Italian licence points

We cannot read your balance. We can tell you what each violation costs, when the per-occasion cap is disapplied, and how points come back.

What we do not do

We cannot read your licence balance

Only the Portale dell'Automobilista, the IO app and the Motorizzazione helpline can show the balance. What is here is what a violation costs and how points are recovered — the two things those sources do not explain.

[ IMG ]int-points4:3

The points

A licence that goes down

Initial allocation20 / 20

Floor: 0
Cap per occasion: 15
Highest reachable: 30Derived figure

The cap does NOT apply at all where suspension or revocation is ordered for that violation: the full deduction stands.

The points

Derived figure

A derived figure: it is nowhere in the text. It is the initial allocation plus the maximum bonus provided, and we show it as derived rather than presenting it as a statutory value.

How they come back

Refresher course+6 points
Course for professional-certificate holders+9 points

The clean period

After the clean period without any deduction-bearing violation, the balance returns to the initial allocation.

2 years → 20 points

The bonus

A holder already at the initial allocation accrues a bonus for each complete clean period, up to the stated maximum.

+2 points / 2 years · max 10

Balance at zero

Once the balance reaches zero the technical fitness examination under art. 128 is due. The same examination is triggered by a second route: after notification of a first violation costing at least five points, two further non-contextual violations of at least five points each within twelve months.

The points

Newly qualified drivers: the doubling

The rule exists, but it is not in art. 126-bis: it is in the CLOSING NOTE of the points table annexed to that article. That is why looking for it in the article turns up nothing.

3 years

In force as of: 1 October 2003
Source: CdS art. 126-bis · CdS art. 126-bis, tabella dei punteggi allegata

Open anomaly

Two anomalies we leave open

Open anomaly

Two different scales for one article

The text of art. 167 co. 3, as amended, states overload bands that do not match the ones printed in the points table annexed to art. 126-bis, which stayed on the earlier bands. We render both scales as written.

Bands in the article's own text

5%
·15%
·25%
·> 25%

For the article's own text our data records the bands, not a verbatim transcription: we print the quotation where we hold one and never invent one where we do not.

CdS art. 167 co. 3

Bands in the points table

10%
·20%
·30%
·> 30%

«Commi 3, 5 e 6, con riferimento a: a) eccedenza non superiore al 10 per cento; b) eccedenza non superiore al 20 per cento; c) eccedenza non superiore al 30 per cento; d) eccedenza superiore al 30 per cento»

Tabella allegata all'art. 126-bis

For the article's own bands we assert NO points value: the table is built on a scale the article no longer uses, and mapping one onto the other would be our invention. Referred to the reviewer.

Open anomaly

Three rows with a leading minus

In the official table the art. 173 rows are printed with a leading minus, while almost every other row of the same table is an unsigned positive. We use the magnitudes and disclose the anomaly: we do not silently correct it, and we do not claim to know which reading is right.

−8 · −5 · −10

What we found

What the Codice della Strada does NOT say

Four things readers take for granted that are not in the text, or are not where they look for them. Each with its article, and with the exact place the rule actually lives.

Newly qualified

There is no article about doubling points for newly qualified drivers

The rule exists, but it lives in the CLOSING NOTE of the table annexed to art. 126-bis — outside the article and outside art. 117. Anyone looking where it is natural to look finds nothing — including us: an earlier pass of this same research concluded the rule was absent, after checking both articles and the extracted table in full. That was wrong, and the retraction is on the record.

cite: Table annexed to art. 126-bis, closing note
Texts searched: Art. 126-bis, art. 117, the points table (99 extracted lines), a search across the whole consolidated text

Points

Points are subtracted from a balance, not accumulated

This is the inverse of the accrual model most cross-border readers bring with them. And the highest reachable figure is written nowhere: it is the sum of two provided values, and we show it as derived.

cite: Art. 126-bis
Texts searched: Art. 126-bis and its annexed table, consolidated text

Criminal threshold

Above the threshold there is no reduced payment at all

Not because a provision forbids it, but because above the threshold the act is no longer an administrative offence: it is a crime punished by ammenda and arresto. No reduced payment, no further reduction, no ordinary window. That art. 202 cannot reach that band is, however, our inference from its wording, not an express exclusion.

cite: Artt. 186 and 202
Texts searched: Artt. 186, 186-bis, 187 and 202, consolidated text

2027

No 2027 figure exists yet

Every amount on this site is bounded by a decree due by the end of 2026, effective the following year, indexed to an ISTAT variation that will only be ascertained once the two-year period closes. The index does not exist, the decree does not exist, and we do not even know the sign of the variation: the last comparable period was negative.

cite: Art. 195 co. 3 CdS; L. 197/2022 art. 1 co. 497 as amended
Texts searched: Art. 195 CdS, L. 197/2022, D.L. 31 December 2025 no. 200

In brief

Italian points come off a balance — they do not build up

This is the single fact most cross-border readers get backwards, and it changes every calculation that follows. An Italian licence is issued with 20 points, and violations DEDUCT from that allocation down to a floor of 0. There is no register filling up toward a threshold, and no number that is "bad to reach" — the danger is running out.

