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The motorway vignettes are slightly different insofar as they are a form of road tax and without purchasing them you are illegally using their roads. I know that when I travelled into Switzerland, I had to buy my vignette at the border crossing and inform them of how many days I would be in the country. The vignette is then dated accordingly. Austria was slightly different as a Motorhome under 3.5 tons was allowed to purchase a vignette but if you were exceeding 3.5 ton, you had to purchase a go-box which is an electronic tag for motorway use (Really expensive).
The Crit’Air sticker is an air quality certificate for city & town use only. They use the word vignette as it comes in the form of a road tax disc. I went ahead and purchased the disc from their website (listed above). It was all very seamless and only cost €4.51 but beware – some independent sites are charging upwards of €15 for the same thing. You log onto the site, put in the details of your vehicle as per your registration document and the site will tell you which category you are entitled to.
From placing the order to receiving the disc, it was no more than the 2 weeks.

Just a quick update on this. I changed the car this year and had to apply for a new Crit'Air. They are issued for the lifetime of the car or the windscreen. (it's permanently attached to the windscreen so if you have to replace the windscreen, then unfortunately, you have to replace the disc also). Anyhow, new car, new Crit'Air.... the news is that it has gone up to a staggeringly high price this year of €4.76 and true to French efficiency, back to me within 7 working days...