When you rent a car, there are almost always costs not included in the advertised price. Sales tax. Vehicle license recovery fee. Customer facility charge. Concession recovery fee. Parking surcharge. Insurance charge. An added fee if you’re under 25 years old. An added fee for additional drivers. Upcharges for satellite radio (PSST! Here’s how to get around that charge) and car seats. Stuff like that. In Orlando, as is the case in other cities, the cost of a toll transponder is often quietly added on, as well. And folks, it ain’t cheap!
The Orlando area toll roads include:
- SR 91/Florida Turnpike
- SR 408/Spessard L. Holland East-West Expressway
- SR 417/Greeneway
- SR 429/Western Beltway
- CR 522/Osceola Parkway
- SR 528/Beachline (They built optional toll roads for the portion of the road between I-4 and MCO several years back, but have yet to implement them. Heads up, though, in case they start them and you wind up in the wrong lanes. Click here for more info)
- I-4, which runs straight through the tourist corridor in Central Florida, is a free highway. However it now also has a paid toll option.
All of the above roads primarily use electronic payment, so if you stay straight on the road and get to a toll, you need a transponder to pay for the (electronic) toll. Some (but not all!) of the roads still offer a cash option if you merge to the right side of the road (if you look at the right side of the photo above, which is where the non-electronic payments are, the toll booth with the blue sign is unmanned and only takes exact change (For now. They’re in the midst of eliminating “Exact Change” lanes entirely); the ones with green signs are manned, and they can take bills and can give change. None of the booths take credit cards). After you’ve paid your toll with money, your “pay by cash” road merges back to the main road. There are also blue/unmanned/change-only booths for some entrances and exits of the toll roads (because they don’t just charge you while you’re on the road, they also can charge you to enter and exit it, as well), but more and more nowadays ONLY have an electronic option. Oh, and if you go through an electronic/cashless toll and don’t have a transponder, they record your license plate and bill you that way.
Orlando is the largest rental car market in the world, with most of the major car rental companies located on-site at Orlando International Airport (MCO), without the need for a shuttle bus to pick up your rental car. All of them use some sort of electronic payment option such as TollPass, e-Toll, Plate Pass, etc., which tack on several dollars per day for the privilege of using their system.
Jerks.
How Can You Avoid Paying Some Of These Crazy Charges?
Bring your own transponder (for most, but not all car rental companies)
There are several transponders from other areas of Florida, as well as parts of Georgia and North Carolina, that are interchangeable with the toll roads in Florida. For example, joy of joys, effective May 28, 2021, E-Z Pass can be used throughout the state of Florida! NC QuickPass, Peach Pass, K Tag, T, and PikePass are also all usable in Florida.
Understand your routes and options
Know where you will want to go and how to get there. If you’re going to incur toll roads in your travels, check with the websites of each road and see if cashless tolls are unavoidable (The 408 and 528 are the quickest and easiest ways to go between Orlando International Airport/MCO and the Disney/Universal/theme parks and convention/International Drive areas, and both have cash options all the way through to/from these places – but not necessarily at any exit in between them).
- I know it sounds kind of obvious, but if you want to avoid tolls and possible administrative fees altogether, don’t take toll roads. It CAN be done in the Orlando area…just be prepared to spend lots of extra time on the road (i.e. with no traffic backups, it will take about 30 minutes, give or take, to go between MCO and WDW if you use the 417 or 528, but a good 60 to 75 minutes if you take surface streets and non-toll roads).
- Consider purchasing a SunPass transponder of your own (for car rental companies that allow you to use your own transponder). Other options are SunPass PRO (good in Florida + 21 other states), Uni (good in Florida and 19 other states), etc.
If you have your own SunPass or Uni, you may receive a hefty discount for each toll you pay.
You can purchase your transponder by mail and have it delivered (if you have a U.S. address), or you can buy it in person once you’ve landed in Orlando. SunPasses are available in Central Florida at Walgreens pharmacy, Publix supermarket, CVS Pharmacy and AAA Auto Club South. If you want to buy one after you’ve landed at MCO and avoid tolls until you purchase it, the closest locations are Walgreens (5702 Lee Vista Blvd.), which is about 3 miles north of the airport, and Publix (4042 S. Semoran Blvd.) which is about 5 miles north of MCO. IMPORTANT! If you buy the transponder in Orlando as soon as you arrive, please note it takes several hours for your Sunpass balance to reflect the money you’ve put into your account – as per SunPass: “Please wait until 6:00 AM of the morning following activation before using your SunPass. After 6:00 AM of the morning following activation, your SunPass will work on all Florida toll roads and most bridges.” So if you land at 2pm, buy your transponder at 3pm and go through an electronic toll at 3:30pm, YOUR SUNPASS ACCOUNT MAY NOT HAVE MONEY IN IT YET and you may incur whatever fees & charges your car rental company lists. Purchasing your transponder by mail, ahead of time, will alleviate this issue.
