Lithuania Currency and Money: The Euro, Cards, ATMs and VAT Refunds

At a Glance

The euro in Lithuania, in one table

Lithuania joined the European Union in 2004 and the euro area nine years later, the last of the three Baltic states to adopt the currency. Nothing else is legal tender here, so foreign banknotes you bring are souvenirs rather than spending money once you land.

The Old Currency

The litas: the rate, and whether you can still change it

Yes, you can still change litas into euro, free of charge, in any amount and with no deadline — but only at the two Bank of Lithuania cash offices, and only if you register first. This is the single fact that almost every page about Lithuanian currency leaves out, and it matters if you found an envelope of banknotes in a drawer after a trip made before 2015.

The conversion rate is fixed forever. The EU Council set it at 3.45280 litas to one euro on 23 July 2014, and the European Commission publishes the same figure. It does not move with markets, because the litas no longer trades on any market.

Every litas issue from 1993 onwards is accepted, including banknotes marked as being of 1991 issue, and damaged or stained notes can be exchanged too if they meet the required characteristics. What is not accepted is the walk-in approach: since a change of procedure, Bank of Lithuania cash office services are provided only to people entered in the bank’s register of cash office customers. You register in advance at kasos.lb.lt, after which no appointment is needed. Bring a passport, an identity card or an EEA-issued driving licence — identification is required for any monetary transaction at the counter, and for totals over EUR 10,000, or where there is suspicion, you may be asked to complete a Customer Identification Form.

The only two counters in the country

Both close one hour earlier on the eve of a public holiday. Neither is at the airport, neither is in the Old Town, and no commercial bank, hotel desk or bureau de change in Lithuania will take litas off you. If your itinerary keeps you in the centre, treat this as a deliberate detour and build it into your Vilnius plans or your day in Kaunas rather than assuming you will pass one.

The same counters do two other useful things free of charge: they exchange worn and damaged euro banknotes and coins, and they sell numismatic items. There is a limit on the coin side. Euro coin exchange is free up to €1,000 per person per calendar month, with a 5% fee on anything above that, and no more than 50 coins per person can be paid out in cash on any one business day.

Cash or Card

Do you need cash in Lithuania?

For a normal city trip, no. Lithuania is one of the easiest countries in Europe to visit with nothing but a contactless card and a phone, and the numbers behind that are published quarterly by the Bank of Lithuania rather than guessed at by travel blogs.

Note the asymmetry in that table: 90,777 terminals against 1,136 machines. Lithuania is far better supplied with places to tap a card than with places to get paper money, which is the opposite of what visitors from cash-heavy countries expect and the reason the “change money first” instinct wastes an afternoon here.

Where cash still has rules

Euro cash is legal tender across the euro area, which the European Commission defines as mandatory acceptance at full face value with the power to discharge a payment obligation. The exceptions matter more than the rule for a traveller. A refusal is allowed where both parties agreed on another means of payment or where it is made in good faith, national limits on cash payments are permitted to fight tax evasion and money laundering, and under Article 11 of Council Regulation (EC) No 974/98 no party other than the issuing authority has to accept more than 50 coins in any single payment. A Lithuanian shop can legally decline your jar of shrapnel.

The national limit is real and it is low enough to catch a tourist buying something serious. Since 1 November 2022 the Law on Restrictions on Settlements in Cash has barred both individuals and companies from settling a transaction in cash above €5,000, or the equivalent in a foreign currency. That ceiling counts the total of all payments made for the same transaction, and splitting a purchase into smaller payments to slip under it is explicitly prohibited. If you are buying a serious piece of amber, a bicycle or anything else with a four-figure price, plan on paying by card or transfer.

Our own recommendation, and it is a recommendation rather than a sourced figure: carry €30–50 in small notes as a buffer. Not because any particular venue is confirmed cash-only, but because a declined card is a five-minute problem in central Vilnius and a much longer one in a village. If you are heading out to Klaipėda and the coast or the Kuršių nerija, keep a note or two in a different pocket from the card.

Cards

Cards, phones and the Vilnius bus trick

The most useful thing to know about paying in Lithuania is that you can board a Vilnius bus or trolleybus, tap your own bank card on the validator, and it sells you a full-price 60-minute ticket for €1.25. No app, no kiosk, no paper card to top up, no local SIM required to make it work.

Judu, the Vilnius transport operator, lists the accepted networks as Mastercard, Maestro, Visa and Visa Electron, and both Google Pay and Apple Pay work on the same validators. There is one catch that catches couples every single day: only one ticket can be bought at a time with a single card. Two people means two cards or two phones, or one of you buys a ticket the traditional way. The full fare table sits in the costs section below, and the wider picture is in our guide to transport in Lithuania.

If your only card runs on a network outside that list, do not make it your only means of paying for transport. The same goes for a card with no contactless chip: 83,540 of Lithuania’s 90,777 terminals are contactless, which is excellent, but the validator on a bus is a tap-only device.

