Budapest 🇭🇺

On the metro, and on one bus route. BKK — Budapesti Közlekedési Központ, the authority that runs Budapest's metro, trams, buses and the HÉV suburban railway — calls the scheme Budapest Pay&GO, and the list of places it works is a closed one: the four metro lines M1, M2, M3 and M4, and the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz, the airport bus. That is the whole list.

Where it works, the tap is a purchase rather than a season of travel. Hold a Mastercard or Visa card, or a phone or watch carrying one, against a Pay&GO device at a metro station entrance and it buys and validates one single ticket in the same movement. There is no tap-out, nothing accumulates behind the scenes and there is no daily ceiling — a second journey is a second tap and a second full fare — and it has to be the same card every time.

The exclusions matter more than the inclusions here. There is no Pay&GO device to tap on a tram, on an ordinary city bus, on a trolleybus, on the HÉV, on the Budavári Sikló — the funicular up to the castle — or on the Zugligeti Libegő chairlift, and a ticket bought with Pay&GO is not valid on any of them either. On the last two that means only that there is nothing to tap: the Sikló sells at its ticket office and takes a bank card there, and the Libegő sells from machines that take a card at every one. On a tram, a bus, a trolleybus or the HÉV it means what it says, and boarding with only a bank card is travelling without a ticket: 25,000 Ft, reduced to 12,000 Ft if you pay the inspector on the spot or settle within 2 working days.

The 100E works differently again. Its Pay&GO device is mounted at every door of the bus rather than at a station, and the tap buys the separate airport ticket, not the ordinary city fare; no ordinary Budapest ticket or pass is valid on the 100E at all.

So use the card for the metro and for the 100E, and for a tram, a bus or the HÉV buy first — in the BudapestGO app, at a ticket machine, at a ticket office or at a BKK customer centre.

Yes, on all four lines. The Pay&GO devices stand at the station entrances of M1, M2, M3 and M4. Tap a Mastercard or Visa card, or a phone or watch carrying one, and the device buys and validates a single ticket in one movement — that is the whole transaction. There is no tap-out on the way out, nothing accrues towards a daily ceiling, and every fresh journey is a fresh tap at full price. Keep using the same card.

What the tap does not buy is a ride on anything else. The ticket it issues is valid on the metro lines and, in its own separate form, on the 100E airport bus, and BKK says plainly that it is not valid on other services — so it will not carry you out of a metro station and onto a tram, a bus or the HÉV. Being on one of those without a ticket costs 25,000 Ft, or 12,000 Ft paid to the inspector on the spot or within 2 working days.

Tap at the entrance before you go down, and if the rest of your journey leaves the metro, buy that leg separately in the BudapestGO app or at a machine before you board.

Only on the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz, the airport bus. Its Pay&GO devices are mounted at every door of the bus, and a tap with a Mastercard or Visa card, or a phone or watch, buys and validates the separate airport ticket on the spot. That ticket is the only kind valid on the 100E — no ordinary Budapest single or pass covers it — and it is good for one direct trip with no transfer and no return.

On every other bus in Budapest, and on the trolleybuses, the answer is no. BKK's list of where Pay&GO works names the metro lines and the 100E and nothing else, and it makes the point twice over: a ticket bought by tapping is not valid on those services either. There is no Pay&GO reader at an ordinary bus door. Whether the driver or an inspector would take a bank card for an on-the-spot sale is not something this page can give you: BKK publishes the higher on-the-spot price without ever saying what the seller accepts, and it names that sale on certain tram lines and on the blue VOLÁN regional buses rather than on an ordinary city bus. Either way, boarding with just a card in your pocket is travelling without a ticket: 25,000 Ft, or 12,000 Ft if you pay the inspector on the spot or settle within 2 working days.

For an ordinary bus, buy before you board — in the BudapestGO app, at a ticket machine, at a ticket office or at a BKK customer centre. A ticket bought on board or from staff, where that is possible at all, costs 700 Ft instead of the usual 500 Ft.

The Budapest Kártya is not a card you load with money, and it is not a cheap way to buy travel. It is a fixed-duration sightseeing bundle, and what you pay is the card's own price: from 17,990 Ft for 24 hours up to 38,990 Ft for 96 hours, with no separate card fee or deposit. Inside that window travel is unlimited on BKK's trams, trolleybuses, metro and buses, night services included, and on the HÉV as far as Budapest's city boundary. Set it beside a plain BKK day ticket at 5,750 Ft for 72 hours and it becomes clear the card is bought for the museums, with the travel thrown in.

The assumption that catches people out concerns the airport. The plain card, in any of its four lengths, does not cover the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz. Only the 72-hour Plus at 39,990 Ft and the 72-hour Flexi at 27,990 Ft include that transfer. The same asymmetry runs through the two hill rides: the plain card does not carry you on the Budavári Sikló funicular and the Plus does, while every version rides the Zugligeti Libegő chairlift free in both directions.

