Monaco number plates, more cars than residents and a sticker on its way out

Wander round Monte-Carlo looking at cars and sooner or later you notice the number plates. Plenty aren’t from Monaco, which already tells you something about the place. Behind the Monegasque plates there’s a statistical oddity, more vehicles than residents, and a small administrative revolution, the end of the sticker that proved for decades that a car was up to date. Here’s what the official sources say.

More cars than residents

According to the government, Monaco has about 53,000 registered vehicles, and almost 6,000 of them are fully electric. The country has 38,857 residents, according to IMSEE, which works out at more vehicles than people living there. It strikes me as a figure that captures Monaco well, a small, wealthy country with a very particular bond with the motor car, from the Grand Prix to the Prince’s car collection.

That doesn’t mean every plate you see is Monegasque. Almost 57,000 people come in to work every day from France and Italy, and visitors arrive on plates from half of Europe. So in Casino Square spotting a Monaco plate becomes almost a game. What else is on that square is in Casino Square.

The estampille, a sticker on its way out

Every vehicle registered in Monaco must renew its registration every year. For decades that was shown by the estampille, a sticker on the plate. The government began changing things in 2025. From the campaign that opened on 1 September 2025, renewals run from 1 September to 31 December, with no penalties, and the year vanished from the estampille.

The campaign for 2027, which opened on 1 September 2026, takes the final step. The physical estampille disappears from the plate, and the vehicle registration service sends a certificate on secure paper that must be kept in the car to show at any check. Fully electric vehicles still have to renew, but it costs them nothing.

What registering a vehicle costs

The 2026 fees of the vehicle registration service are public. Registering a car costs €122, or €69 if it’s fully electric. A motorbike is €88, or €46 if electric. A motorbike estampille is €42, and free if it’s electric. A roadworthiness test for a vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes is €72.

Then there are the special series. The tariffs list a Z series and a TT, temporary transit, series, with much higher prices, €617 to register a car, and a provisional WW registration. I haven’t found an official source explaining who can use each series, so I won’t pretend I know. What I will say is be wary of anyone selling ‘Monaco plates’ as a souvenir or investment, because nothing I’ve read allows for it.

If you’re driving in Monaco

For visitors the practical side is different. Monaco largely follows the French highway code, so you drive on the right, with a general 50 km/h limit, French-style road signs and an alcohol limit of 0.5 g/l. There are about 1,000 on-street parking spaces, paid for petrol and diesel cars and free for electric ones, and around forty public car parks, most of them underground. Prices and locations are in parking in Monaco, and what to know if you arrive in one rented in Nice is in car hire for Monaco.

If you haven’t brought a car but want one for a while, Monaco has shared electric cars from Mobee, which the tourist board says you book through an app, and which might be a Twizy, a Smart or a Tesla. For short hops there are MonaBike’s 350 electric bikes across 49 stations, at €1 for a 30-minute ride. I explain how it works in MonaBike, Monaco’s e-bikes. For a British driver used to the left, the bike can honestly be the less stressful option in Monaco’s tunnels and hairpins.

My honest advice is to keep things as simple as possible here. Unless you’re here for the car collection or to see the circuit, I’d park once, underground, and do the rest on foot, by public lift or on the local buses. Monaco can be crossed on foot in under an hour, and many of its hills are handled by free public lifts, so here a car is more of a headache than a help. And if motoring is your thing, the place not to miss is the Prince’s car collection.