E-scooters in Kaunas: Bolt, the helmet rule, who may ride and where to ride on Laisvės alėja

Which e-scooter apps work in Kaunas?

• Bolt, which brought shared e-scooters to Kaunas on 5 August 2019, after Vilnius, and added e-bikes in April 2022 at the same price as its scooters (the city, 5 August 2019 and 26 April 2022).
• Ride, which calls itself an e-bike sharing service. Its Lithuanian page (read 2 November 2026) lists Kaunas among its cities without saying which vehicles it has there, and tells riders how to start an e-scooter. Open the Ride app to see what stands near you.

At 03:47 on Monday 2 November 2026, Lithuanian time, the Kaunas map showed 879 Bolt scooters free to rent at that moment.

Bolt and Ride both run in Vilnius, and Bolt rents scooters in Riga and Tallinn too. New to shared e-scooters? See how to rent an e-scooter.

What does an e-scooter cost in Kaunas?

Check the price in Bolt’s app before you unlock. Ride’s Lithuanian page also sends you to its app for prices and subscriptions.

If you use Ride, its terms (approved 24 March 2025; the lessor in Lithuania is UAB “Ride LT” in Vilnius) add costs worth knowing:

• up to €50 to fetch a vehicle you leave outside its area;
• €1,500 if you don’t end a rental within 24 hours, when Ride treats the vehicle as lost or stolen;
• a ride ends only once you’ve parked inside the area and uploaded a photo of the vehicle in the app.

Do you need a helmet for an e-scooter in Kaunas?

Yes. Since 1 January 2026 every e-scooter rider in Lithuania must wear a helmet, whatever their age (Reidas, 12 March 2026) and wherever they ride: on the road, the pavement or a cycle path (Reidas, 27 March 2025). Until then only riders under 18 had had to wear one wherever they rode.

The helmet must be certified and the right size; a bicycle helmet will do (Reidas, 12 March 2026). Riding without one can cost a fine of €20 to €40 (Reidas, 15 April 2026).

The rental company has to provide the helmet, Reidas reported in March 2025 and again in April 2026. Ride’s Lithuanian page (read 2 November 2026) offers a red RIDE helmet to any customer without one of their own: ask on +371 2926 3646 or at support@ridemobility.eu, then collect it from its warehouse in Vilnius or, easier from Kaunas, have it sent to a parcel locker.

Sort out a helmet before you ride. If you rent from Bolt and have none, check in its app how it provides one before you unlock.

Lithuania’s e-scooter rules in 2026

On 12 March 2026 Reidas summarised the tightened traffic rules (KET) in force since 1 January 2026:

Reidas’s fuller order of 27 June 2026 puts the pavement, where there is no other way, after the paved shoulder and before the carriageway, where you keep as far right as you can. Ride’s Lithuanian how-to says you may ride an e-scooter on the pavement. If you do, give way to people on foot and slow to their pace.

Fines. Breaking the traffic rules on an e-scooter can cost €20 to €40 under article 428 of the Code of Administrative Offences, and €30 to €50 if it forces others to change speed or direction suddenly. In June 2026 the police ran three checks on micromobility in four weeks and singled out the offences they recorded most: riding over crossings, riding without a helmet, speeding past people on foot and carrying passengers (Reidas, 27 June 2026).

Alcohol. A rider with 0.41 to 1.5 per mille of alcohol in the blood faces a fine of €80 to €150, and above that €150 to €200 (Reidas, 27 June 2026), as does refusing a test (Reidas, 15 April 2026). On a scooter of up to 1 kW and 25 km/h your driving licence isn’t taken away, Reidas wrote in April 2026, but a faster or more powerful one counts in law as a moped, and riding it drunk can cost up to €1,100 and the licence.

Where can you ride in Kaunas? Laisvės alėja and the centre

Laisvės alėja is split in two. The city divided its main pedestrian street into two zones with road signs: with the Old Town behind you and the Soboras church ahead, the whole right-hand side and the middle, under the lime trees, are for people on foot only, and the left-hand side is for mixed traffic (the city, 30 April 2021). On that side a path marked out by strips of paving serves cyclists, scooter riders and unicycle riders, but it isn’t theirs alone: people may walk on it too (the city, 14 September 2023).

Slow down beside people. On the mixed side riders must give way to people on foot (the county police, 2021) and pass them only at close to their pace, about 6 km/h, leaving room on either side (the city, 2023). On 14 September 2023 the city put up new information signs there, and police checking speeds clocked a cyclist at 26 km/h. For now it had no plans to ban scooters or bikes from the avenue, the city said, but if riding didn’t improve it could send fast riders to other streets.

A quicker way. For riders in a hurry the city suggested Kęstučio gatvė, which runs parallel to Laisvės alėja and was renewed with a new cycle path (the city, 30 April 2021).

The old Vilijampolė bridge. Riders heading for the centre from Vilijampolė or Šilainiai had no way but the P. Vileišio bridge, whose side paths are so narrow that people on foot often struggle to pass cyclists and scooter riders, the city said on 1 July 2024, presenting plans for a new bridge over the Neris for cyclists and pedestrians. On the old one, take it slowly or walk the scooter.

Safety. In 2020 the Kaunas county police counted 364 people hurt in road crashes in the city, among them 39 cyclists, six e-scooter riders and one scooter passenger (the city, 30 April 2021). In September 2023 they said twice as many people from crashes involving scooter riders or cyclists had gone to hospital that year as the year before (the city, 14 September 2023).

Where can you park a shared e-scooter in Kaunas?

The city issues permits to companies that rent out micromobility vehicles, and its e-services page for those permits, last updated on 5 May 2026, links a city map of the parking places for rented micromobility vehicles.

Before you end a ride, check in the app where it lets you leave the scooter, stand it upright and keep it out of people’s way. Ride’s app marks the zones where the municipality limits speed in yellow and those you can’t ride through in black; you can’t end a ride in a red zone or outside a green one (Ride’s FAQ), and you finish by uploading a photo of the vehicle (its terms).

From Kaunas’s stations, on buses and from the airport

City buses and trolleybuses. Kaunas has rules for carrying passengers and luggage on its local routes, linked from the city’s public transport page; carrying luggage you haven’t paid for can cost a fine of €10 to €12, the page notes. Check them, or ask at the public transport service point at Laisvės al. 114 (Monday to Friday, 07:30–18:30), before you bring your own scooter.

Trains and coaches. End a shared scooter’s ride where the app allows before you board. Lithuanian Railways (LTG), whose site the city links for trains, and Kautra, which it links for intercity coaches, set their own rules for taking your own e-scooter along: check before you travel.

The airport. Before you count on a scooter to or from Kaunas Airport, check in the app whether you can ride or end a ride there.

Did you know?

• Bolt’s first Kaunas rides cost 10 cents a minute, with unlocking free for the first week, when it launched on 5 August 2019; the mayor, Visvaldas Matijošaitis, said Kaunas was joining the many large European cities with scooter sharing (the city, 5 August 2019).
• In 2019 riders didn’t have to leave scooters at marked places: Bolt would gather them every day and take them back to the key spots in the city (the city, 5 August 2019).
• Kaunas had more than 110 km of cycle paths in April 2022, its deputy mayor Andrius Palionis said, adding that e-bikes suit the city because many trips out of the centre face steep climbs (the city, 26 April 2022).