Buying online does not get you a card. It gets you an email voucher, which has to be exchanged for the physical card at a BKK customer centre - there is one at the airport and one at Deák Ferenc tér - or at a ticket machine, before it will carry you anywhere. More than 300 places around Budapest sell it over a counter if you would rather skip that step.

So if the plan is to use it from the moment you land, buy the Plus or the Flexi; and if you have already bought a plain one online, exchange the voucher at the airport customer centre and pay for the 100E separately.

The Sziget Citypass is not a general visitor card. It is a bundle built around the Sziget festival - travel, attraction entries and a transfer bus between the airport and Óbudai-sziget, the festival island - and it comes in two lengths: 14,990 Ft for two days and 29,990 Ft for seven.

Like the Budapest Kártya, it is a fixed-duration product rather than a card you top up: there is no separate card fee and nothing to load onto it. And, also like the Budapest Kártya, buying it online gets you an email voucher rather than a card. Exchange the voucher for the physical card at a BKK customer centre - at the airport, or at Deák Ferenc tér - or at a ticket machine, before you try to travel on it.

The transfer bus is festival-only in every sense. It runs between Liszt Ferenc Airport 2 and Óbudai-sziget during the festival and not outside it, and it goes to the festival grounds rather than into town. If you are arriving outside those dates, or you want the city centre rather than the island, this is the wrong product: the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz on its own 2,500 Ft airport ticket is what takes you to Deák Ferenc tér.

Yes, if it is a Mastercard or a Visa. BKK, the city transport authority, publishes its accepted list in full — Mastercard, Visa, Apple Pay and Google Pay — and because that list is complete, a card outside it is genuinely not accepted: an American Express will not open a gate here. Where the card was issued makes no difference at all. The small card machines you tap take a card issued abroad on exactly the same terms as a Hungarian one.

The real limit is not the card, it is where a tap works. Budapest Pay&GO, the tap-to-buy system, exists at the entrance gates of the M1, M2, M3 and M4 metro lines and at the doors of the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz, the airport bus. It is not on the trams, not on the ordinary buses, and not on the HÉV suburban railway inside the city. On any of those, your bank card is not a ticket at all, however good it is.

Each tap buys one ticket and validates it in the same movement, so there is nothing to stamp afterwards. A metro gate sells one ticket per tap; a 100E door device will sell up to five in a single tap, which is how a family boards the airport bus on one card. A tap on the 100E buys that bus's own 2,500 Ft airport ticket rather than the ordinary city fare. Nothing accumulates and nothing caps here: every tap is a fresh ticket at the full price.

So carry a Mastercard or a Visa, use it at the metro gate and on the 100E, and for a tram, a bus or the HÉV buy a paper ticket before you board — the ticket machines across the city all take a contactless card.

Travelling with no valid ticket in Budapest costs 25,000 Ft. Pay the inspector on the spot, or at a BKK customer centre within two working days, and it is 12,000 Ft instead. Inspectors work the metro barriers and the surface network alike, and the surcharge is the same figure on the HÉV inside the city boundary.

Validating is two different acts depending on what you board. In the metro you validate before you cross the peronzár, the barrier line at the station entrance. On a tram, a bus or a trolleybus you validate after boarding, at the small stamping machine inside the vehicle: a ticket in your pocket is not a ticket until it has been stamped or scanned for this particular ride. BKK's validation rule does not name the HÉV, so on the HÉV ask at the station where to validate before you board.

A bank card only counts where Budapest Pay&GO exists, and that is the four metro lines and the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz - nowhere else. Trams, ordinary buses, trolleybuses and the HÉV take no tap at all, so holding out a bank card there proves nothing. Where you did tap, you have to show the inspector the same card, phone or watch you paid with; another card of yours will not do.

Past Budapest's administrative boundary, the HÉV and the blue VOLÁN regional buses fall under the operating company's own terms rather than BKK's. On the HÉV the amount does not change: MÁV's own HÉV tariff sets the same 25,000 Ft on either side of the boundary. The VOLÁN buses' surcharge is set by their operator, not in BKK's tariff. Either way, buy the right ticket for the section before you cross the boundary rather than finding out which rule you are under.

The 100E Repülőtéri Expressz is the one that actually reaches the middle. It leaves the shared stop on the arrivals pavement between Terminals 2A and 2B and runs to Deák Ferenc tér, Budapest's main interchange, calling at Kálvin tér, in as little as 40 minutes. It is also its own closed fare island: no ordinary BKK ticket or pass is valid on it, and what you need is the airport single ticket at 2,500 Ft. Tap a card or a phone at the Budapest Pay&GO device by any door and it buys and validates one - up to five in a single transaction - or buy it in BudapestGO, or on paper at a BKK counter or machine.

The cheap way out is the 200E from the same stop, on an ordinary 500 Ft vonaljegy, running around the clock. It does not reach the centre: it ends at Kőbánya-Kispest, the terminus of metro line M3, and the metro finishes the job. The two buses do not share tickets in either direction - the airport ticket is not valid on the 200E, and an ordinary ticket is not valid on the 100E.

