Germany is the only country in Europe without a general speed limit on its motorways. The recommended speed on the Autobahn is 130 km/h, and in OpenStreetMap, the open map most navigation data builds on, 61.5% of German motorway segments carry the tag for "no limit".
That is one number in a larger question: what are the default speed limits across Europe, and how much of that information is in the map data that speed warnings and navigation apps read? We collected the official defaults for 32 countries and measured, country by country, how many roads carry a speed limit tag in OpenStreetMap. We also added the density of enforcement cameras from our own dataset.
Default speed limits by country
The table lists the default limits for passenger cars, which apply unless a sign says otherwise. It also shows the share of road segments with a maxspeed tag in OpenStreetMap for three road classes, and the number of enforcement cameras in the MapAtlas Camera Index.
| Country | Urban | Rural | Motorway | OSM motorway | OSM primary | OSM residential | Cameras | Per 1,000 km² |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 50 | 100 | 130 | 100% | 89% | 41% | 1,457 | 17.4 |
| Belgium | 50 | 90 | 120 | 99% | 87% | 50% | 2,701 | 88.4 |
| Bulgaria | 50 | 90 | 140 | 99% | 76% | 12% | 270 | 2.4 |
| Croatia | 50 | 90 | 130 | 92% | 77% | 6% | 486 | 8.8 |
| Cyprus | 50 | 80 | 100 | 99% | 69% | 5% | 167 | 30.9 |
| Czechia | 50 | 90 | 130 | 97% | 84% | 21% | 859 | 10.9 |
| Denmark | 50 | 80 | 130 | 100% | 98% | 25% | 20 | 0.5 |
| Estonia | 50 | 90 | 90 | n/a | 89% | 15% | 75 | 1.6 |
| Finland | 50 | 80 | signed | 99% | 92% | 36% | 1,089 | 3.3 |
| France | 50 | 80 | 130 | 98% | 80% | 27% | 3,853 | 7.0 |
| Germany | 50 | 100 | none | 98% | 90% | 60% | 4,714 | 13.2 |
| Greece | 50 | 90 | 130 | 90% | 61% | 8% | 362 | 2.8 |
| Hungary | 50 | 90 | 130 | 98% | 81% | 25% | 366 | 3.9 |
| Ireland | 50 | 80 | 120 | 100% | 93% | 40% | 6 | 0.1 |
| Italy | 50 | 90 | 130 | 95% | 55% | 13% | 10,707 | 35.6 |
| Latvia | 50 | 90 | n/a | n/a | 69% | 25% | 147 | 2.3 |
| Liechtenstein | 50 | 80 | n/a | n/a | 98% | 71% | 1 | 7.3 |
| Lithuania | 50 | 90 | 130 | 100% | 84% | 22% | 370 | 5.7 |
| Luxembourg | 50 | 90 | 130 | 100% | 95% | 78% | 37 | 14.2 |
| Malta | 50 | 60 | 80 | n/a | 63% | 22% | 25 | 76.8 |
| Netherlands | 50 | 80 | 130 | 100% | 100% | 99% | 844 | 22.8 |
| Norway | 50 | 80 | 100 | 100% | 99% | 30% | 290 | 0.9 |
| Poland | 50 | 90 | 140 | 100% | 84% | 17% | 875 | 2.8 |
| Portugal | 50 | 90 | 120 | 88% | 34% | 8% | 174 | 2.0 |
| Romania | 50 | 90 | 130 | 97% | 95% | 77% | 80 | 0.3 |
| Slovakia | 50 | 90 | 130 | 99% | 84% | 14% | 21 | 0.4 |
| Slovenia | 50 | 90 | 130 | 99% | 74% | 16% | 147 | 7.2 |
| Spain | 50 | 90 | 120 | 88% | 50% | 12% | 2,104 | 4.2 |
| Sweden | 50 | 70 | 110 | 100% | 99% | 83% | 2,455 | 5.5 |
| Switzerland | 50 | 80 | 120 | 100% | 94% | 38% | 638 | 15.4 |
| Turkey | 50 | 90 | 130 | 91% | 26% | 1% | 1,710 | 2.2 |
| United Kingdom | 48 | 97 | 113 | 100% | 93% | 39% | 5,806 | 23.9 |
Limits are in km/h. "n/a" in the motorway columns means the country has no road tagged as a motorway in OpenStreetMap, or the source lists no motorway limit. Camera counts are from the MapAtlas Camera Index snapshot of 21 May 2024.
