Tolls on the Costa Blanca

Do you pay toll on the Costa Blanca?

For the drive from Alicante or Valencia to this coast: no. The AP-7 along the coast is toll-free over that whole stretch, and has been since 1 January 2020. Even so, you will still come across plenty of travel information calling the AP-7 a toll road here, and it costs people time: they detour along the N-332 through every village centre, or they look for a toll plaza that no longer exists. Below is how it really stands.

The short answer

On the Alicante — Valencia stretch, and therefore on any drive to Moraira, Calpe, Jávea, Dénia, Benissa, Altea or Benidorm, you pay no toll. You can simply take the motorway.

Why so much out-of-date information is circulating

Until the end of 2019 this was indeed a toll road. The concession expired on 31 December 2019, after which the Tarragona — Valencia and Valencia — Alicante sections — 374 kilometres between them — reverted to the Spanish state and became toll-free on 1 January 2020. That was officially announced by the Spanish government.

Guidebooks, blogs and even car hire company pages written before that date and never updated since still call the AP-7 a toll road. If you read that somewhere, look at the date.

Where toll does still apply nearby

There is one more tolled stretch of AP-7, and it causes most of the confusion: it runs south of Alicante, towards Murcia and Almería. Anyone driving from the airport to the northern Costa Blanca does not go near it. If you are heading south instead, to Torrevieja or Cartagena for example, it can affect you.

Beyond that, the Alicante ring road was a separate concession with its own toll plaza. The ministry extended the full discount on it, and in December 2025 the council of ministers approved its definitive removal, after which the road passed to the ordinary roads authority. We have found no official document dated after February 2026, so: do not count on having to pay here, but do not count on such things never changing either.

The AP-7 and the A-7 are two different roads

This is not a typing error but a real difference, and it decides where you end up. The AP-7 is the coastal route past Benidorm, Calpe and Dénia — that is the road you want. The A-7 runs inland via Alcoy and has always been free. Both connect Valencia with Alicante, but through very different country.

The road is still called the AP-7 now that the toll has gone; there has been no renumbering. In the European system it is the E-15.

The exits you need

For Moraira it is exit 63, signposted Teulada, Benissa and Calpe, then the N-332 and the CV-743. There is no dedicated exit for Teulada or Xàbia yet; the Spanish government is working on a new junction.

What you do pay

No toll, then, but you do pay for fuel and, in the villages, for parking in the blue zones — what that costs and when it applies differs per municipality; see the driving rules in Spain. And if you drive on to Portugal, you will meet an electronic toll system there, for which hire companies offer a separate arrangement. That and the other rules for crossing the border are at taking a hire car across the border.

See hire cars at Alicante Airport

More on car hire on the Costa Blanca

The full overview is at car hire on the Costa Blanca, and where you collect the car at Alicante Airport.

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