Guides for crossing the border
Practical articles on choosing a crossing, what to prepare in advance and what has changed at the EU border.
These guides are written for one situation: you are crossing Ukraine's land border with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Moldova, and you want it to cost you less time and less nerve. We do not rewrite the news and we do not write about travel in general. Every guide answers a specific question people type into search before setting off, and ends with what to actually do.
There are two kinds of guide. The first is what we measured ourselves. YakNak has been recording the queue length at every crossing every ten minutes for two months; that data shows Saturday is one and a half times worse than Wednesday, that a night queue is not "empty" but roughly 40 % of the daytime one, and that the Hungarian border peaks in the morning while the Polish one peaks in the afternoon. Guides of this kind rest on our own figures and are updated together with them.
The second is rules we do not set: documents, customs allowances, the EES. Here we deliberately add no interpretation of our own. Every rule carries a link to the official page and the date we checked it. If that date looks old, check the source — we say exactly where it is.
How to use this section
Start by choosing a crossing from the live queue on the home page, then open the guides that crossing's own page shows you — they are picked for its lanes and its border. If you spot an error or a rule that has moved on, tell us through contact; corrections are published with the date on them.
What is ours and what is official
| Figure | What it means | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 0.42× | night queue against the daytime one, median over 23 crossings | our measurement |
| 1.52× | Saturday against an average weekday | our measurement |
| 18 of 32 | crossings have a pedestrian lane | our registry |
| 40 | cigarettes allowed on entry to the EU | Directive 2007/74/EC, checked 14.08.2026 |
| 10.04.2026 | the EES operates at every external border | eu-LISA, checked 14.08.2026 |
The first three rows are ours to publish and nobody else's: they are our own measurements, and the methodology guide shows how they were made. The last two are somebody else's rules, and we restate them literally, with a link and a date. When the two kinds are mixed in one text without labels, the reader can verify nothing — so we keep them apart.
Planning the trip · our own measurements
How to choose a border crossing
Why the shortest queue is not the fastest crossing, how much a night departure actually saves, and when a 50-kilometre detour pays off.
Crossing the border on foot and by coach
Which crossings have a pedestrian lane, which take coaches, why the pedestrian queue behaves differently, and what to check when you travel without a car.
Night or day: when the queue is really shorter
Our own 60-day data: how much a night departure saves at each border, why Krakivets and Shehyni never empty at night, and why night barely helps on entry.
Already in the queue: what to do next
How to work out your own wait from your position, not the headline figure, whether to switch crossings, what to do when the queue stops, and how to tell us.
Documents and rules · official sources, dated
Documents for crossing the border
What is checked on leaving Ukraine and entering the EU: passports, documents for children and the car, and where to find the primary source before you go.
EES and ETIAS: what changed at the border
The EES has run at every external Schengen border since 10 April 2026. What it records, who is exempt, and what changes when ETIAS starts at the end of 2026.
Customs allowances: what you may carry across
EU allowances when entering from Ukraine and Ukrainian allowances when entering from the EU: goods, alcohol, tobacco, cash, fuel and pets. Sourced and dated.
Crossing the border with a child
Documents and the other parent's consent, child seat rules in each neighbouring country, food for the road, EES fingerprints, and how many queue hours to plan.
Driving abroad: what you need besides a passport
Vehicle documents and the Green Card, driving someone else's car, vignettes in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, mandatory kit, winter tyres and fuel.
About YakNak’s numbers
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