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The Czech Republic (CZ) is landlocked. There is no port and no container, so an international removal from Britain travels by land the whole way, crossing the Channel and then driving through Germany. Your price comes from volume and mileage. Most people relocating their home qualify for relief from import duty on their belongings.
That one fact changes almost everything else on this page. A removal company quoting you for Australia is thinking in twenty foot containers and sailing schedules. Removal companies quoting you for Prague are thinking in cubic metres, driver hours and whether a forty five foot lorry can physically reach your street. If a quote arrives talking about container rates, the firm has not read your enquiry properly.
Shipping household goods overland is its own discipline. The removal services you need are not the ones a container specialist sells, and the two price very differently.
We have been arranging international moving enquiries since 2010. Send your details once and they go to one vetted mover that covers the journey. That firm checks access, inventory, packing, storage and customs paperwork before it quotes you. There is no charge to you, and no list of companies ringing you afterwards.
Removals to the Czech Republic sit in the same family as any other European removal by land. What separates the good moving companies from the rest is not the lorry. It is whether they handle the border work properly and whether they check the delivery address before quoting, rather than after.
| Sea leg | None. Landlocked country |
|---|---|
| Crossing | Dover to Calais, or the tunnel |
| Overland | France or Belgium, then Germany |
| London to Prague | About 1,050 km, roughly 650 miles |
| Customs | Required since January 2021 |
| Duty on personal goods | Usually relieved. See below |
| Currency | Czech koruna. Not the euro |
| Motorway tolls | Vignette needed on major roads |
People often arrive at this page expecting international shipping to mean a boat. For the Czech Republic it does not. Your belongings are loaded onto a lorry in Britain and, in most cases, that same vehicle drives to your Czech address. Fewer handling stages means fewer chances for damage, which is one genuine advantage of a land journey over a sea one.
It also means the timing works differently. There is no sailing date to miss and no port congestion. What you wait for instead is either a departure slot on a shared vehicle, or the date you have booked a dedicated one. If your dates are firm, say so at the first conversation, because that single fact decides which type of removal service you should be quoted for.
Hiring a removal van and driving it yourself is legal and some people do it. It will move your furniture. What it will not do is handle the export declaration, the EORI number or the duty relief claim, and it leaves you personally liable at the border. For a few boxes that may be fine. For a household, the paperwork alone is usually why people use an international moving company instead.
Two groups mainly: English speaking people relocating to Prague or Brno for work, and Czech nationals coming home after a spell in Britain.
The survey, collection across Britain, the export declaration and the timing are covered on UK to Czech Republic removals.
Returning residents, families, students and people clearing a Czech property after a sale or bereavement. The relief scheme flips: you claim through HMRC, before your goods arrive rather than after.
Prague draws the largest share by a wide margin. Around 354,000 foreign nationals live in the city, roughly a quarter of its population and about a third of all foreign residents in the country. Brno follows at around 67,000, Plzen near 45,000 and Liberec above 20,000. Mlada Boleslav is the outlier: roughly 23,000 foreign workers in a town of under 48,000, almost entirely because of the Skoda Auto plant.
Relief comes from Council Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009 and turns on three things: where you have lived, how long you have owned your belongings, and when they arrive. Get any of the three wrong and duty becomes payable, and it is usually a timing mistake rather than a paperwork one.
The full conditions, the two traps that catch people out, the evidence customs asks for and the cases where relief does not apply at all are on our Czech Republic customs and duty relief page. Read it before you pack, not after.
Volume in cubic metres, the truck, handling at both ends, and packing. That is the whole structure of an estimate. A one bedroom flat and a four bedroom house are not the same job, and no honest quote treats them alike. We will not print a price band we cannot stand behind with named sources, but we can show you how the total is built so you read a quote line by line rather than comparing headline figures and taking the smaller one.
Volume guidance by property size, what is routinely excluded, and the six questions that make two quotes comparable are on our cost of moving to the Czech Republic page. For shared space, which American moving companies call a consolidated shipment, against sole use of a vehicle, see part load removals. For the packing decision see packing for a Czech move. Give the real collection postcode rather than the nearest city, the same way you would give a US mover a zip code, because British mileage before the Channel is priced.
The customs work is identical whether you land in Prague or a village in Vysocina. What changes is the last mile, and on Czech deliveries the last mile is where the problems are.
Population 1,407,084, with over 2.2 million in the wider area. The historic core has restricted vehicle zones and permits that take days to arrange. Older buildings have stairwells a sofa will not turn in. Kladno sits north west in the commuter belt, Mlada Boleslav is the Skoda Auto town, and Kolin has a large car plant of its own. These three are where corporate relocations from Britain tend to land.