If your intuition comes from the German Flensburg register, or from any system where points accrue toward a cap, invert it. A driver with a high number in Italy is a driver in good standing. A driver at the floor faces a technical fitness examination before driving again.

The deduction for each violation comes from a table annexed to art. 126-bis, which carries 97 point-bearing rows. The article and the table are one instrument: art. 126-bis co. 1 sets the allocation and then incorporates the table by reference for the amounts.

20 pointsInitial allocation
15 pointsCap per occasion
30 pointsHighest reachableDerived, not stated in the text

The figures

The cap, and the case where the cap does not exist

Where several violations are established at the same time, art. 126-bis co. 1-bis caps the total deduction at 15 points. That is the rule most summaries stop at, and stopping there is where they mislead.

The same comma disapplies the cap entirely where suspension or revocation of the licence is ordered for the violation. Not reduces it — disapplies it. So the cap protects you in exactly the situations that are not serious, and vanishes in the ones that are. A reader planning around "the most I can lose at once" needs both halves of that sentence.

Points and money are also on separate tracks. The doubling that art. 142 co. 11 applies to heavy vehicles doubles the pecuniary and the accessory sanction and never the points, because the points come from the annexed table rather than from the sanctioning article. Two provisions, two mechanisms, and no arithmetic passes between them.

How it works

How points come back

Three mechanisms restore points, and they do not stack in the way readers assume.

A refresher course restores 6 points; for holders of a professional certificate together with the relevant licence categories, the equivalent course restores 9 points. Both require passing an examination at the end — attendance alone restores nothing.

A clean period restores the allocation outright. Where 2 years pass without any violation carrying a deduction, the balance returns to 20 points. And for a holder already at the full allocation, each clean period of 2 years earns a credit of 2 points, up to a maximum of 10 points.

That maximum is where the site's most-quoted derived figure comes from, and we flag it every time we print it.

The highest reachable figure is nowhere in the statute

Adding the initial allocation to the maximum bonus gives 30 points, and that is the number Italian drivers quote. Art. 126-bis never states it. It is a sum of two provided values, and we render it as derived every time rather than presenting it as something the text says.

CdS art. 126-bis co. 5 — derived from initial allocation + maximum bonus

Reaching the floor, and the second route to the same examination

At zero the holder must sit the technical fitness examination under art. 128, and failing to comply within 30 days of notification leads to suspension for an indefinite period by a definitive act. A second, separate trigger reaches the same examination without the balance emptying at all: art. 126-bis co. 6 provides for it where a first notified violation carrying a substantial deduction is followed by two further non-contextual violations of comparable weight inside the period the comma states. The thresholds and the period are in that comma; our data set carries the consequence rather than those figures, so we point you at the provision instead of printing them.

CdS art. 126-bis co. 6

Refresher courseRestores 6 points, examination required.
Professional courseRestores 9 points for the qualifying categories, examination required.
Clean periodAfter 2 years without a deduction-bearing violation, the balance returns to 20 points.
Clean-period bonusAlready at the full allocation: 2 points per 2-year clean period, up to 10 points.

In detail

Two things about this table we will not smooth over

The points table is an official text, and two features of it are unresolved. We show them rather than pick a reading, because picking one would mean asserting something the source does not.

First, art. 167 co. 3 — overloading for vehicles under a stated weight — has been amended to bands the annexed table does not use. The article now reads one set of percentage bands; the table still prints the earlier set. Two different scales describe what should be one tiering, so we render both as written and assert NO points mapping for the article's own bands. Choosing a scale would be our invention, not the law's.

Second, three rows of the table — all of them art. 173, the vision-and-devices article that also covers phone use — print with a leading minus sign where the other rows are unsigned positives. That is in the official electronic text, not introduced by our extraction. It is probably a transcription artifact, since every value in this table is a deduction and a negative deduction reads as a credit on two of the heaviest distraction offences in the catalogue. We use the magnitudes and disclose the sign rather than silently taking the absolute value.

There is no article about doubling points for newly qualified drivers

The rule exists: within 3 years of a first category-B-or-higher licence issued after 1 October 2003, the table's point values are doubled for every violation. But it is not in art. 126-bis and it is not in art. 117 — it sits in the CLOSING NOTE beneath the annexed table, outside its rows and columns. Anyone searching the article for it finds nothing, and so did we: an earlier pass of this research concluded the rule was absent after reading both articles and the extracted table in full. That conclusion was wrong, and the correction stays on the record instead of being quietly tidied away.

Tabella annexed to CdS art. 126-bis, closing note

Whether points touch a licence issued outside Italy is not in our sources

The points system in art. 126-bis operates on Italian licences. What an Italian authority records against a foreign licence, and what your own licensing authority does with an Italian decision, depends on instruments outside the corpus this site was built from. We describe the Italian mechanism and stop where our sources do.

CdS art. 126-bis — foreign-licence treatment not sourced here

Draft in progress: the long-form text of this page is still being written.

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