Most people who come to Nuevo Progreso for a filling, a pair of glasses or a month of medication never drive into Mexico at all. They leave the car on the Texas side, walk over the bridge, and are on the main street in a few minutes.
This is what that costs and how it works. Every figure here is one you can check standing at the bridge, which is exactly why we would rather be boring and correct than confident and wrong.
Leave the car in Progreso, Texas
A parking lot on the Texas side, where most visitors leave the car
Progreso is a small town, and the parking lots are clustered by the foot of the bridge. You will see them before you see the bridge itself.
What to expect:
- Published day rates have run about $2 to $4. Each lot sets its own price, so read the sign at the entrance rather than trusting a number you read online — including this one.
- Pay when you arrive, not when you leave. Most lots take cash.
- Keep the ticket or receipt somewhere you will not lose it while shopping.
If you are visiting a clinic that has quoted you a time, give yourself a buffer. The lots nearest the bridge fill first on weekends and around the holidays.
The bridge charges you in both directions
This is the part people get caught out by, because the two directions are not the same price and they are not paid the same way.
Walking into Mexico is about $1 per person. The turnstile takes quarters — four of them. There is no card reader on the turnstile, so if you arrive with a twenty-dollar note and no change you will be looking for somewhere to break it.
Walking back into the United States is cheaper, roughly 25 to 50 cents, and you can generally pay in pesos instead — around 5 pesos.
Driving across is $5 per vehicle, up from $4 in August 2025.
Bring more quarters than you think you need. A family of four walking in and out is a fistful of change, and the machines do not make it easy to improvise.
The bridge sets these rates, not us. They can change, and the sign at the booth is the authority.
Four quarters in an open hand, the change the walking turnstile asks for
The hours are almost certainly not what you read somewhere else
Search for the Progreso bridge hours and you will find a lot of pages telling you it closes at night. Some say 6am to midnight. Some say 6am to 10pm.
US Customs and Border Protection lists the Progreso crossing as open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Here is where the confusion comes from, and it is worth knowing because it explains why so many sources disagree. CBP's own data lists two ports in this area with Progreso in the name. The second one is the Donna–Rio Bravo bridge, a few miles away, and that is the one with restricted hours. A lot of pages — ours included, until we checked — picked up the wrong bridge's schedule and published it as the Progreso hours.
If you are ever unsure, CBP publishes the hours and the current wait for each crossing itself. We show the live Progreso reading on our [safety and crossing page](/safety), taken straight from their feed with their own timestamp on it.
The walk
The bridge is short. Most of the clinics, pharmacies and optical shops people come for are within two or three blocks of the Mexican end, on and around the main avenue.
You do not need a car on the other side, and most visitors do not take one.
What to have on you
A US passport held up on a busy street near the bridge
- A valid passport or passport card. A driver's licence is not enough to get back in.
- Quarters for the turnstile, and small notes.
- Cash. US dollars are widely accepted in the tourist strip. Bring a backup card, but do not assume every counter takes one.
- The clinic's name, address and phone number, written down rather than only in an app.
- Your own phone, charged.
Timing it
The town is busiest in the middle of the day and quietest early. Weekdays are calmer than weekends, and the run-up to Christmas is the busiest stretch of the year.
If you have an appointment, the thing that will actually make you late is not the walk or the queue on the way in — it is the queue coming back, which is where CBP inspects everyone. Check the live wait before you head to the bridge rather than assuming today looks like last time. That number moves hour to hour.
Before you go
If you are crossing for care rather than shopping, it is worth knowing what you are walking into before you arrive:
- Look up the clinic by name and check the address matches where you are actually going.
- Ask for a written, itemised quote before any work starts. The prices we list were researched from published price lists; only the clinic can quote your own case.
- Ask to see the Cédula Profesional. Mexican dentists and doctors must hold one, and it is normal to have it displayed. Nobody from ClearCross has inspected a clinic or checked anybody's licence, so this is a question worth asking yourself.
There is a fuller list of what to bring and what to ask on our [safety and crossing page](/safety), along with the live border wait.
