Tolls in Greece: which motorways charge a fee for a rental car road trip

In Greece, only proper motorways — identified by a number preceded by an A (A1, A2, A5, A7, A8...) — are tolled. Regular national roads ("ethniki odos"), secondary roads, and almost all mountain, island, and countryside roads are free. In practice, a road trip through the deep Peloponnese, the Zagori, or Crete crosses almost no tolls at all: it's the major inter-regional links that are tolled.

Seven paid stretches structure the network: Attiki Odos (the Athens ring road), Egnatia Odos (A2, running across the whole north of the country from Igoumenitsa to the Turkish border), Nea Odos and Kentriki Odos (A1, Athens-Thessaloniki), Olympia Odos (A8, Athens-Patras), Moreas (A7, Corinth-Kalamata-Tripoli), Ionia Odos (A5, Antirrio-Ioannina), and the Rio-Antirrio bridge, which links the Peloponnese to the mainland near Patras.

Prices went up on 1 January 2026 on several stretches, including a first-ever increase on Attiki Odos (never revalued since it opened). Here are the 2026 rates for a private car on the most common legs of a road trip out of Athens.

Every Greek toll plaza accepts cash and bank card at the regular booths, with no advance setup required — by far the simplest option for a rental car over a short stay. An electronic tag (e-Pass) exists and earns a discount in the 8-15% range plus a faster lane, but it requires a subscription with one of the motorway operators: rarely worth it for just a handful of crossings on one or two routes.

Keep a few small-denomination notes handy in the car: at peak times on Attiki Odos or approaching Thessaloniki, the cash lanes are sometimes faster than the fewer card-only lanes. Since 31 December 2025, Egnatia Odos has changed operator (the GEK TERNA group, via Nea Egnatia Odos), and the old discounted EgnatiaPass subscriptions were scrapped — no impact for a visitor simply paying at the booth.

On several of these routes, an old free national road runs alongside the tolled motorway — this is notably the case along Egnatia Odos in the north of the country. The savings are real, but so is the trade-off: a narrower road, more village crossings, more bends and trucks, for a noticeably longer journey time.

Ioannis Politis, Michalis Kyriakoglou, Georgios Georgiadis and Panagiotis Papaioannou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Transportation Research Record, 2020) studied toll avoidance on the Egnatia Odos: for car drivers, travel cost and the toll fee are decisive route-choice criteria, while truck drivers look first at travel time. Both groups, however, value the motorway's higher safety standards. On a road trip of a few weeks, the money at stake stays small — a few tens of euros over the trip — against the time and safety gained, especially with children or after a long day at the wheel.

On stretches recently upgraded from a single-carriageway national road into a tolled motorway, such as parts of Egnatia Odos, safety standards (central barrier, hard shoulders, lighting) are noticeably higher than on the old single-lane-each-way national road — a factor worth weighing alongside the pure cost calculation.

For a classic Peloponnese loop out of Athens (see our dedicated itinerary), budget for the Rio-Antirrio bridge if you close the loop via the north, plus a few tens of euros of Moreas or Olympia Odos depending on your stops — rarely more than €30-40 in tolls for the whole trip, since most roads through the Mani, Arcadia, or the Gulf of Corinth stay free.

For a run up to the Meteora or a round trip Athens-Thessaloniki, the A1 motorway accounts for most of the spend (around €35-40 one way); for a bigger loop toward Epirus and the Zagori via Igoumenitsa, budget €50-90 in round-trip tolls depending on the exact route. Either way, tolls remain a minor line item next to car rental, fuel, and accommodation.