Prague → Split: vignettes & tolls

Prague – Brno – Vienna – Graz – Ljubljana – Zagreb – Split crosses four countries on the D1, A2/A9 in Austria, A1 in Slovenia and the A1 in Croatia down to the coast. It is the classic summer route to the Dalmatian coast, usually driven with an overnight stop around Zagreb.

Tips & tricks

• ✓Buy the Czech, Austrian and Slovenian vignettes before leaving Prague — Croatia charges distance tolls at booths instead, so no Croatian vignette is needed.
• ✓Croatian coastal motorway toll booths get badly congested on summer Saturdays (the weekly changeover day) — an ENC/e-toll tag or an early departure avoids the worst queues.

On the road — good to know

• •The final stretch on Croatia's A1 runs right under Velebit mountain, a section so exposed to the bura wind that it has racked up roughly 10 cumulative months of closures since 2008, with a record gust of 248 km/h once measured at the Maslenica bridge.
• •Croatian motorway tolls are collected separately from any vignette, either by ticket-and-cash/card at barriers or the ENC transponder lane, and a full Zagreb-to-coast run costs a car in the range of twenty-something euros.
• •Along the way the A1 crosses some genuinely striking engineering, including tall Velebit-area viaducts, and passing drivers often detour briefly off-route toward Plitvice Lakes National Park before rejoining south of Karlovac.

Watch out for

• 🇨🇿Roadside resellers near border crossings charge a markup to "help" buy the e-vignette, when the official e-dálnice app or portal does the same thing free in about two minutes.
• 🇦🇹The vignette does not cover Sondermaut sections like the Brenner or Tauern tunnels — drivers who only buy the vignette get fined at those separate toll points.
• 🇸🇮The e-vinjeta is bound to both the plate and the exact vehicle class, so buying the wrong category — such as car instead of car-with-trailer — invalidates it even after payment.