Taxi in Amsterdam: how it works and what it costs

Four ways to get a taxi in Amsterdam

There is no single answer to how you order a taxi here, because four different things are all called a taxi in Amsterdam and they work differently the moment something goes wrong.

• Book ahead, online. You enter the pickup address and the destination, you see what each vehicle type costs, and you pay before the ride starts. That is what this site does, and it needs no account and nothing installed.
• Walk up to a rank. Fine for a short hop. You pay the meter, so the amount depends on how long you sit in traffic.
• Call a dispatch office. The old way, still the quickest when your phone is dead and you have a number.
• A ride-hailing app. Convenient for a single trip, with a price that moves with demand rather than with a meter.

Hailing a car on the street is not really a thing here. Drivers are allowed to pick up at ranks, and outside the ranks a ride is meant to be arranged in advance.

Amsterdam taxi prices and what the meter may charge

Metered rides in the Netherlands have a legal ceiling that the national government sets every year. Any company may charge less; none may charge more. These are the 2026 maximums, in force since 1 January 2026.

Note the per-minute rate: the meter counts distance and time together, so the same route costs more at five in the afternoon than at five in the morning. That is the single biggest reason a fare turns out higher than expected, and it is also why nobody can quote you one number for a route without knowing when you travel.

There is also a waiting rate of at most €59.41 per hour, which a driver may only charge if you agreed it beforehand, for instance when the car waits while your meeting overruns.

To see what that ceiling means for a particular ride, fill in the distance and the driving time. The per-minute rate is why the second field matters: leave the distance alone and raise the minutes, and you can watch the same route get more expensive.

For the one route almost everybody asks about, the numbers are on airport to city centre.

How to tell a licensed taxi from the rest

Three things are checkable in about five seconds, and together they rule out nearly everything that goes wrong.

• A blue number plate. A vehicle registered for taxi work carries one. A white plate on a car offering you a paid ride is the end of the conversation.
• A driver card on display. Every professional driver holds a licence card with their photo, issued after an exam and a certificate of conduct, and it belongs in sight in the car.
• A meter, or a price you agreed in writing. One of the two. Not neither.

When you book rather than hail, this is settled before you ever see the car. Documents of both the driver and the vehicle are checked and approved before that driver can receive any ride at all, their expiry dates are held on file and the driver is reminded before one runs out, and your booking gives you a link that shows the car approaching on a map. The driver's name, car and number plate appear on that link as soon as the ride is assigned, and you can forward it to whoever is waiting for you.

Where the taxi ranks are

Fixed ranks are at Schiphol and at the train stations, which is where you will find a car waiting without arranging anything. Elsewhere in the city they are thinner on the ground, especially away from the centre and late at night, and that is exactly when booking ahead saves you standing around.

Taxis ordered through an app often leave from a separate pick-up point rather than the rank itself, at Schiphol in particular. If you booked, agree the exact spot with your driver instead of assuming. The official city site keeps the current list of ranks; it is linked at the bottom of this page.

Does Amsterdam have Uber?

Yes. There is Uber in Amsterdam, and it is not the only ride-hailing app operating here. What surprises most visitors is not whether the apps are available but what they are: in the Netherlands a ride you book through an app is not a separate, lighter-regulated category of transport. It is taxi transport, under the same law as the car at the rank.

Uber does work in Amsterdam, but it works inside that system rather than beside it. The car carries a blue licence plate, the driver holds a chauffeurskaart issued by Kiwa Register, and the company behind the ride holds a taxi licence. The same three things you would check on any other taxi apply, and they apply to the app ride too.

So the useful question is not taxi against app. It is how the price is formed, and there are three ways:

• The meter, which is capped by law and does not move when demand does.
• A fixed price agreed in advance, which does not move at all once you have it in writing.
• A price that follows demand, which can sit below the meter on a quiet afternoon and above it when a lot of people want a car at once.

That last one is worth thinking about before you rely on it, because the moment you most need a car is usually the moment everyone else does: rain at closing time, or a hall full of delayed arrivals. Whether a particular app has cars near you right now is something only that app can tell you, and it changes by the hour. What does not change is the legal maximum on the meter, and the fact that a price you agreed in advance is still the price when you arrive.

When a taxi is the wrong answer

Amsterdam is a small, dense city with a lot of water and not much room for cars, and a taxi is genuinely not always the fastest way across it.

• Trams, metro and buses cover the centre and the ring, and they are cheaper per person than any car. Between two addresses on the same line, the taxi mostly buys you comfort.
• The train runs from Schiphol into the city and is the cheapest way in for one or two people travelling light.
• A bike is what locals use, and over short distances in the centre it is often quicker than a car. Bear in mind the traffic here takes cyclists seriously as traffic.

A taxi wins when you are carrying luggage, when there are more than two of you, when you are travelling at an hour when little else runs, or when your address simply has no decent connection. On those trips the number that matters is the price for the whole group and the door-to-door time, not the fare per person. Arriving by ship is the clearest case of all: see Rotterdam Cruise Terminal to Amsterdam.

Who actually drives you

An Amsterdam taxi service is one of three things. A taxi company with its own cars and its own dispatch office. An independent driver with a licence, a registered vehicle and their own customers. Or a platform that connects one of the two to you.

This is the third kind. You book with a taxi company or a dispatcher connected to the network, and the ride is driven by one of their drivers or by an independent driver from the same network. WellTransfers does not own cars and does not employ drivers; what it does is make sure a booking reaches a driver who is free, approved and nearby, and that the money afterwards ends up in the right place.

The practical difference for you is that a ride is on somebody in particular. Complaints are recorded against a driver and a company, not into a void. What the network is and what it is not is set out on the English home page.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Amounts and rules change regularly. Always check the current information with the official bodies.

• Rijksoverheid: maximum taxi fares (in Dutch)
• I amsterdam: taxis and taxi ranks in the city
• City of Amsterdam: taxis and taxi ranks
• Schiphol: taxis and transport