BGToll, Needed for Motorhomes over 3.5 tons in Bulgaria

Click this map preview of BGToll routes to download a large version [4mb]! Save it to your mobile phone; you will need it as a reference to know where you have to pay tolls.

Whilst it might be easily operable for locals and commercial freight haulage companies, it’s totally impractical for any tourist who wishes to explore Bulgaria with a motorhome! In fact, BGToll is a complete headache to comply with, and seriously impacts on the enjoyment of your holiday time in this beautiful country.

Let me explain the BGToll shortcomings, one by one:

Bulgaria introduced the new electronic BGToll system for heavy vehicles and included motorhomes. In this post I explain how we dealt with this utter nuisance.

The website has minimal functionality in English

This screen capture of the BGToll website in English shows some of its shortcomings.

Yes, there’s a website for the new toll system but as soon as you switch to English its shortcomings are obvious. The translation reads as if it is machine translated, often nearly incomprehensible. In the English version all explanatory images are missing, including the most important maps that show all toll routes.

It gets worse with the website: as soon as you click the link to buy a BGToll ticket (called Route Pass) the website reverts back to Bulgarian and Cyrillic type face. There is no way to read anything and no chance to enter town names to calculate the route. How many tourists have a Cyrillic keyboard on a western computer or mobile phone, which is set up for Latin characters?

So, option number 1 to buy a route pass on the website doesn’t work on foreign devices!

The BGToll app for smartphones didn’t accept our credit cards

This is one row of screen captures, which shows that we were unable to pay through the BGToll app. We have dozens of these as it never worked!

We went through the arduous effort to find and visit the BGToll office in Blagoevgrad, the first city we came to in Bulgaria. We were hopeful that somebody there could explain the system and payment options to us.

Let’s just say this wasn’t a big success, except that we received the advice that we should use the mobile app. We were also told not to try to open an account on the app as it doesn’t work (something we had already discovered).

Well, we never managed to make a single payment on the mobile app. After some trial and error, we had worked out to how to calculate a route, but the most important final step always failed!

We have two credit cards from different banks, both are Mastercards (Visa Cards are near impossible to get from any Australian bank). With transactions in foreign countries, both of these cards usually insert a page where we have to enter an extra verification for the transaction; this obviously doesn’t work with the app and thus we cannot pay via the app.

So, option number 2 to buy a route pass via the smartphone app doesn’t work!

You should be able to buy a route pass at a BGToll office

To find the office in Blagoevgrad took us ages because we couldn’t find an address for it anywhere. Google seems to be nearly useless in Bulgaria if you are searching with a Latin character device.

Actually, it already took us considerable time to find a car park within walking distance for our larger than average “Bertita” . And I doubt that where I parked was strictly legal.

Cleverly, the BGToll office is located in the middle of the central pedestrian zone; the perfect spot to go and purchase a route pass for a heavy vehicle… Anyhow, these BGToll offices can only be found in major cities – exactly the places we don’t usually visit and certainly avoid during the current Covid crisis.

So, option number 3 to buy a BGToll pass at their offices is of extremely limited use!

[Commercial transport companies can use additional options: if you are frequently transporting freight around Europe you can sign a contract with one of several companies for electronic toll collection via an on-board GPS tracker unit. For a casual tourist this is not a viable choice as all these companies want a minimum one year commitment.]

The final option: buy a BGToll Route Pass at a vending machine at a fuel station

We got to visit many, many fuel stations in Bulgaria. Here a collection of some where we weren’t able to buy a Route Pass. I only needed to fill twice with Diesel during our trip; I did so usually at stations where the attendant had to spend considerable time to issue us a BGToll Route Pass on their computer. Once the very helpful woman spent over 20 minutes to issue my ticket – worth all of 0.19 LEV = roughly 9 Euro-CENTS! Nobody can make money with such a complicated system, so I felt sorry for her.

We were left with this single option to comply with these complicated BGToll payments. It turned out to be very tedious and really hit and miss for us.

Instead of clearly signposting the select few vending stations on the side of the road, you actually have to stop at each station you encounter, get out of your vehicle and enquire inside if they sell the tickets. Lovely, especially when it’s pouring down with rain and you often leave with no success! Even more tedious, in a country where few attendants speak English and it’s impossible to get an answer to your question.

