Every year, motorists in Switzerland must pay CHF 40 francs if they want to drive on the nations federal motorways – this map shows the routes. There is a physical sticker and an electronic version. The electronic version has led to a number of unofficial online sellers, which add a fee.
Those wishing to purchase an electronic vignette can avoid these fees by going to the official website.
The vignette, which covers the calendar year, must be bought by the end of January. It is also valid one month in advance, so a vignette for 2025 can be bought from 1 December 2024 and allows the purchaser to drive on Swiss motorways with a 2025 vignette during the last month of 2024.
In addition to charging extra fees, third party sellers of e-vignettes need to transmit vehicle information to the Swiss government agency in charge of administering the system. This means your vehicle is not immediately registered as having a vignette. It also means you’re sharing data with an additional third party.
E-vignettes offer a few advantages. If your windscreen breaks it is very difficult to transfer the physical sticker to a new windscreen. Because the e-vignette is linked to a licence plate this challenge is avoided. If you change your car but keep your plates, something possible in Switzerland, your e-vignette will follow you. If you move to another canton and need to re-register your car this doesn’t work of course. However, if you have not deleted the e-vignette website’s cookie, you are given one chance to change the licence plate that goes with it.
The government likes the e-vignette too. It gets to keep more of the CHF 40. Distributors of the physical sticker take a cut of the fee.
The official e-vignette website can be found here.
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