Sri Lanka Vehicle Revenue Licence Calculator (2026)

The revenue licence (commonly called the “rēvīnyū”) is the annual Motor Traffic Act fee every registered Sri Lankan vehicle owner pays to keep their vehicle road-legal. Three independent line items make up the total:

1. Base annual fee.Set by the relevant Provincial Council under §31 of the Motor Traffic Act No. 8 of 2009. The Western Provincial Council's schedule is keyed by vehicle class, use type (private / hire / commercial), engine capacity bracket and vehicle age(under 4 years, 4–10 years, over 10 years). Battery-electric vehicles are looked up by motor power (≤40 kW, 41–100 kW, >100 kW). Hybrids pay the standard rate — the earlier concession was removed by the 2016 amendment.
2. Late-renewal surcharge. §32 of the same statute adds 10% of the base fee for each completed quarter the licence is overdue, capped at 4 quarters (40%). Formula: surcharge = base × 0.10 × min(⌈months ÷ 3⌉, 4). Beyond 12 months overdue you must reapply at the DMT — the surcharge route is no longer available.
3. Emission test fee. The Vehicular Emission Test (VET) certificate is a separate Department of Motor Traffic tariff — Rs 5,500 for cars / vans / dual-purpose; Rs 2,500 for lorries and buses; Rs 2,000 for three-wheelers; Rs 1,500 for motorcycles. It must be obtained before the licence payment is accepted, and is valid 12 months. Battery-electric vehicles are exempt — no exhaust to test.

The calculator above totals these three components and shows the breakdown line-by-line. A secondary multiplier-form computation runs in parallel as a sanity check — total = base × (1 + 0.10 × quarters) + emission — and a warning surfaces if the two paths disagree. The fee table itself is encoded directly from the Western Province DMT online fee-lookup tool and cross-referenced against the published Motor Traffic Act statute.

One note on age: older vehicles often pay more, not less, in the Sri Lankan schedule — the “old-vehicle surcharge” is built into the base fee table rather than applied separately. The policy intent is to nudge owners of high-emission, end-of-life vehicles toward replacement.

A worked detail on the engine bracket: the published table groups everything at or below 1,000cc into a single “≤1,000cc” row, then steps up at 1,001–1,300cc, 1,301–1,600cc, 1,601–2,000cc, 2,001–2,500cc and over 2,500cc. So a 660cc kei-car and a 998cc city hatch pay the same base fee, while a jump from 1,300cc to 1,350cc moves you up a band. The tool rolls the finer sub-1,000cc buckets up to that shared row automatically, which is why selecting “501–800cc” and “801–1,000cc” returns an identical figure. Hire rates for cars are roughly 1.5× the private rate; commercial vans and dual-purpose vehicles carry their own multipliers, reflecting heavier road use.

Electric vehicles bypass the cc table entirely. Because a BEV has no displacement, the Provincial Council keys its fee to motor power in kilowatts — three bands at ≤40 kW, 41–100 kW and over 100 kW. If you are weighing the running cost of an EV against the up-front price, the revenue licence is only one line; the much larger number is excise duty at import, which our Sri Lanka vehicle import tax calculator handles, and the monthly instalment, which the vehicle leasing calculator works out.

Every result is double-entered. The primary path adds the three components; a secondary multiplier-form path — total = base × (1 + 0.10 × quarters) + emission — recomputes the same number a different way, and the calculator shows a visible warning if the two ever disagree. The surcharge always rounds completed quarters up: one day into a new quarter counts as a full quarter, because the statute charges by completed three-month block, not by exact day. That is the single most common source of “why is my bill higher than I expected” surprises at the counter. The revenue licence is a recurring annual cost, much like the income tax you can estimate with our Sri Lanka income tax calculator, so it pays to budget for both renewals in the same month each year.

• Department of Motor Traffic, Western Province — Revenue Licence fee schedule
• Motor Traffic Act No. 8 of 2009 (Western Provincial Council Statute) — full text
• Department of Motor Traffic — Vehicular Emission Test (VET) tariff
• eServices Sri Lanka — eRevenue Licence (eRL) online payment portal

The fee table, surcharge formula and emission tariff on this page were last cross-checked against the WP DMT online fee-lookup tool and the Motor Traffic Act statute on 2026-05-12. The page is reviewed each January and whenever a Provincial Council gazette amends the schedule. Rates outside Western Province may vary — see the limitations note inside the calculator card.