IMPORTANT INFO AS PER SUNPASS’S WEBSITE:SunPass customers using a rental vehicle may have their tolls applied to their SunPass account. Customers with SunPass Portable transponders may use their transponders in their rental vehicles. (It is strongly recommended that SunPass customers access their online SunPass accounts or contact the SunPass Customer Service Center to add the rental vehicle subscription to their account for the rental period.) If the transponder is not in your vehicle or functioning properly, tolls from other agencies will not be posted to your SunPass account, and may be charged to you by the rental Service Provider. Please remember to remove your transponder upon return of the vehicle. SunPass customers that do not have their transponders in the vehicle are subject to the tolls, fees and charges set forth below and in their rental agreements.
SunPass also sells “SunPass Mini” stickers for $4.99 but once attached to your rental car, you can’t take it with you when your rental period is complete.
- The Central Florida Expressway Authority has an automated toll payment solution for visitors to Florida who are renting a car out of Orlando International Airport. The Visitor Toll Pass program allows car renters to refuse the rental car companies’ toll transponder, thereby saving them the cost of transponder and/or penalties – YOU ONLY PAY FOR THE TOLLS INCURRED, and save up to 80% on them, to boot! Click here for the details.
Renting a car in Orlando has its advantages – you have the freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want during your vacation/holiday. However, the costs of car rentals can be a bit ridiculous. Hopefully, this article can help you avoid some of the more ridiculousness.
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44 comments
How does the toll system know to charge my personal purchased SunPass and not the toll payment system used by the rental car company?? What are the chances of me getting charged the excessive fees by the rental car company even though I purchased my own SunPass??
Hi Mark! The tolls look for a transponder first – as long as you have one in use, your transponder will be charged. If you don’t have a transponder (or if it’s in the wrong spot – so make sure you place it where the instructions recommend, or not functioning correctly), then it takes a picture of your rental car’s license plate and, depending on the rental car company you’re using, you could incur the toll price and/or administrative fees and/or you then automatically opt in for the car rental company’s automated toll payment for the time you rent the car. As Sunpass suggests, make sure to access your online SunPass accounts or contact the SunPass Customer Service Center to add the rental vehicle subscription to your account for the rental period.
Good question and thanks for all the info! I am from NYC and have Ez-Pass. I understand it is NOT accepted in Florida. Is this correct?
Hi Kim! That’s correct – EZ Pass doesn’t work with the SunPass system at this time. I’ve read they’re trying to get them to sync up, but it’s been a long process so far.
[…] This may be helpful to some of you visiting Disney perhaps…How to Avoid Crazy Toll Charges When Renting a Car in Orlando. […]
Hi we’re flying into Miami travelling to Naples then upto Jacksonville,hiring our car from Alamo could you recommend best pass to buy for tolls .
Hi Karen! I would recommend a Sunpass. If you live in the US, you can order one online. If you live outside the US, the article tells you the brands of stores where you can buy one once you arrive in FL. Or you can use Alamo’s system, if you’d prefer.
Thank you travelling from the UK.
I thought so – you said “hire car” We say “rental car” 😉 Honestly, Alamo’s system isn’t bad, as far as toll payment systems go, IMHO.
For anyone else, it would be more convenient to Fly into Miami, go to Jacksonville(Take I-95 North), then go to Naples(I-95 South to I-4 West (would recommend SR-417 TOLL (north terminus is at a dual interchange with I-4 in Sanford,FL) Sunpass or Cash as of July 2021),
then
I-75 South at interchange with I-4 in suburban Tampa
or
I-275 South, causeway $1-1.50(cash is more expensive)), Joins I-75 in Bradenton-Sarasota, to go South to Naples
Naples is at bottom of N-S portion of I-75.
