How To Plan For And Use Toll Booths In Norway

Norway is a country with lots of toll booths, both on major roads between the big cities and towns in Norway, as well as inside the cities themselves. You typically won’t get far on the road before hitting your first toll station in Norway, and the cost of the toll booths will add up very fast.

This article will look closer at the Norwegian toll booths, and teach you how to prepare for them before visiting Norway. We will cover both rental cars as well as anyone who uses a private non-Norwegian car to drive to and in Norway.

The toll booths in Norway are all automatic, and you will get a invoice after your visit. Private cars get the invoice from the company that operates the toll booths, while rental cars gives it directly to their customers. To see how much to expect to pay for toll booths in Norway, use the website Bompengekalkulator.

Toll boots can be pretty expensive, and some examples of this high cost is when you travel between:

  • Oslo and Bergen: 270 NOK.
  • Oslo and Trondheim: 205 NOK.
  • Stavanger and Bergen: 405 NOK.

And this is when you drive with a car that uses AutoPass (most rental cars and Norwegian cars do). If not, add another 25 % on top of that cost. Trucks will pay even more, and some toll stations have 3x to 4x the cost for trucks (or any vehicle that weights over 3,500 kg).

Toll booth on E18 near Larvik
Toll booth on E18 near Larvik. Photo published with permission.

And to makes matters even less fun, rental cars have an additional VAT on the toll booths that regular cars don’t have to pay, so add another 25 % VAT on top of any cost. So if you drive a rental car without AutoPass (luckily most of them have this), the cost will be:

Oslo and Bergen: 421 NOK.
Oslo and Trondheim: 320 NOK.
Stavanger and Bergen: 632 NOK.

PS. the website and prices include public ferries as well as toll booths, so some of the expenditures you see on the examples come from ferry passes.

How to plan for how much toll booths will cost you

As mentioned above, almost all roads between cities and towns in Norway will have one or more toll booths, and you should prepare for this extra cost if you travel by car when visiting Norway. Luckily there’s an online app that allows you to plan your toll booth visits ahead of time, so just head to the website called Bompengekalkulator.

On that website, type in your destination and where you are driving from, and you get an overview of how much the trip will cost you in toll booth passing.

Bompengekalkulator
A screenshot from the Bompengekalkulator online app.

If you drive a car without AutoPass, make sure to turn that off to see the real cost (25 % higher). Most rental cars will have AutoPass installed. Also make sure to change the type of car. The default is petrol (Bensin), so click on that and change it if you drive an EV, hybrid or diesel engine car.

You can also click on the “+ Via” to add a stop along the way, for instances where you want to stop at a certain place while driving between your stops. Some of the most popular tourist attractions are behind toll booth stations, so it’s worth filling out if you plan on doing some detours from the main road.

How to pay at toll booths in Norway (for private foreign cars and rental cars)

Most toll booths on public roads are completely automatic, and you do not have to pay with your bank card or even coins to pass. What happens is that the car’s license plate is registered, then an invoiced will be billed to the address of the car’s owner. You don’t even need to slow down your driving when passing these automatic toll stations.

When it comes to rental cars, they get the invoice very fast, and you will typically be billed 4 – 6 days after returning your car. Some rental car companies might even charge it directly to your credit card if you have this registered at them.

Foreigners who drive their private car to and in Norway will typically get the invoiced delivered to their home address in their home country. You should register with Euro Parking Collection before travelling to Norway to make sure you get the invoiced after your visit.

You might think that it’s a good idea skip this step, but unless you live in a very special country, the invoice will still show up at your address. It will typically be transferred over to a national company that collects money in your country, so you will have to pay it either way. If you don’t register, you might even get additional fees.

A toll booth in Oslo
A toll booth in Oslo. Photo: Konstanchin / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Private toll stations

You might also have to pass toll booths in private roads. Anyone who privately owns a road in Norway is free to set up a toll booth if they want to, but they are pretty uncommon. Mostly you will find them in places where a private company has had to create a road to get to a special place, such as a skiing resort high up in the mountains.

These private toll booths can be anything from high-tech AutoPass toll booths like the public ones, to very small and simple toll booths where you have to pay with your credit card to open the physical barrier preventing you from passing.

The most common private toll booths are like the one on the photo below (minus the sheep on the road, these are not that common).

A private toll booth at Totenåsen
A private toll booth at Totenåsen. Photo by: Øyvind Holmstad / CC BY-SA 3.0.

EVs get free or very cheap toll booth passings

The Norwegian government love for people to drive electric cars, so these get a lot of benefits, including a severely reduced or even free toll booth passing. For example, driving from Oslo to Bergen in a petrol car with AutoPass will cost 270 NOK, while an EV will only pay 93 NOK.

Keep in mind that electric vehicles need to use AutoPass to get the payment reduction, since this is the only way for the toll stations to know that you do drive an EV.

Tesla EV charger station
A Tesla EV charger. Photo published with permission.

Toll stations inside the major cities in Norway

Many of the major cities in Norway (including Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and more) have their own, internal toll stations where you have to pay every single time you pass by a station. These stations are scattered all over the city, making it next to impossible to use the city center by car without passing a toll station.

The reason for this is to reduce the amount of cars in the city. The toll for each passing is pretty cheap, typically around 20 – 30 NOK, and you get to pass as many toll stations as you want without one hour of passing the first one without paying any extra. The odd exception is Oslo, where the toll station prices are very high during rush hour.

While these are far from the most expensive toll stations, the cost do add up very fast if you are living in one of these cities and need to pass the toll station a few times each day to get to work, school or kindergarten.

Why are there so many toll stations in Norway?

Toll booths are used as a means of financing road construction in Norway, so most new roads or road upgrades get new toll stations. The cost is usually a mix of public government or municipality funds combined with a loan that is repaid by the income from the toll stations.

The general rule is that the toll stations must pay the loan for the road, so after X number of cars have passed, the toll station is shut down since the road has been paid for in full. It is common for toll booths to be in place for around 10 – 20 years before they are fully paid.

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