Several countries add conditions that one number cannot hold:
- Weather and time of day. France and Luxembourg lower their limits in rain; on Luxembourg's motorways the limit drops from 130 to 110 km/h. Lithuania allows 130 km/h on motorways from April to October and 110 from November to March. In the Netherlands, most motorways are limited to 100 km/h between 06:00 and 19:00, according to Rijkswaterstaat.
- Expressways. Czechia sets 110 km/h on expressways and Poland 120 on dual-carriageway expressways. For Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Slovenia and Switzerland, Your Europe lists two values for motorways and expressways, such as 130 and 110 km/h; the table shows the higher one.
- Towns. Brussels applies 30 km/h in built-up areas, Spain 30 km/h on urban streets with one lane in each direction, and Wales 20 mph (32 km/h) on roads with street lights, according to GOV.UK.
- Turkey. The General Directorate of Highways sets 110 km/h on divided roads, 130 on the motorways it runs and 140 on motorways built under build-operate-transfer contracts.
- No general limit
- 130 or 140 km/h
- 120 km/h
- 110 km/h
- 100 km/h or less
- No limit listed
- Not covered
The Autobahn in the map data
Germany's motorway network is the best documented case of a road without a limit. Section 3 of the German road traffic regulations sets 50 km/h in towns and 100 km/h outside them for cars, and states that the 100 km/h limit does not apply on motorways. The EU's Your Europe page for Germany lists 130 km/h on motorways as recommended.
OpenStreetMap records this with a specific value. On 28 September 2026, Geofabrik's statistics for Germany counted 70,955 road segments tagged highway=motorway:
- 98.3% carry a
maxspeedtag of some kind. - 61.5% (43,647 segments) carry
maxspeed=none, meaning no limit applies there. - The rest carry a number, usually where a sign sets a limit for noise, junctions or road works.
These are segments, not kilometres. A segment is one stretch of road between two changes in its tags, so short limited sections near junctions count as often as long open ones.
How complete the speed limit data is
A speed limit in the map is only useful if it is there. Across all 32 countries, the share of road segments with a maxspeed tag falls as roads get smaller:
| Road class | Segments | With maxspeed | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motorway | 328,546 | 315,854 | 96.1% |
| Trunk | 459,949 | 388,906 | 84.6% |
| Primary | 1,530,417 | 1,206,510 | 78.8% |
| Secondary | 2,348,635 | 1,608,000 | 68.5% |
| Tertiary | 3,339,248 | 1,725,237 | 51.7% |
| Residential | 13,347,495 | 4,154,913 | 31.1% |
The spread between countries is widest on residential streets:
- Nearly complete: the Netherlands tags 98.8% of residential streets, Sweden 82.8%, Luxembourg 77.9% and Romania 76.7%.
- Mostly missing: Turkey tags 0.9%, Cyprus 5.4%, Croatia 6.0%, Greece 7.7% and Portugal 8.0%. Italy, the country with the most cameras in this table, tags 12.6%.
- Primary roads show the same pattern at a higher level. Turkey tags 26%, Portugal 34% and Spain 50%, against about 99% in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
- 75% or more
- 50 to 75%
- 25 to 50%
- 10 to 25%
- Under 10%
- Not covered
A missing tag does not always mean the limit is unknown. On a residential street inside a town, the national urban default applies unless a sign says otherwise, and software can infer it if it knows the country and the town boundary. Where a street has a 30 zone, a school zone or a local exception, only an explicit tag carries it. We explain how cars use these values in our article on intelligent speed assistance.
