Romania's road vignette and your rental car

The rovinietă is the charge for using Romania's national road network. It is paid for a specific vehicle and lets it use these roads for a set period: one day, 10 days, 30 days, 60 days or 12 months (Law 226/2023, art. 2 and 5).

• It is electronic only. The payment is recorded in the database of CNAIR (Compania Națională de Administrare a Infrastructurii Rutiere, the national road company). There is no sticker and nothing to display on the windscreen.
• It is mandatory for cars and other passenger vehicles, and for goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes, whatever country they are registered in. Electric cars need a rovinietă too.
• The price depends on the vehicle category, its emission class (Euro) and the period.
• Responsibility for a valid vignette lies, under the law, with the user: the driver or the registered holder of the car (art. 2 and 6).

The rental company's conditions include the Romanian road vignette in the rate; of all road charges, it is the only one included. The exact rule, with its clause number in the Rental Conditions, is summarised below under “What the rental company’s conditions say”. This means:

• you do not buy a rovinietă for the rental car and pay nothing extra for it;
• you have nothing to fill in or display: the check is automatic, by registration number;
• if you want to be sure, ask the rental company's representative when you collect the car; you can also check the vignette's validity on CNAIR's etoll.ro portal, under "Vignette Check" in its English version.

The rovinietă applies to the national road network run by CNAIR: national roads (DN), expressways and motorways.

The exception is national-road sections inside municipalities, between the municipality's entry and exit signs (Law 226/2023, art. 5).

With a rental car you do not need to keep track of these sections: the included vignette lets you use the whole national road network.

• Video cameras. On national roads, CNAIR uses fixed or mobile cameras that read the registration number and check the database automatically for a valid rovinietă.
• Check terminals. For vehicles registered in other countries, checks are also made with terminals by the traffic police, the border police, ISCTR road-transport inspectors and CNAIR staff at border crossings.
• The sanction. Driving without a valid rovinietă is an offence punished with a fine (Law 226/2023, art. 18).

With a car rented on Car-Rentals.ro the vignette is included by the rental company, so you have nothing to do for these checks.

Since 1 October 2026 the rovinietă has been governed by Law 226/2023, which replaced Government Ordinance 15/2002. If you rent a car on Car-Rentals.ro, nothing changes for you: the vignette is still included in the rate.

• The price of the rovinietă now also depends on the car's emission class (Order no. 888/2026 of the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure).
• Vignettes bought for cars until 30 September 2026 stay valid until their end date.
• The rovinietă is sold only through CNAIR's official channels: the etoll.ro portal, the TollRo app, authorised distributors and CNAIR's sales points. In 2026 CNAIR warned about unauthorised websites selling the vignette.
• The new TollRo charge, based on the distance driven, applies only to goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, not to cars.

Until 30 September 2026, on top of the rovinietă, a separate crossing toll (peaj) was charged for the Danube bridges at Fetești–Cernavodă, on the A2 motorway to Constanța, and at Giurgeni–Vadu Oii, on the DN2A.

Since 1 October 2026 this toll is no longer charged:

• Government Ordinance 15/2002, which set the bridge toll, was repealed by Law 226/2023;
• CNAIR announced that tolls bought before 1 October 2026 and not used lost their validity;
• for cars, CNAIR now charges the rovinietă, while the TollRo charge applies only to goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes.

So with a rental car you can drive to Constanța on the A2 without a separate bridge toll. Road-charge rules can change, so if in doubt before your trip, check the information on etoll.ro.

The Romanian road vignette is the only road charge included in the rate. The other costs on the road are set by the rental company's conditions; under them, you pay for:

• fuel;
• parking for the whole rental, including at airports;
• road tolls and bridge crossing fees other than the Romanian vignette, for example vignettes and road tolls in other countries;
• Green Card extensions;
• fines for breaking traffic rules, in Romania or in the countries you drive through;
• costs resulting from local-authority action concerning the car during the rental.

If the rental company pays a fine for you, it invoices you for the fine plus an admin fee per fine. Amounts owed can be taken from your card or your deposit. The amount of the admin fee is below under “What the rental company’s conditions say”.

Driving to another country as well? Leaving Romania with the rental car is allowed only with the rental company's written consent and only to the countries its conditions accept; the countries and the deposit that applies outside Romania are summarised below. Cross-border travel cannot be booked online: when you book, write the country you want to visit in the “Observations” field; the request reaches the rental company with your booking. Vignettes and road tolls in those countries are paid by you.

The main rules are summarised below, with clause references; the full text is in the Rental Conditions.