Can I get a Taiwanese licence on my own, without a driving school?

Every scooter shop, every colleague and half the internet will tell you to sign up for a 駕訓班. It is worth knowing that the law never asks you to, and that it says so in a single sentence you can read for yourself.

The requirements for sitting a driving test are listed in article 60 of the Road Traffic Safety Rules. Under 經歷, the experience you must have before you are allowed to take the test, the first line reads 「應考輕型或普通重型機車駕駛執照者，無經歷之限制」. For a light or ordinary scooter licence there is no experience requirement at all. No course, no permit, no waiting period. The next line but one says 「應考小型車普通駕駛執照者，須有學習駕駛三個月以上之經歷」, three months of learner driving for an ordinary car, and that is the entire extra burden the car carries.

Nowhere in the list does the word 駕訓班 appear as a requirement for either of them. It appears once, further down, as an exemption.

Licence	Driving school compulsory?	What the law asks instead
Scooter or motorcycle up to 250cc	No	Nothing. No permit and no waiting period, only the free 120-minute safety lecture
Ordinary car	No	A learner permit held for 3 months
Big bike over 250cc	Yes	A school course, plus an ordinary motorcycle licence held for a year
Any licence, after a revocation with a ban of 3 years or more	Yes, since 30 June 2026	A school course before you may sit the test again

The scooter, where there is nothing to skip

There is no waiting period on a scooter licence, so a school cannot sell you a shortcut past one. What stands between you and the test is a short list of appointments.

You must be 18 or over. You need a driving-licence registration form with a physical examination signed off by a public hospital, a health authority or a hospital the Motor Vehicles Office has designated, valid for one year, and unlike the car this does not include a fitness test. Three one-inch photos from the last two years, plain background, no hat, ears showing. As a foreign resident, proof of permitted stay or residence of six months or more, which for most people is the ARC.

Then two things that are gates rather than paperwork. The hazard perception test has to be on your record before the booking system will let you register, and a first-time rider has to sit the 120-minute safety lecture. The lecture is free, it has been compulsory since 1 December 2018, and 公路局 schedules it 「講習安排於筆試前實施」, before the written paper. 臺北區監理所 states the consequence plainly, 「未參加初考領機車駕照安全講習者，不得參加筆試及路考」, and notes that it applies to holders of a car licence with no scooter licence too. It is booked separately from the exam and has its own timetable, often the morning of the test itself, with the written paper in the afternoon. Book the two together.

One thing makes the sequence gentler than it looks. Your medical certificate and your written-test pass are each valid for a year, so passing the paper and coming back for the riding test another day is ordinary rather than a problem.

The money is small. NT$250 to sit the test, which is NT$125 for the written half and NT$125 for the riding half, NT$200 in cash for the card when it is printed, and a fuel charge of one litre of 95 unleaded for the station’s test bike, waived entirely if you bring your own with a valid registration document.

The one thing self-study cannot give a rider

Here is the part that no guide mentions and that matters more than the money.

A learner permit for a motorcycle exists, but article 57 grants it only to someone enrolled in a driving school’s road-training course. A self-studying rider cannot apply for one. And riding without a licence is not a technicality, it is NT$6,000 to NT$24,000 and the bike is stopped on the spot.

So the honest position is this. If you study on your own, you have no legal way to practise on a public road before the test, and the practice you are allowed is whatever you can arrange off the road. Your options are private land, an unused space with the owner’s permission, and the test ground itself.

That last one is better than it sounds, and each station publishes its own arrangement. 高雄市區監理所 opens the circuit 「路考開始前30分鐘至路考開始」, the 30 minutes before your test, and says outright that it is for learning the layout rather than for lapping until you pass. 臺北區監理所 instead publishes a standing slot, 「機車考場開放體驗時間為星期一至星期五12:00-13:00」, an hour at midday on weekdays, with its 板橋 and 蘆洲 stations running the same hour on their own days. Look up the page for the station you booked, because the arrangement is published and it differs. Stations will also often lend or rent you a bike, though that part is not published anywhere.

This is the real argument for the scooter school, and it is a safety argument rather than a paperwork one.

The car, and what the learner permit actually is

The car has the three months, so the sequence starts earlier.

You apply for a 學習駕駛證 at a Motor Vehicles Office counter. You need to be 18, and you need the registration form with both a physical examination and a fitness test passed, valid a year. It is issued while you wait, in about an hour, and it costs NT$100 for the paper version or NT$50 for the electronic one. It is valid for one year from the day it is issued, which is comfortably more than the three months you have to wait, but not so much that you can leave it in a drawer.

What it lets you do is narrower than people assume. Article 58 says learning should be done in a driving practice ground as a rule, and that when you do drive on a public road it must be on the routes and at the times the road authority has designated, with a licensed driver of that vehicle class sitting beside you supervising. It is not a permit to borrow a friend’s car and drive around the neighbourhood.