Let’s just say, I was successful for three-quarters of the toll roads we drove. On others I had no choice but to drive without a route pass. Sometimes there were no fuel stations for the entire stretch of toll road we drove; at other times none that sold the pass. Somehow these stations seem to congregate around main cities.

Once we visited several sights: the Thracian Tombs and the Shipka Memorial Church. The guy at the only station in Shipka wanted to send us back 15 kilometres to the previous town of Kazanluk to buy a pass for the remaining 33 kilometres of toll road ahead of us – without the required route pass to drive to Kazanluk, of course. Very economical, and certainly good for the environment – not!

 INFORMATION: During our time in Bulgaria, we were most successful getting a BGToll Route Pass at fuel stations operated by OMV (these can issue a pass on their service computer if they don’t have a vending machine onsite), and occasionally at LUKOIL.

The fines for being caught without a route pass are ridiculously high: €77 per incident! In comparison: the highest ticket we paid was 2.96 LEV, or €1.49. Mind you, main roads and long distances aren’t our preference when we travel to see things. This will be different for tourists who transit through Bulgaria.

So, option number 3 to buy a BGToll pass at fuel stations is extremely tedious and not a guarantee of success!

Every Route Pass you buy is only valid for a maximum of 24 hours and you are not supposed to deviate from the approved route!

The driver has 24 hours from the time of activation of the route pass to travel the set route following strictly the selected points. [quoted from BGToll website]

This is a rule, which probably works well enough for the commercial transportation of goods. But it is absolutely contrary to any travel behaviour, particularly for people travelling in a motorhome! Sights can be left and right of the road (archaeological sites and monuments aren’t even in the database), and some attractions might be interesting enough that travellers spontaneously decide to spend more time.

As a matter of fact, the first ever route pass we bought (at the border) was long expired by the time we drove into Blagoevgrad. Why? As mentioned above, we wanted to visit the BGToll office in the city. We entered the country on Friday late afternoon and stayed overnight at a dam halfway, where several Bulgarians were camping too. We expected (correctly) that the BGToll office would be closed on weekends.

Hence we decided to stay until the end of the weekend – a very typical behaviour of people travelling by motorhome! Of course, there wasn’t another option to renew our 24-hour pass before we reached the city.

This demonstrates how ridiculous the system is: the payment for this section was all of 0.05 LEV (3 Euro-CENTS with rounding)! The fine for an expired route pass could have been €77…

The payment of route passes (and vignettes for smaller vehicles) is controlled by BGToll vehicles parked alongside major roads. These are small white vans, which look somewhat like mobile speed checks with number-plate recognition cameras mounted on the rooftop.

One of the typical BGToll vans you can see on the side of the road. These have number plate recognition cameras to check toll compliance.

Our expenses for Route Passes in Bulgaria during nearly 5 weeks:

The typical BGToll Route Pass vending machine as you can find at fuel stations (if you can find one).

In comparison: the old vignette for vehicles between 3.5 and 12 tons had a price of 80 LEV per month [source ]. We would have happily paid this much to save us the constant headache of trying to buy a BGToll Route Pass. It also would have saved us a lot of stress and fuel.

This row of screen captures demonstrates the failing of the route calculations. On the right the much shorter route from Sandanski to Melnik.

So what to do as a tourist with a camper or motorhome over 3.5 tons?

You could do the same as one of our friends did: his reaction was

I left Bulgaria as soon as I could, the country doesn’t want my presence or my money.

Of course, this will not help the tourism industry in Bulgaria and you will miss an otherwise lovely country.

Or you could lobby specific government authorities to reverse the inclusion of privately owned leisure vehicles (motorhomes, campervans, vehicles towing a heavy caravan or boat) from the obligation to buy BGToll Route Passes and let them continue to use the old electronic vignette. Other countries, like Belgium, charge kilometre based tolls only for goods carrying vehicles.

Financially, the vignette might bring more revenue (see our table above) and it would enable visitors to travel in Bulgaria unencumbered and do what they came for: enjoy their stay, instead of driving around under almost constant stress!

Useful email addresses to lodge a complaint:
BGToll: [email protected] (most likely they will not care)
Ministry of Tourism: [email protected]

A BGToll control vehicle stationed at the border

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Have you been in Bulgaria with a leisure vehicle over 3.5 tons since the 1^st of March 2020?
What has been your experience with the BGToll Route Pass?
Did you encounter any problems or did you find the system easy?
Please tell us in the comments below!