In town, not at the airport. Bring about 50 euros in cash for the landing day, change the rest at an exchange office once you are in Tirana or whichever city you are heading to, and you will get a rate close to the real one. The airport is the one place worth avoiding for anything more than pocket money.
That is the whole answer. Here is how it works in practice, including the part where you may not need to change anything at all before you collect your car.
How much cash should I bring with me?
About 50 euros per person is plenty to land with.
That covers the small things on arrival day. If the rate you get on that fifty is a few percent off, the loss is a coffee, not a problem. Everything after that you change properly, in town, at a proper rate.
Bring euros rather than dollars or pounds if you have the choice. Euro is the currency every exchange office here deals in all day, and it gets the cleanest rate.
Should I change money at Tirana airport?
Change a little if you must, but do not plan your trip around it.
Tirana International Airport‘s own answer to this question is that currency exchange services are available near the departure area. That tells you what you need to know as someone arriving: it is not built around passengers walking out of baggage reclaim, and it is not where you want to convert your holiday budget.
Airport exchange counters everywhere in the world price for captive customers, and Albania is no exception. Change what you need for the first few hours and keep the rest.
Where do I actually change money?
At an exchange office, which you will see signed as zyrë këmbimi or simply exchange.
In Tirana they are on more or less every busy street, and every other city has them in the centre. They are licensed and supervised by the Bank of Albania, the rates are posted on a board outside, and the good ones charge no commission at all.
Two rules and you are safe:
• No commission, stated plainly.
• A rate on the board that is close to the market rate, so you can see what you are getting before you hand anything over.
If both are true, walk in. If an office advertises zero commission but the number on the board is noticeably worse than everywhere else, that is where they are making the money instead.
How do I know the rate is any good?
Check in Google or the Bank of Albania’s official daily rate before you go out, and treat it as your reference point.
Do not expect to be handed the rate you see on Google. That is the mid-market rate, the wholesale number banks trade at, and no exchange office anywhere gives it to a walk-in customer. What you should expect in Albania is something fairly close to it, which is genuinely better than most of Europe manages.
Locals tend to have a benchmark in their head. A common one is Iliria’98, a long established chain with branches around the country and an app that publishes its rates. It is a useful sanity check on what a normal rate looks like today.
What it is not is somewhere you need to hunt down. The spread between a decent office and the best office in town is small, and on a few hundred euros the difference is negligible. It starts to matter if you are changing thousands. For a holiday, take the nearest place that passes the two rules above.
Should I just use a bank?
No.
Banks give visibly worse rates than exchange offices, on the order of several percent once you compare their buy and sell prices against a city exchange. You will also queue, because a bank branch here is set up for account holders and bank business, not for changing a tourist’s cash quickly.
The exchange offices exist precisely because they do this one job better. Use them.
Is there a limit, and do I need my passport?
Carry your ID or passport, but relax about the limits, because they sit far above anything a traveller does.
Exchange offices are regulated under Albania’s anti money laundering rules, so they carry out customer identification as a matter of course and can ask you for a document (even though they don’t usually do it) . Bring one anyway.
As for amounts, the legal thresholds are these:
• Any cash transaction of 1,000,000 lek or more, roughly 10,500 euros, must be reported to the authorities, whether done in one go or split across linked transactions.
• Since 3 September 2025, transactions above that same 1,000,000 lek ceiling cannot be done in physical cash at an exchange office at all, and have to go through a bank account or an electronic payment instrument.
Unless you are buying property, neither of these will ever touch your trip.
Do I need lek before I pick up the car?
No, and this is the part worth knowing before you land.
When you collect your car with us, you can pay in euro cash or by card. There is nothing to convert first, no queue at an airport counter with a bad rate, and no need to arrive holding a pile of lek you have not checked the rate on.
So the sensible order is: land with your fifty euros, collect the car, drive into Tirana, and change money there at a proper rate once you have somewhere to park and five spare minutes.
One thing to carry forward: keep cash on you for the rest of the trip. Card acceptance in Albania is patchy, including in Tirana, and petrol stations in particular are not a place to assume the terminal works.
Quick answers
What currency does Albania use?
The Albanian lek. Euros are sometimes accepted informally, but you will usually get a poor rate for the convenience, so change properly and pay in lek.
Where is the best place to exchange money in Albania?
An exchange office, a zyrë këmbimi, in a city centre. No commission, rate posted on the board, close to The Bank of Albania reference rate.
Is it better to exchange at the airport or in the city?
The city, comfortably. Change only pocket money at the airport.
Do I need my passport to exchange money in Albania?
Bring it. Exchange offices are regulated under anti money laundering rules and may ask for identification [6].
Can I pay for a rental car in euros in Albania?
With us, yes. Euro cash or card at the counter, so you do not need lek before you collect the car.
Before you land
Put 50 euros in your pocket, leave the rest alone until you are in town, and book the car so the first stop after the airport is not a currency counter.
We are TIA Rental, we rent cars to travellers across Albania, and you can pay in euro cash or by card when you collect. Book at tiarent.al.
For what happens once you are moving, our guide to driving in Albania, official rules and traffic fines covers speed limits and the documents you need in the car.