ATMs

ATMs in Lithuania: where they are, and what nobody publishes

Lithuania had 1,136 ATMs at the end of the first quarter of 2026, of which 260 also accept cash deposits. That is a thin network by Western European standards, so withdraw when you see a machine in a city centre rather than assuming the next street will have one.

At Vilnius Airport, the machines you will actually walk past are these.

Why this page does not print ATM fees

Because they are not published. Independent ATM deployers in Lithuania do not put their surcharge schedules online, and the Lithuanian banks publish tariffs for their own customers rather than for visitors’ foreign cards. Any page quoting you a precise per-withdrawal fee for a Lithuanian machine is guessing, and a guess from 2023 is worse than no number at all.

What is guaranteed by law is that the machine has to tell you before you commit. Read the screen, decide there, and apply three habits: prefer a bank-branded machine over an independent one when both are in front of you, withdraw fewer and larger amounts to spread any fixed fee, and always decline the machine’s offer to convert into your home currency. That last one is the section below, and it is where most of the money is lost.

One arrival-day detail worth knowing: official Vilnius Airport taxis accept both cash and payment cards, and can be identified by the information stickers inside the vehicle showing the approved tariffs. So you do not need euro in hand at the kerb. Our Vilnius Airport transfer guide compares the options into the city.

The Expensive Screen

Always choose euro: the dynamic currency conversion trap

When an ATM or a card terminal offers to charge you in pounds, dollars or any currency other than euro, decline it every time and choose EUR. That offer is dynamic currency conversion, the exchange rate is set by the machine’s operator rather than by your bank, and taking it is the most expensive routine mistake a visitor makes in Lithuania.

EU law is unusually helpful here, and hardly any travel page mentions it. Since 19 April 2020, Regulation (EU) 2019/518 has required ATMs and points of sale across the EU to express the total currency conversion charges as a percentage mark-up over the latest available euro foreign exchange reference rates issued by the European Central Bank, and to disclose — before the payment is initiated — both the amount payable in the recipient’s currency and the total you will be charged in your own account currency.

In plain terms: the mark-up is legally required to be on the screen, as a percentage, before you press the button. Most people tap through it. Read it instead, and the choice makes itself.

The benchmark those percentages are measured against is the ECB’s euro foreign exchange reference rates, which are usually updated at around 16:00 CET every working day except TARGET closing days, following a concertation procedure between European central banks at around 14:10 CET. That is also why this page does not print a live pound or dollar rate: any figure written into a travel guide is stale within a day. Check the ECB’s own page on the morning you need it.

The same rule and the same answer apply in restaurants and shops, not just at ATMs. If the waiter’s terminal asks whether you want to pay in your home currency, the answer is still euro.

Exchange

Changing cash: mostly, do not bother

The cheapest way to get euro in Lithuania is to withdraw them from an ATM with your own card, having declined the conversion offer. Bringing home-currency banknotes to change at a counter adds a spread you cannot see and a queue you do not need.

If you do have cash to change, currency exchange at Vilnius Airport is run by TOP EXCHANGE.

Treat those as an emergency service rather than a plan. An airport counter is the least competitive rate you will be offered on the whole trip, and an unattended self-service kiosk is generally worse than a staffed desk, because nothing about a machine invites you to negotiate or to walk away. This page will not print a spread figure, because no operator publishes one. The check you can actually make is free: look up the ECB reference rate for that day, work out what your notes are worth at it, and compare that against the number on the board before you hand anything over.

Tax

VAT in Lithuania: 21%, and what is taxed less

Lithuania’s standard VAT rate is 21%, and it is already inside every price you see. There is no American-style tax added at the till, so the shelf price, the menu price and the museum poster price are what you pay.

That table explains a pattern visitors notice and misattribute to Lithuania simply being cheap. Museum entry, a concert ticket, a hotel night and a bus fare all sit in the reduced band, while the beer and the T-shirt sit at 21%. Rates are set in law and can change: the VMI publishes the current list, so if you are building a budget months ahead, confirm the reduced rate there rather than trusting a figure copied from a blog.

VAT Refunds

Tax-free shopping: the €40 rule most guides get wrong

The minimum spend for a Lithuanian VAT refund is €40 including VAT, not the €55 that circulates on travel sites. The figure comes straight from the VMI, Lithuania’s tax authority, and it matters because €40 puts a decent piece of amber, a linen shirt or a good bottle inside the scheme where €55 would have put it outside.

Refunds are for travellers whose permanent place of residence is outside the EU, regardless of citizenship. The VMI illustrates it with its own example: a Lithuanian citizen who permanently lives in Norway qualifies, while a Norwegian citizen who permanently lives in Lithuania does not. Passport colour is irrelevant; where you live is everything.

Three mistakes account for almost every failed refund. The first is asking for the declaration after paying — your non-EU ID has to be shown at the till, at the moment of purchase, and no shop can retrofit it later. The second is assuming every shop participates; only those in the Tax Free shopping system do, and they are required to advertise it in English at the counter, so if you cannot see the sign, ask before you queue. The third is the calendar: customs has to confirm the goods left the EU by the last day of the third month after the month you bought them, which is generous for a normal holiday and lethal if you posted the parcel home and left the paperwork in a drawer.