There are two options to Go east, 1) up to Fort Myers, (about 30 mins), FL-80 East to West Palm Beach (toll-free,I-95,US Hwy 1, and turnpike as options) 2) Alligator Alley ($3.25 cash/$2.95 SunPass)
I-75 goes West to East across alligator alley (kinda self-explanatory on name, although I’ve never seen one on my 5-10 trips)
Hope this helps
Hertz has updated their policy to only charge for PlatePass for each day it is used with no maximum.
“You will be charged for each toll at the highest, undiscounted toll rate plus a $4.95 convenience fee for each calendar day when tolls are incurred. There is no maximum PlatePass convenience fee.”
OK. I’ll double check that and change the article accordingly. Thank-you for the heads up! 🙂
They will ship the SunPass to Canada now. I just ordered one to be shipped to my Canadian address.
Great to hear, Kevin! I didn’t know that. Will do some quick research and d the post as needed. Thanks for the update 🙂
Thank you so much for this detailed article! I remember our last trip we had a car for 10 days and drove thru the tolls only on the way to/from the airport! I’m researching rental cars now and just had 2 updates for your article. 1) SIXT has increased their daily fee to $8.99, but they did confirm that if I have my own transponder I can waive their fee and pay on my own. They said sometimes previous renters leave their transponders by accident and if SIXT can’t remove the old transponder, I won’t be able to add my own and there’s no way around that (not sure how that works exactly???) 2) the sunpass link is now https://www.sunpass.com/en/signup/transponderclassify.shtml thanks again for this wealth of information!
Oh thank you so much! I checked all the links (and price quotes) a few months ago but I guess I missed the updates. I’ll change them accordingly and give you a shout out, too 🙂
Glad the article was helpful!
hi I am arriving on 4th sept . driving a hire car from Alamo .with 4nights in Orlando then fort Lauderdale ,then key west ,then clearwater ,return to Orlando . would I be better getting a pass from publics or Alamo or just paying cash tolls. thank you.
Hi Micheal! I’m only “very” familiar with the toll roads in the Central Florida region, since that’s where I live, so I can only answer you from that POV.
If you get the pass from Alamo, you’ll know how much you’ll be paying for the transponder each day.
If you get a pass from Publix, you’ll have to pay for the transponder or sticker, but you’ll also get a small discount on each toll you pass through.
Just as there are some electronic-only tolls in the Central FL area, there are sure to be some in the other places you plan to visit; in that case you’ll have no option to pay cash at those tolls.
It’s all a matter of sitting down, figuring out your route, Googling to learn about the tolls you’re incur, and figuring it out on paper. 🙂 Good luck!
micheal, be sure to google map your route from MCO to FLL it may be worth it to take the turnpike and having a transponder is definitely a must. the alternative is to add MLB to your itinerary to explore the space coast (kennedy space center, beaches, watch a rocket launch, etc) from there you can save a lot of money staying on 95 all the way down to ft lauderdale. from ft lauderdale to the florida keys you can take 95 until the very end and then hop on the turnpike again.
Wish I’d seen your article before I rented from Thrifty this trip…
Picked up a One-Way rental from Miami to Denver (24 days), with the Miami Airport office insistent that I had to pay for their Sunpass for the entirety of the rental despite only being in Florida for the first 3 days. Asked them if there was any problem with me buying the Sunpass sticker for $4.95 & they said it was for Florida residents ONLY.
So as Miami is all cashless tolls I was lumbered with a pre-paid toll bill of $189+tax on top of my rental fee etc…
I call it the Thrifty ‘extortion tax’, which is compounded by lies told to me at the Airport office re the sticker system it seems.
We still have more than 2 weeks to go as left Florida last week, annoyed to be paying Thrifty an extra $8/day for absolutely nothing…
OMG Matt, how awful! But yeah…they lie. They lie like a rug. And they know that when you’re at the car rental desk, you need to make split decisions and they take advantage of that. I wish you had found the article, too…it’s always better to know everything ahead of time, so you can make an informed decision instead of getting ripped off. I’m sorry that happened.
I always check “avoid tolls” on my GPS, and use the same routes that locals would use. The toll roads are a tourist trap. You can get around without them easily.
Hi, sorry for my question but some details are not very clear for me. For example for Advantage (and others) the daily fee is $4.95 with a maximum of $24.95 per month. So if I rent 10 days the fees will be $49.50 or $24.95. Thank you for your answer.
Hi! As I understand it, it would be $24.95, since that’s the maximum.