Three months later you book the test. NT$450 the first time. If you fail and re-register within the year it is NT$225 for the part you have to sit again, and after a year it returns to the full NT$450. The card is another NT$200. Fuel is four litres of 95 unleaded for the circuit test and four more for the road test, at market price, and you can avoid the first of those by bringing your own car, which needs its registration document, valid insurance and a wheelbase over 230cm.

Why everyone tells you the car needs a school

If the law is this clear, the belief has to come from somewhere, and it comes from several places at once.

• Most people who passed went to one. The school books the test, lends the car and walks its students through the station, so most drivers in Taiwan never saw the self-study route and describe the only one they know.
• The learner permit does not let you practise where you would like to. Article 58 keeps you on a practice ground or on the designated routes at the designated times, with a licensed driver beside you. Plenty of self-learners end up paying a school for hours on its ground, which is a service they chose rather than a course the law imposed.
• Two licences really do require a school. The big bike over 250cc always has, and since 30 June 2026 so does re-sitting any licence after a revocation with a ban of three years or more. The headlines for that change read 「重考需上駕訓班」, and a headline about re-sitting is easy to remember as a rule about sitting.
• “35 days at school or 90 days on your own” is correct, and it gets retold as “you need the school”.

None of these changes the answer for a first-time car licence. You can sit it without a school, provided the learner permit has been in your hand for three months.

So what does the school actually sell?

One thing, and it is worth being precise about it. The second paragraph of article 60 says the experience requirements do not bind someone who has graduated from a public or registered private driving school. That exemption is the product. For the car it replaces the three months, and for the scooter, where there was never a waiting period, it replaces nothing.

The school route is not instant either. The minimum course lengths are set by regulation, in article 25 of the rules governing private driver training institutions, and they are floors rather than estimates.

• Ordinary car, no fewer than five weeks. That is where the familiar “about 35 days instead of three months” comes from. It is the legal minimum, not a sales pitch.
• Light and ordinary scooter, no fewer than three days.
• Big bike over 250cc, no fewer than one week.

The teaching hours are fixed too, in the same regulation’s schedule, where a teaching hour is counted as 50 minutes. An ordinary car course is 56 of them, 24 theory and 32 practical, and the practical half includes 12 hours of driving on real roads. A scooter course is 16, six of theory and ten on the range.

Prices are not published centrally. Each school files its fee schedule with the transport office, so ask for that school’s 簡章 rather than for a number over the phone. What is published is the government’s own school. 公路人員訓練所 charges NT$13,650 all in for the ordinary car course, being NT$13,000 of tuition plus the NT$450 exam fee and the NT$200 card, and spreads it over seven weeks rather than the five the law allows, with 24 periods of theory across three Sundays and 32 practical periods. Private schools set their own and vary by city. The scooter course is the interesting one right now.

The scooter course is currently subsidised, and the deadline is close

Since 16 December 2025 the Highway Bureau has been paying NT$1,300 towards the fee for anyone taking the ordinary scooter course, across 59,500 places. The Bureau’s own page puts the current course fee at NT$2,800 to NT$3,700, so the net cost is somewhere around NT$1,500 to NT$2,400.

The condition is a date. You must hold the licence by 15 December 2026, and you claim the money in person at the school where you trained, after you have passed. Given how far ahead exam slots book, anyone thinking about it should count backwards from that date now.

The Bureau published its reasoning alongside the money, and the numbers are the most honest case for a course that exists. In its own 2019 figures, riders who passed by self-study had an 11.6% violation rate in their first year against 4.2% for school-trained riders, and its later analysis puts the trained group at 59% lower violation risk and 36% lower crash risk.

The short version

	Self-study	Driving school
Compulsory?	Allowed for car and scooter	Only for a bike over 250cc
Scooter, time	Book the lecture, the hazard test and the exam	3 days minimum, 16 hours
Scooter, money	NT$450 in fees plus the medical	About NT$1,500 to NT$2,400 after the subsidy, until 15 Dec 2026
Car, time	Learner permit, then 3 months	5 weeks minimum by law, 7 at the government school
Car, money	NT$100 permit, NT$450 exam, NT$200 card, plus fuel and the medical	NT$13,650 all in at the government school, private schools vary

For a car, the school is a straight trade of about NT$13,000 for somewhere between five and eight weeks, depending on whether your school runs the legal minimum or the seven weeks the government’s own institute takes. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on whether you need to be driving next month.

For a scooter, the arithmetic changed while the subsidy is running. The course no longer costs much more than the fees themselves, and it is the only lawful way to get supervised road practice before the test.

Whichever route you take, the written paper is the same free official question bank, and the step-by-step process does not change. If you have not checked whether you can simply exchange the licence you already hold, do that first, because it is faster than either of these.