Practical sequencing at the airport: the customs confirmation comes before check-in, because customs may want to see goods that are about to disappear into the hold. Build the extra time into your departure, and if you are still choosing flights, our cheap flights to Lithuania page covers which routes leave you a workable morning.

Tipping

Tipping in Lithuania, answered honestly

There is no official tipping rate in Lithuania, and this page is not going to invent one. We looked for a Lithuanian institution, tax authority or tourism board that sets or even describes a norm, and found none. Every confident percentage you read on other travel sites is folklore repeated between blogs, not a rule you can be held to.

What you can do instead is read the bill. If a service charge has been added, it will appear as a line on it. Card terminals in restaurants and bars increasingly offer a tip prompt on screen; declining it is a single button and nobody reacts. Tipping is discretionary here, judged by what the service was worth to you rather than by a number, and no waiter will chase you down the street over it.

The reason this section exists in this shape is the same reason the rest of the page cites its sources: a page that admits what it cannot verify is worth more to you than one that fills the gap with a confident figure somebody made up in 2016.

Real Prices

What money actually buys in Vilnius

These are published tariffs from the operators themselves, not sampled cafe prices. They are the figures you can build a budget on.

For calibration against local earnings: Lithuania’s statutory minimum monthly wage is €1,153 gross in 2026, up from €1,038 in 2025. Set the €59 three-day Vilnius Pass against that and you can see why a pass is a considered purchase for a resident and an easy one for a visitor.

The city tax that is not in your room rate

Vilnius charges a city tax of €2 per person per night on accommodation. It has been €2 since 1 January 2024, having been €1 per person per night from 1 July 2018 until 31 December 2023. It is not included in the rate you saw when booking — the accommodation provider adds it to your invoice, which is why a room that looked like a fixed price grows by a few euro at checkout. For two people over four nights that is €16 you had not planned.

Exemptions do exist: people under 18 and older school pupils with a pupil’s certificate, disabled persons with 0–40% working capacity, stays of one month or longer, and guests who booked via Airbnb, because the platform pays the fee straight to Vilnius City Municipality. That last one is a genuine price difference between booking channels, not a technicality.

So when you compare accommodation, compare the total that lands on the invoice rather than the headline rate, and check whether breakfast and the city tax are inside or outside it. Our where to stay in Vilnius guide covers which districts suit which kind of trip.

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In Your Change

The Lithuanian coins in your change

Lithuania did something unusual with its euro coins: all eight denominations carry the same national design. Most euro countries vary the picture by value. Lithuania put one image on every coin from the 1 cent to the €2 — the coat of arms of the Republic of Lithuania, Vytis, the mounted knight, alongside the country name LIETUVA, the year 2015 and the twelve stars of the European flag. The designer was the sculptor Antanas Žukauskas.

Turn a Lithuanian €2 coin on its edge and the lettering reads LAISVĖ * VIENYBĖ * GEROVĖ * — Freedom, Unity, Well-Being. It is the cheapest souvenir in the country and it is already in your pocket.

None of this affects what you can spend. Coins and banknotes from any euro-area country are accepted identically in Lithuania, and the Lithuanian coins in your change will spend just as normally when you get home.

The free museum about money

The Bank of Lithuania’s Money Museum in Vilnius, at Totorių g. 2/8, is free, and so are its guided tours — a genuinely good rainy-afternoon stop rather than a filler.

There is a second Money Museum exhibition in Kaunas, at Maironio g. 25 — the same address as the Kaunas cash office, so anyone still holding litas can change them and see them behind glass in a single stop. Both fit neatly into a wet day on the trip planner.

Banknotes

Banknotes: no €500, and a new series on the way

The Europa series of euro banknotes has six denominations — €5, €10, €20, €50, €100 and €200 — because the ECB decided to stop issuing the €500 note, which is not part of the series at all. If a currency page still lists €500 as a current denomination, it has not been updated in years, and several of the pages ranking for this query do exactly that.

Practically, the top of the range is awkward anyway. A €200 note is not something a kiosk, a bakery or a bus is set up to break, so when you withdraw, take a mix and keep small notes for small purchases. This is also the argument for the €30–50 buffer mentioned earlier being in small denominations rather than one large one.

A third series of euro banknotes is in progress, and nothing about it will affect this trip. The ECB chose the themes “European culture” and “Rivers and birds” on 30 November 2023, ran a design contest in 2025 that drew over 1,200 applications, and expects the final decision on the visual appearance around the end of 2026. Circulation is still several years away, and today’s notes will remain valid.

Avoid These

Money mistakes to avoid in Lithuania

Four more, quickly. Do not bring home-currency banknotes expecting to spend them: the euro is the only legal tender here. Do not plan to settle a big purchase in cash, because since 1 November 2022 cash settlement of a transaction above €5,000 is prohibited, and splitting it into smaller payments is prohibited too. Do not hand over a jar of coins, since no shop has to accept more than 50 coins in one payment. And do not let the customs export confirmation slide past the last day of the third month after the month of purchase, or the refund is simply gone.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions