An e-Day License is the $20 ticket that lets you legally drive your off-peak car during its restricted hours for a single day. If you run a Weekend Car, an old Off-Peak Car, or the newer Revised Off-Peak Car, your number plate normally bars you from the road on weekday daytimes. Buy an e-Day License through OneMotoring or an AXS machine, pick the date you want to drive, and the restriction lifts for that day. The price has held at $20 for years, and as of June 2026 you can buy one up to two weeks ahead and cancel it before 7am on the day if your plans change. This guide walks through exactly how to buy an e-Day License, what the 2026 off-peak rules look like, the fines for getting it wrong, and whether the whole off-peak deal is worth it for your driving pattern.
Off-peak cars in Singapore carry red number plates and a road-tax discount in exchange for staying off the road during peak times. The deal trades freedom for money. An e-Day License is how you buy back one day of that freedom when you need it.
One license covers one calendar day for one vehicle. It lifts the restriction from midnight to midnight on the date you choose, so you can drive at 8am on a Tuesday or 1pm on a Saturday with no risk of a summons. It does not roll over, and it is tied to the specific vehicle and date you nominate at purchase.
The scheme covers three plate types: the original Weekend Car (WEC), the Off-Peak Car (OPC), and the Revised Off-Peak Car (ROPC) that has applied to new registrations since 2010. They share the same $20 e-Day License price but have slightly different free-driving windows, which matters for how often you actually need to buy one.
There are three ways to pay your $20, and all of them are self-service. You do not need to visit an LTA counter.
Whichever channel you use, you must nominate the usage date at the point of purchase. Undated e-Day Licenses, the kind you could bank and use any day, are no longer sold as of the current LTA policy, though anyone holding old undated licenses can still use them. If you bought your car partly to dodge car ownership costs, it helps to plan your e-Day usage in the same way you would budget any recurring expense in our car cost calculator.
Plans change, and the rules are forgiving here. You can cancel an e-Day License or move it to a different date any time before 7am on the date you originally chose. After 7am on the day of use, it is locked in and non-refundable.
The whole point of buying an e-Day License is to drive during restricted hours. So the first question is which hours are restricted for your plate. Get this wrong and you either waste $20 on a day you were already free to drive, or you skip a license on a day you needed one and risk a fine.
The table below sets out the 2026 restricted and free windows for each scheme. The big practical difference is Saturday: under the newer ROPC scheme, Saturdays are completely free, so most ROPC owners only ever buy e-Day Licenses for weekday daytime trips.
| Period | WEC / OPC | ROPC | License needed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekdays 7am-7pm | Restricted | Restricted | Yes, for both |
| Weekdays 7pm-7am | Free | Free | No |
| Saturday 7am-3pm | Restricted | Free | Only WEC / OPC |
| Saturday after 3pm | Free | Free | No |
| Sunday, all day | Free | Free | No |
| Public holidays | Free | Free | No |
| Eves of 5 public holidays, 7am-3pm | Restricted | Free | Only WEC / OPC |
Skipping the $20 is a false economy. Driving an off-peak car during restricted hours without a valid e-Day License is an offence, and the penalty dwarfs the license price.
There is also a smaller trap with old undated licenses. If you still hold one and use it, you must declare the usage date by 11:59pm the day after you drove. Miss that and a $30 late-declaration fee applies, and an undeclared license is treated as invalid. The honest maths is simple: a license costs $20, a first offence can cost up to $5,000, so buy the license.
The e-Day License is cheap, but the scheme it sits inside is the real money decision. The off-peak trade-off is an upfront rebate plus an annual road-tax discount, paid for with restricted driving and the $20-a-day cost of breaking that restriction.
For a brand-new ROPC, you get up to $17,000 knocked off the combined Certificate of Entitlement (COE) premium and Additional Registration Fee (ARF) at registration. If you convert an existing normal car to ROPC, you instead earn up to $1,100 cash rebate for every six months it stays off-peak, with no rebate if it is converted for under six months or is already over 10 years old. On road tax, every scheme saves up to $500 a year, with a floor of $70 a year. Before you commit, it is worth seeing how the rest of the bill stacks up in our guide to what really drives car costs in Singapore.
The break-even is all about how often you drive in daytime on weekdays. If you genuinely only need the car at night and on weekends, the savings are real and the occasional e-Day License is a rounding error. If you find yourself buying licenses two or three times a week, you are paying $40 to $60 weekly for the privilege of a discount, and a normal car plus careful budgeting may work out cheaper.
Say your road-tax saving is the full $500 a year. That covers 25 e-Day Licenses at $20 each. Buy fewer than 25 daytime weekday licenses a year and the road-tax discount alone keeps you ahead, before counting the upfront rebate. Buy more, and the restriction is costing you money. Pair this with the rebate you would get back when you eventually deregister, which we break down in our COE and PARF rebate guide, to see the full lifetime picture.
One thing to know before you buy into the scheme: it is largely a one-way door. A WEC or OPC cannot be converted back to a normal car. A ROPC can be converted to normal status, but you forfeit the off-peak benefits and pay the difference. The red-and-white number plate also stays with the off-peak status, so there is no quietly running an off-peak car on a normal plate.
The e-Day License only solves the time restriction. It does not change anything about insurance, season parking, or your COE clock, all of which run exactly as they would for a normal car. If you are weighing a second-hand off-peak car, read the plate type carefully, because a WEC's restricted Saturday mornings mean more e-Day Licenses over the year than an equivalent ROPC.
An e-Day License costs $20 and lets you drive your WEC, OPC, or ROPC during its restricted hours for one full calendar day. The price has been stable for years and is the same across all three off-peak schemes as of June 2026.
You can buy an e-Day License online through your OneMotoring dashboard, or at any AXS channel, which includes the AXS e-Station website, the m-Station mobile app, and physical AXS kiosks. Online purchase is available all day except the midnight-to-1am maintenance window.
Yes. You can cancel an e-Day License or change its usage date at any time before 7am on the date you originally selected. After 7am on the day of use it is locked in and cannot be refunded, so decide early if your plans have changed.
Driving during restricted hours without a valid e-Day License is an offence. A first offence can attract a fine of up to $5,000, and subsequent offences up to $10,000. Since a license is only $20, it is never worth the risk of skipping it.
It depends on your plate. ROPC owners can drive freely all day Saturday and do not need a license. WEC and OPC owners are still restricted on Saturdays from 7am to 3pm, so they need an e-Day License to drive during those morning hours.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.