Crossing the Border by Taxi: What You Need for Croatia and Albania Trips from Montenegro

If your flight departs from Dubrovnik or Tirana instead of a Montenegrin airport, your taxi ride includes an international border crossing, and it's worth knowing what that actually involves before you're sitting in the car wondering if you brought the right documents.

The two crossings you'll use

Heading north toward Dubrovnik, the crossing is Debeli Brijeg on the Montenegrin side and Karasovići on the Croatian side, located in Herceg Novi municipality along the coastal road. It's the main crossing point for this route and runs 24 hours a day.

Heading south toward Tirana, the crossing is Sukobin on the Montenegrin side and Muriqan on the Albanian side, in Shkodër County. It opened as a joint crossing in 2009 and is the primary coastal route between the two countries, also running around the clock.

Both are standard, well-used international crossings, not obscure back roads, so there's nothing unusual or improvised about either trip.

What you need

A valid passport. This is the main thing to have ready for both crossings. A national ID card is only accepted at the Croatian crossing if you hold EU citizenship; for anyone else, and for the Albanian crossing regardless of nationality, you'll need your passport. Keep it somewhere easy to reach in the car, a bag at your feet rather than a suitcase in the trunk, since you may need to hand it over at the checkpoint window.

Any visa requirements for your nationality. Depending on where you're from, Croatia (as an EU and Schengen member) and Albania may have different entry requirements than Montenegro does. This isn't something we can advise on directly since it depends entirely on your passport's country of issue, so it's worth checking your own government's travel advisories or the relevant embassy before you travel, particularly if you're not from the EU, US, UK, or similar visa-exempt countries.

Patience, especially in peak season. Wait times at Debeli Brijeg can run considerably longer in July and August, sometimes stretching to a few hours on the busiest weekend days, while winter crossings are typically quick. The Sukobin crossing into Albania tends to move more predictably, generally somewhere between a few minutes off-season and roughly an hour on a busy summer day, though conditions can shift. Neither figure is a guarantee, just a general sense of what to expect.

What the driver handles

You don't need to worry about vehicle paperwork, insurance, or anything related to the car itself, that's on us. What we need from you is simply a valid passport and whatever entry documentation your nationality requires. If you're traveling with children, it's worth double-checking whether either country has specific requirements for minors crossing with only one parent, since some border authorities do ask about this, though it's not something specific to taxi travel versus any other mode of crossing.

One less thing to worry about: time zones

A small but genuinely convenient detail: Montenegro, Croatia, and Albania all run on the same time zone, Central European Time. Whichever airport you're headed to, you don't need to do any mental math on arrival times or worry about a flight that technically departs an hour earlier or later than your phone shows. It's a minor thing, but it's one less variable to think about on a trip that already involves a border crossing.

What the crossing itself feels like

For most travelers, the actual process at either checkpoint is fairly routine: you'll slow down, hand over passports through the window when asked, and wait while the officer checks them. There's rarely any need to get out of the car unless specifically asked to. It's not dramatically different from crossing any land border between neighboring European countries, just with the added variable of Montenegro sitting outside the EU and Schengen area, which is why the passport check happens at all rather than being waved straight through.

Timing your trip around the border

Because border wait times are the least predictable part of any cross-border transfer, we'd recommend treating them as a planning buffer rather than something you can pin down to the minute. If you're catching a flight from Dubrovnik or Tirana, especially in peak summer, give yourself more cushion than the raw drive time alone would suggest. Our guide on how far in advance to book covers this in more depth, including how seasonal traffic compounds with border timing.

For the specifics of each individual route, including exact distances and fares, see our guides to Bar to Dubrovnik Airport and Bar to Tirana Airport.

The pickup rule still applies

Worth repeating here since it's easy to overlook: we can only pick you up if your trip starts inside Opština Bar, which covers Bar, Sutomore, Čanj, Dobra Voda, Šušanj, Stari Bar, Virpazar, and Utjeha. That restriction is only about where the ride begins. Once you're picked up legally within that zone, crossing into Croatia or Albania is a completely normal, routine part of the job for us.

Book through the Greencar.me Taxi app on Android, or the App Store on iPhone. For the full picture on pickup zones and fares across every route in this guide, see the airport transfers overview.