Of course, that’s before tolls 😉
You need to update the policies. Some have changed and are much more customer friendly (Hertz, for example).
OK, thank-you. I do check them periodically to see if they’ve updated their policies. Will check again. Thank-you for the heads u!
I downloaded the free app PayTollo and paid the tolls via the app, much cheaper than any Other option. You enter your rental car license plate and description of the car. You load a balance/add a credit card and it is deducted from that balance, you are refunded the left over at a time of your choosing. Very slick, easy and cheap. https://www.paytollo.com/pt_florida
That could be good option if you have your own car but it says on PayTollo’s website that it doesn’t support rental cars at this time. That really won’t help anyone renting a car in Central Florida.
I presume this is a mistake in the “National” section:
“Hertz actually lowered the price of TollPass usage for their Emerald Club members in some states in early 2018, but the price in Florida is still less ;-).”
Hehehehe – whoops. I’ll go fix that right now. Thank-you 🙂
I just picked up from an off-airport agency next to MCO and drove to WDW with Google set to avoid tolls. It only took 42 minutes and that was with “orange”-level traffic. On a weekend. I think the times listed are misleading or no longer accurate.
Other than that though, this was very helpful.
This is fricken crazy. I went down to Orlando Fl for a week and rented a car choosing to pay tolls in cash costing less than $10 total. I later received a toll bill from Thrifty for $116 for toll including an administration fee of $89.91.
I will not submit to this type of fraudulent practice and will complain to the Fl AG if they are willing to support out of state complaints. This level of fraud is rampant from what I’m reading and needs to be addressed by the governments in these states.
Sorry to hear that happened; it’s very frustrating, I know. I suppose you could ask Thrifty to send you a list of exactly what tolls you went through and figure out what happened, and go from there. Good luck!
Hi we are travling from switzerland to Tampa an d stay there for most the time we want to visit orlando at some time we would like to rent a Car from Hertz wich Tollsystem would u recommend for that ?
greeting Matias
There’s no toll on I-4 (the main road between Tampa and Orlando) but there are some tolls on most of Tampa’s highways, and most, if not all of those are electronic. For an ease of use, I’d say get whatever your car rental company offers for tolls – but that will cost more than if you had a transponder.
Just saw this and looked up my budget rental from Zezgo. The fine print says, “E-Toll/Sunpass activation fee is 14.95 USD per day. If the customer declines Toll pass / E-toll device, a penalty of 25.00 USD for each toll used in addition to the cost for each unpaid toll will apply. Please note, that it is difficult to avoid Toll Roads while driving in Florida State, so it is highly recommended to activate Toll Device offered by the provider in order to avoid violation charges (up to the full amount of security deposit). Note that it is not possible to use personal Toll device or pay on spot:”
That is terrible. I might just need to cancel that reservation
Wow. I’ve never heard of Zezgo – must me tiny/new. But yeah, that sounds like a total rip off!
Hi there!
What do you think about Ecotoll, which I found by chance and seems to be a much more fair thing than all the other systems and offerings.
What do you think about it?
We’re not familiar with it, sorry.
does illinois I-PASS work in florida orlando? it says it does. i dont need orlandovisitor toll pass right?
i am renting avis at MCO. how do i avoid getting charged by AVIS?
The information we garnered was from each rental car company’s website. Beyond that, as Florida residents who typically use SunPass, I don’t know if a pass from Illinois works. You may want to check I-Pass’s website, or contact their customer service. Contacting Avis directly may also be a good idea for specific questions about their services. Good luck!
Hi!
Have you heard about the company AmeriCars? It looks like they only charge you a 20$ initial fee for the activation and a week after they’ll charge you only the tolls you used, but I’m worried there might be some hidden fee or trick, so wondering if you have an opinion or know this company at all.
Thanks!
Never heard of them but with some quick Googling, it looks like they get really crappy reviews. I’d stick to a name brand car rental place and try some of the suggestions we listed under “How Can You Avoid Paying Some Of These Crazy Charges?” in this post.
Be warned NC Quick Pass does not always read. I assume this is because it is not a native transponder. One trip to Orlando, half my tolls were billed to the rental company despite having a working transponder in the car and registering the license plate. I got the admin fees waived but still paid the much higher cash toll rate. The next trip involved the Sunshine Skyway and the transponder did not read in the staffed toll lanes. I would get the Visitor Toll Pass or order a SunPass to be safe.