There is a train, but not from the terminal. Ride the 200E one stop to Ferihegy vasúttállomás, and MÁV trains run from there to Nyugati pályaudvar in about 30 minutes. That leg is free if you hold a Budapest-bérlet, a county or nationwide BKK season pass, or a Budapest Kártya; otherwise it is a MÁV fare, and train tickets are sold only at the machines on the Ferihegy platform, around the clock, for cash or card. Nothing inside the airport sells them.

Taxis run on one municipally regulated tariff whoever dispatches them - Főtaxi from the booking stands at the 2A and 2B entrances, or Uber Taxi with its six-digit PIN pickup in front of 2A. Any trip starting or ending at the airport begins at 2,100 Ft rather than the 1,300 Ft base fare that applies elsewhere in the city, then runs at 520 Ft a kilometre and 130 Ft a minute. Every contracted car takes a card as well as cash.

With luggage and no pass, walk out to the shared stop, tap for the 100E and get off at Deák Ferenc tér.

Yes, and generously. A child travels free on BKK's local Budapest network right up to their fourteenth birthday, whatever their citizenship and wherever they live. Under 6 they have to be with an adult escort. The same free entitlement carries beyond the city boundary onto the HÉV suburban railway and the regional VOLÁN buses, for that same under-14 band.

What the child needs is a document showing their date of birth, and a passport is the one a visiting family will already have. Nothing is bought and nothing is applied for; there is no child ticket to hold. But the free ride is checked when an inspector asks for it, so the document has to be on the child rather than back in the hotel.

From 14 the free travel stops, and what replaces it only works outside the city: from 14 up to the 25th birthday there is a half-price ticket on the beyond-boundary HÉV and regional sections, again regardless of citizenship. Inside Budapest a 14-year-old pays the adult fare.

The river is priced on its own. A child from the start of school up to the day before turning 15 pays 550 Ft on the boat rather than 750 Ft, and 130 Ft on the ferry rather than 200 Ft. One thing not to assume on the way in: the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz runs its own fare outside the ordinary Budapest tariff, so ask what a child pays at the BKK customer centre in the terminal before you board it.

Yes, and it buys a ticket for the whole city rather than just the metro. What cash will not do is get you aboard: you pay before you travel.

More than 300 BKK ticket machines stand across Budapest, and most take coins and banknotes alike, but a card-only subset takes no cash at all; BKK sites those only where a cash-accepting machine is also to hand. Twelve BKK customer centres take cash and card at the counter, one of them in each of the airport's two terminals, and so do the cash desks at Nyugati pályaudvar, Móricz Zsigmond körtér, Újpest-központ, Puskás Ferenc Stadion, Örs vezér tere, Blaha Lujza tér and Batthyány tér. Grocery shops and tobacconists across the city sell singles and ten-packs too, though BKK does not state what they take, so carry both.

Two things worth knowing before you queue. Paper carries a handling fee on top of the fare - 300 Ft on a single ticket, 1,000 Ft on a day ticket or a pass - so the identical journey is cheaper bought in the app. And the Budapest Pay&GO terminals, at metro entrances and on the airport bus, take a card or a device only: there is no slot for coins or notes anywhere on them.

Buying on board is a different question, and an unsettled one. A vonaljegy bought from a driver or from inspecting staff costs 700 Ft against 500 Ft bought ahead, it is sold only on certain tram lines and on the blue VOLÁN regional buses, and BKK does not publish whether the person selling it takes cash, a card or both. Treat it as a fallback, and get your tickets from a machine or a counter first.

Yes, and there are two separate things a phone does here. BudapestGO is BKK's own app and sells almost the whole range: the 500 Ft single, the ten-pack, the timed tickets, the 24-hour and 72-hour day tickets at 2,750 Ft and 5,750 Ft, the monthly and longer passes, and the 1,000 Ft supplementary airport ticket that exists in no other channel. The app is free to download, buying inside it needs an account, and it takes Apple Pay and Google Pay.

An app ticket is not live the moment you buy it. A single-ride vonaljegy has to be validated on every boarding by scanning the code on the vehicle; a pass is different, and needs only the felszállok - the boarding - button. Board a bus at the front door and the drill is to scan the code, then show the driver the animation the app produces.

The other route is Budapest Pay&GO: hold the phone or the watch to the small card machine at the metro entrance or by the bus door and it buys and validates a ticket in a single tap. It exists at the entrances of metro lines M1 to M4 and at every door of the 100E Repülőtéri Expressz, and nowhere else - not on trams, ordinary buses, trolleybuses or the HÉV. Whatever you tapped with is what an inspector must see, so if you paid with the phone, the phone has to still be alive when you are checked.

Install BudapestGO and register before you land, and use Budapest Pay&GO as the metro-and-airport shortcut rather than as the way you pay for the city.

Fares yes; journey times only for airports. Fares, caps and penalties are printed where an operator publishes them, with the source beside each figure. Journey times appear only on the airport pages, as the rough time from the airport to the centre where one is published; there are no timetables here. For a live departure or a door-to-door route, use the operator's own journey planner.