After 10 years, Poland replaced its microwave-based toll system with the satellite-based “e-Toll” system
20 December 2021 (updated 21 August 2025)
Poland’s Ministry of Finance launched the new satellite-based e-Toll system on June 24th, 2021. The migration period from the microwave-based ViaTOLL system to the e-Toll system was completed on September 30th, 2021. Since then, all trucks above 3.5 tons and buses with more than 9 seats (including the driver) need to exchange their old microwave tags with GNSS-based devices. There are three options that tolled vehicles can choose from to be compliant to the satellite-based tolling scheme:
- GPS-tracking devices, which are part of the so-called External Localization System (ELS), made available by authorized ELS operators
- GNSS-based On Board Units (OBUs) from one of the authorized OBU operators
- A smartphone or tablet that uses the e-TOLL PL app
- An accredited EETS Provider
Now that the European Electronic Toll Collection Service (EETS) is also accepted in the e-Toll system, the take-up of EETS users in Poland has increased significantly in 2025. EETS is provided by Telepass since October 17, 2022, and by Toll4Europe since August 1, 2024. The Department of Road Toll Collection at the Ministry of Finance has published statistics about the use of the various options for toll declarations on the tolled road which is summarized in the diagrams below.
Percentage of Toll Transactions in Poland by Different Type of Devices in Q2 2025
All Trucks and Buses
387.5M total transactions
No. of Device Registrations for Polish Trucks > 12t
349.1K registered vehicles
No. of Device Registrations for Polish Trucks > 3.5t and < 12t
74.6K registered vehicles
Graphic © GNSS Consulting
The pie charts above indicate that in the second quarter of 2025, 6% of all the trucks and buses – national and international – processed their toll transactions using the free smartphone app while driving on the tolled road network in Poland[1]. A majority (52%) of all toll transactions were made using a tracking device operating within Poland, supplied by service providers known as “External Location System” (ZSL = Zewnętrzny System Lokalizacyjny in Polish). Another 28% of the transactions were made with a tolling OBU made available by a provider of the European Electronic Toll Service (EETS), while 14% of the vehicles used the service of a provider that supplies a windshield-mounted OBU that only works within Poland. The second pie chart shows that the actual percentage of device registrations for the Polish-registered trucks above 12t, by far the largest category using the e-Toll system, is very much in line with the overall percentage of the actual transactions. The third pie chart illustrates that among the smaller commercial trucks in Poland, between 3.5t and 12t, the smartphone app was clearly the most popular choice, covering 46% of all device registrations in this group of vehicles. A detailed analysis on the use of smartphones in tolling is provided in our article with the title “The Dawn of Smartphones in Satellite Tolling?”
The tolled road network consists of approximately 5,200 km. A map of Poland’s highway network is provided below.
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Map of the highway network in Poland from August 2025
DocelowyUkladDrog.svg:
Sliwers / derivative work: rzyjontko, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
[1] Statistics available for the first quarter of 2025 had very similar figures.