads. But, of course, plenty of other people may also be doing the same, they’re normally slower than the toll road, and if you’re relying on Google Maps or a satnav, it will almost certainly try to reroute you to the toll road as the fastest option.

For more details, and the overview of how it works (including what to do if you’re driving a car with foreign licence plates) go to Visit Portugal’s page or the Portugal Tolls site.

*First published 2013, last updated 2026*

Image courtesy of Depositphotos

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