Brno is the second city at 404,296 and the main draw outside Prague for English speaking professionals, largely through technology employers and two large universities. Further east the Ostrava area holds close to a million people across Ostrava, Havirov, Karvina, Frydek-Mistek and Opava. This is heavy industry country, and a good share of Czech return migration from Britain ends up here.
Plzen in the west at 187,863, home to a brewery the world has heard of and several manufacturers it has not. Liberec sits in the north and Ceske Budejovice in the south. Olomouc and Hradec Kralove have their universities, Pardubice its electronics, and Jihlava serves the centre. Karlovy Vary in the far west has a long established international community. Usti nad Labem covers Most, Teplice, Chomutov and Decin.
Some people search for this service in Czech, using mezinárodní stěhování for international moving, stěhování do zahraničí for moving abroad, or stěhovací služby for removal services. This page stays in English, because that is the language our readers use. These terms are here so you recognise them on a form or in a message from a Czech landlord, letting agent or customs officer.
That last one is the most useful question in the list, and the answer tells you a great deal about the firm.
International Removals Companies is operated by DATACONTEXT (UK) LTD and has been trading since 1 November 2010. We are a free enquiry service. We are not a removal company. We do not own lorries, we do not employ crews and we do not carry your furniture.
What we do is take your details and send them to one vetted mover drawn from the AGM Group network. Not five firms, one. You will not spend the next fortnight fielding calls, and we are paid by the mover rather than by you, which is why the service costs you nothing.
We do not run a price comparison. That is a deliberate choice rather than a limitation. On a European removal the cheapest headline number is very often the one that excludes packing, the customs entry and the shuttle van, and comparing three of those against each other tells you almost nothing useful.
Not every firm in the network holds all five. Ask which ones your mover holds, and check the number on the issuing body's own register rather than taking a logo at face value.
Grouped by region. Each page covers its wider travel to work area, so if your town is not listed the nearest one handles it. This is not a directory of every Czech town, and we would rather write fifteen useful pages than sixty thin ones.
If your move crosses more than one border, or you are still deciding where to settle, these share the same overland journey through Germany: German removals, Austrian removals and Slovakian removals. For a wider view of European removal options across the continent, see our European removals pages.
Each page below covers one part of the job in full, so this page does not have to. Start wherever your question sits.
No customs entry applies between EU member states, which changes what a moving company should be quoting you for.
Answered openly on the page, rather than hidden behind dropdowns.
By land. The country is landlocked, so there is no sea leg and no container port. Your belongings cross the Channel by ferry or through the tunnel, then travel overland through France or Belgium and Germany. Your quote is built from volume and mileage rather than container size.
Usually not, if you qualify for transfer of residence relief. Council Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009 allows personal property to enter free of import duty when you move your normal home from outside the EU. You need to have lived outside the EU for at least 12 continuous months, and to have owned and used the goods for at least six months before you left.
It depends what you are moving for. Prague holds about a third of all foreign residents in the country and has the most awkward delivery access. Brno draws English speaking professionals. The Ostrava area is the industrial belt in the east. Each destination page covers the practical differences rather than repeating the same description.
No. The enquiry, the quote and the paperwork are handled in English. You will meet Czech wording on customs documents and from a landlord or letting agent, which is why the common terms are listed further up this page. Nobody expects you to complete a customs form in Czech.
A hired removal van will get your belongings there, but it does not make you a customs agent. You would still need the export declaration, the EORI number and the duty relief paperwork, and you would be liable for anything that goes wrong at the border. For a full household move most people find the paperwork alone worth paying an international moving company for.
Earlier than feels necessary. A survey, an export declaration and a vehicle booking all take time, and sole use of a lorry on a named date is the hardest of the three to arrange late. Start the conversation as soon as you have a rough date, even before it is confirmed.
Expect to provide a detailed inventory of what you are shipping, proof of your identity, evidence that you are moving your home to the Czech Republic, and proof of the address you are moving into. Clearance is difficult without an address. Confirm the current list with the Customs Administration of the Czech Republic before you pack.
Often it will not, and this is the single most common surprise on Czech deliveries. Older Prague and Brno buildings have tight stairwells, small lifts and no loading bay. Measure your largest items and the stairwell before the survey. A hoist or a shuttle van adds cost, but finding out on delivery day costs more.
No. We are not a removal company and we do not own lorries. We are a free enquiry service. You send your move details once and they go to one vetted mover that covers your journey. That firm contacts you directly. We do not run a price comparison and we do not pass your details to a list of companies.
Collection address, delivery address, move date, rough inventory and access notes. That is enough to get a real conversation started with a firm that actually covers the journey.
Get your free quoteA trading name of DATACONTEXT (UK) LTD. Registered in England and Wales, company number 07425576, data protection registration ZB022743. Trading since 1 November 2010.
We are a free enquiry service, not a removal company. Your details go to one vetted mover from the AGM Group network.
Country covered on this page: Czech Republic (CZ).