Enforcement cameras per country
The last two columns of the first table come from the MapAtlas Camera Index, our dataset of driver-reported enforcement cameras. The snapshot of 21 May 2024 holds 42,856 cameras in these 32 countries. Per 1,000 km² of land, the density varies by a factor of almost 1,000:
- Densest: Belgium with 88.4 cameras per 1,000 km², Malta 76.8, Italy 35.6, Cyprus 30.9 and the United Kingdom 23.9.
- Sparsest: Ireland with 0.1, Romania 0.3, Slovakia 0.4, Denmark 0.5 and Norway 0.9.
Belgium is a useful contrast. It has the densest camera coverage in the table, but only half of its residential streets carry a speed limit tag. Where cameras are dense and tags are sparse, a speed warning has to rely on inferred defaults on exactly the streets where enforcement is most likely.
These counts are driver reports, so they reflect where our users drive as well as where cameras stand. You can browse them per country in the camera index or on the speed camera map, and the method is described in our camera dataset article.
Method and limits
- Default limits: the European Commission's Your Europe country pages, which national authorities supply under Directive (EU) 2015/413, fetched on 29 September 2026. The pages were last checked by their authors between September 2024 and April 2026, so later changes may be missing. The United Kingdom is from GOV.UK, Turkey from KGM and the Netherlands' daytime rule from Rijkswaterstaat.
- Map coverage: Geofabrik's taginfo for each country, data up to 28 September 2026. The share is the fraction of ways with a given
highwayvalue that also have amaxspeedtag. It counts segments, not kilometres, and any value counts, including values copied from a national default. - Cameras: MapAtlas Camera Index, snapshot 21 May 2024, CC BY 4.0. Land area is computed from Natural Earth 1:10m country polygons, leaving out overseas territories and Svalbard.
- Not covered: Iceland, the Western Balkans outside Croatia and Slovenia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Speed limits for vans, trailers, motorcycles and trucks differ and are not in the table.
The script and data are in scripts/seo/blog-keyword-research/speed-limits-europe.py and docs/blog-keyword-research/speed-limits-europe-2026-09-29.json.
Related
For the zones where older vehicles may not enter at all, read low emission zones in Europe. To estimate what a lower limit does to a trip, compare routes with the distance calculator and the travel time map.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the speed limit on the German Autobahn?
There is no general speed limit on the German Autobahn for cars. The official recommended speed is 130 km/h, and many sections have a posted limit because of traffic, noise or road works. In OpenStreetMap, 43,647 of the 70,955 road segments tagged as motorway in Germany (61.5%) carry maxspeed=none, the tag for a stretch without a limit, as of 28 September 2026.
What are the speed limits in Europe?
For cars, 50 km/h in built-up areas is the default in 31 of the 32 countries we checked; the United Kingdom uses 30 mph (48 km/h). Outside built-up areas the default is 60 to 100 km/h, most often 90. On motorways it ranges from 80 km/h in Malta, 90 in Estonia and 100 in Cyprus and Norway to 130 km/h in most of central and southern Europe and 140 km/h in Poland and Bulgaria. Germany has no general motorway limit.
Which European country has the highest motorway speed limit?
Among countries with a general motorway limit, Poland and Bulgaria have the highest at 140 km/h. Turkey allows 140 km/h on motorways run under build-operate-transfer contracts and 130 km/h on those run by its highways agency. Germany has no general limit on the Autobahn, with 130 km/h recommended.
How complete is speed limit data in OpenStreetMap?
It depends on the road class. Across the 32 countries we measured on 28 September 2026, 96.1% of motorway segments carry a maxspeed tag, 78.8% of primary roads and 31.1% of residential streets. The Netherlands is almost complete, with 98.8% of residential streets tagged, while Turkey has 0.9%. Where the tag is missing, software has to fall back on the national default for that road type.
