Crossing is an add-on in the booking, on cars that offer it.
What has to be arranged before you go?
In the booking, crossing is an add-on: choose a car that offers the cross-border option and add it when you reserve. Its fee is shown on that car before you pay.
The add-on, and what it costs, is set by the company that owns the car rather than by this site. At the handover, check that the cross-border add-on you chose is on the rental.
The companies renting here are local firms, and each sets its own add-on.
A car taken across without the add-on is outside the rental agreement. In Ulcinj, where the paperwork is handed over is the same place as the keys.
Sukobin, Muriqan, and the distances
The crossing south of Ulcinj is Sukobin on the Montenegrin side and Muriqan on the Albanian side, in Shkoder municipality, on the river: the Bojana here and the Buna over there. It is 24 km and about half an hour from the middle of Ulcinj, and both routing engines agree on that to the metre, in both directions.
- 24 kmto the Sukobin crossing, about 30 minutes
- 41 kmto Shkoder, about an hour in total
- 119 kmto Tirana Airport, about 2 h 30
At 24 km, the border is nearer to Ulcinj than Bar is.
Beyond it, the drive from Ulcinj to Shkoder is 41 km and about an hour in total, and both routing engines agree on it exactly. Tirana Airport is about 119 km and two and a half hours; Tirana itself about 133 km and two and three quarters.
Shkoder is half an hour to the river and half an hour beyond it. Tirana is about two and three quarter hours each way, and the car comes back to Montenegro.
The road down to the crossing is the same one that runs towards the mouth of the Bojana, so the border and the river island at the end of the beach sit on the same stretch of tarmac. Do not cross there without the cross-border add-on on the rental.
What has not been established
The crossing’s opening hours, and whether it accepts hire cars as a general rule, are not given here. Neither is established by a verifiable source.
We also do not publish waiting times. The figures that circulate, minutes off season and hours at the August peak, give no method.
The person who hands the car over can be asked about the crossing on the day.
No amount for the cross-border add-on is given here. It is set per car by the company that owns it and shown on the car before you reserve.
Sites in the same estate as this one are never used as a source.
What you carry across
At the border the same licence rule applies: a valid national driving licence with the details duplicated in Latin script, valid until at least the end of the rental, and not a copy or an electronic one. If yours is only valid in the country that issued it, an International Driving Permit is strongly recommended and may be asked for.
Keep the phone you booked with reachable, with its country code, throughout the rental. It is a condition of the booking.
The deposit card and the age requirements do not change either. The card has to be physical and in the main driver name given at booking, and the minimum age and driving experience are set per car rather than across the fleet, so a second driver who qualifies for one model may not qualify for another. Check this before the day of the crossing.
Fuel, parking, fines and tolls stay with the renter wherever the car is, and the standard cover excludes the same four parts on the far bank as on this one: wheels, undercarriage, windscreen and interior. The same conditions apply in both countries, and the roads back into Montenegro are covered by the same agreement as the roads out.
Can you leave the car in Albania?
The car cannot finish in Albania. Every pick-up and drop-off point in this booking system is Montenegrin, so leaving the car at the airport means a Montenegrin airport: Podgorica or Tivat, not Tirana. A car taken abroad comes back with you.
If the flight home is from Tirana anyway, work backwards. It is two and a half hours to the airport from Ulcinj, and the car still has to be returned in Montenegro. In the other direction, collecting at the airport before the border is another option: land at Podgorica, drive south, and add the cross-border option when you book the car.
And if the trip runs longer than the booking, tell the rental company before the rental ends rather than after. Extending is allowed with advance notice.
Rentals are counted in whole days with a twenty-four hour minimum.
Enter your dates.
Add the crossing.
Choose the car and the days, and add the cross-border option on a car that offers it.
Find your car