E-scooters in Vilnius: Bolt and Ride, the helmet rule, who may ride and where to park in the Old Town

Which e-scooter apps work in Vilnius?

• Bolt, whose scooters and e-bikes were the green ones when Reidas described them on 9 August 2024.
• Ride, whose vehicles were the red ones in that report. It calls itself an e-bike sharing service, but its Lithuanian page, which lists Vilnius and Kaunas, also tells riders how to start an e-scooter. Open the Ride app to see what stands near you.

In 2024 these were the two companies renting shared scooters and e-bikes in Vilnius, Reidas reported on 6 May 2025, citing JUDU, the city’s mobility company.

At 01:28 on Monday 2 November 2026, Lithuanian time, the Vilnius map showed 2,050 Bolt scooters free to rent at that moment. At 01:40 they spread over more than 10 km each way, thickest within about 2 km of the Old Town, above all to its west.

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

What does an e-scooter cost in Vilnius?

Ride’s Lithuanian page sends you to its app for prices and subscriptions. For Bolt too, check the price in the app before you unlock.

Ride’s 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.

Ride’s FAQ adds that a pause lasts at most 60 minutes, after which the trip ends by itself, and that money paid into its app wallet isn’t refunded to your card.

Rental platforms in Lithuania were bringing in technology that checks only one person is riding and blocks the accounts of riders who keep breaking the traffic rules, Reidas reported on 12 March 2026.

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

Yes. Since 1 January 2026 every e-scooter rider in Lithuania must wear a helmet, whatever their age (Reidas, 12 March 2026). When the Seimas passed the change, amending the Law on Road Traffic Safety (draft XIVP-3540(2)) by 58 votes to 18 with 12 abstentions, Reidas reported on 27 March 2025 that it would cover every rider of an electric micromobility vehicle wherever they rode: on the road, on the pavement or on a cycle path. Until then, it said, the rule had covered riders under 18 everywhere and adults only on the carriageway.

The helmet must be certified and the right size; a bicycle helmet will do (Reidas, 12 March 2026).

The rental company has to provide the helmet: the same amendment put that duty on it, Reidas reported in March 2025. 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 Ride’s warehouse in Vilnius or have it sent to a parcel locker. Its FAQ gives the warehouse as Šaltupio g. 9C, with collection by arrangement Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:00.

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, a Lithuanian road news site, summarised the tightened traffic rules (KET) in force since 1 January 2026:

Reidas’s 2026 list of where to ride leaves out the pavement, though the helmet rule covers riding on it; Ride’s Lithuanian how-to (read 2 November 2026) says you may ride an e-scooter there. If you do, give way to people on foot and slow to their pace.

Be seen. Reidas’s 2026 summary stressed that the vest or lights matter most in autumn and winter, when it is dark for most of the day.

Safety. JUDU counted 180 scooter riders or passengers hurt in crashes in 2024, 59 of them aged 12 to 17. From 2020 to 2023 about a quarter of Vilnius’s crashes with injuries involved scooters or bicycles, and about a third in spring and summer (JUDU’s figures, as Reidas reported on 6 May 2025).

Where can you ride and park in Vilnius Old Town?

Marked parking places in the centre. From Friday 1 September 2023 the city required shared e-scooters in its central part to be left only at special parking places, in the Old Town (Senamiestis) and in part of Naujamiestis, Užupis and Šnipiškės. Each was marked with a rectangle holding a scooter symbol and a “P”, and held up to 10 scooters (Reidas, 31 August 2023). By August 2024 Vilnius had 440 such places for e-scooters and e-bikes, and in May 2025 it planned 350 more by mid-June, for about 800 in all (Reidas, 9 August 2024 and 6 May 2025).

The city’s 2023 rules required riders to stand the scooter upright and in line with the bay, as close as possible to its edge or to the next scooter, and to use the next place when one was full. Near a parking place, it said, the system would not let you end the ride anywhere else, and as obstacles could make the GPS signal drift, the scooter had to be inside a place in any case (Reidas, 31 August 2023). Look for the places in the app, and make sure the scooter is inside the marking before you finish.

Streets closed to scooters in 2023. That year the city put up signs banning e-scooters and bicycles on Vilniaus, Pilies and Savičiaus streets, which it called the busiest tourist streets (Reidas, 31 May and 31 August 2023). Where you see those signs, take another street.

Speed. In May 2023 the city set a limit of 12 km/h for e-scooters in the Old Town and on bridges (Reidas, 31 May 2023). Ride’s app marks the zones where the municipality limits speed in yellow and those you can’t ride through in black, and you can’t end a ride in a red zone or outside a green one (Ride’s FAQ).

Towing and fines. Reidas reported on 9 August 2024 that from 12 August shared scooters and bikes left against the traffic rules would be towed away: from footpaths, cycle paths and other places where the rules ban parking, from pavements where they block people or vehicles, and from the tactile paving laid for blind people. The rider would face a fine of up to €90, or up to €180 in a disabled parking space, and the operator €48 for towing and storage.

From Vilnius airport, the stations and on the buses

The airport. At 01:56 on Monday 2 November 2026 the map showed no Bolt scooter free to rent at the airport; the nearest, six together, stood about a kilometre north-west of the terminal. Whether you can start or end a ride there is in Bolt’s app: check it, and the airport’s own website for the ways into town, before you travel.

The railway and bus stations. At 01:42 the same night about 120 Bolt scooters free to rent stood within 300 m of the railway station, an area that takes in the bus station. End a shared scooter’s ride where the app allows before you board. LTG Link, the train operator, and the coach companies set their own rules for taking your own e-scooter along: check before you travel.

City buses and trolleybuses. Vilniaus viešasis transportas, which runs them, sets the rules for bringing your own scooter on board: check before you travel.

Did you know?

• JUDU’s head of mobility transformation likened a scooter left just anywhere to a banana peel dropped on the pavement: “dirty and dangerous” (Reidas, 6 May 2025).
• Vilnius’s shared scooters and e-bikes covered about 3 million km in 2024, by JUDU’s count (Reidas, 6 May 2025).
• Signing Vilnius’s pavements for bikes would have cost almost €2.5 million: about 1,350 km of them, the city’s administration director Adomas Bužinskas said in May 2023, about a Seimas proposal to ban riding on pavements without such signs (Reidas, 31 May 2023).