How to park in Athens without receiving a fine?

by · Greek City Times

Mayor Haris Doukas’s City Hall still runs paid street parking through myAthensPass. Use the app, sit only in a visitor bay, stay inside the time limit, and keep out of resident spaces. That is how you avoid the ticket.

The app was built by DAEM, the Municipality of Athens IT company. More than 100,000 drivers use it; the city records over 3,000 app sessions a day. It is free, in Greek and English, on the App Store and Google Play.

What the markings mean

  • White lines and a P69 “paid parking” sign: visitor bays. Pay here.
  • Blue lines and a residents sign: permit holders only, day and night, all year.
  • Yellow lines: special use. Not spare visitor parking.

Visitor rules
Controlled hours are Monday–Friday 09:00–21:00 and Saturday 09:00–16:00. Outside those hours, and on Sundays, visitor bays are unpaid. Resident bays are never free for non-residents. Maximum stay in a visitor space is three hours.

Prices
30 min €0.50 · 60 min €1 · 90 min €1.50 · 120 min €2 · 150 min €4 · 180 min €6.
Disability-badge vehicles park free in visitor bays. Free parking for electric cars in controlled zones ended in January 2025.

How to use myAthensPass

  1. Install the app.
  2. Create an account.
  3. Add a debit, credit or prepaid card in the wallet.
  4. Top up between €0.50 and €20.
  5. On the map, choose your spot, pick 30–180 minutes, enter the plate with no spaces or dashes (Greek or foreign plates both work) and start the session.
  6. A notification arrives ten minutes before expiry. Extend from the phone if you are still inside the three-hour cap.

You can schedule a session to start automatically at 09:00 if you arrive before controlled hours. Payment also exists at authorised kiosks (POS) and via scratch cards. Enforcement checks plates against the digital ticket.

How people still get fined
A blue resident bay. More than three hours in a visitor bay. The car stopped and the session not started. The plate typed wrong. Assuming Parkout, the city’s crowdsourced finder, covers the historic centre — it does not. Parkout is for neighbourhoods outside paid zones. In Plaka, Kolonaki, Exarchia, the commercial triangle and the Acropolis area, myAthensPass is the system that counts.

Under Mayor Haris Doukas the rule is unchanged: white bay, app on, three hours max.

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