Seoul Transport Fares 2026: Subway, Bus and Taxi Costs

Seoul is a city you can cross for the price of a coffee, at almost any hour, without ever looking at a timetable. Nine lines under the centre alone, buses colour-coded by how far they go, taxis that arrive in under two minutes and take card. For a lot of visitors this is the first thing about Korea that genuinely surprises them — not a monument, the transport.

It is also where people quietly overpay, because two or three rules are never explained at the gate.

Every fare below comes from the City of Seoul’s own published tables, checked on 14 August 2026. Subway fares are the schedule effective 28 June 2025; bus fares are effective 12 August 2023; the standard taxi meter is the schedule effective 1 February 2023.

Start with the thing that costs people money quietly: paying without a transport card.

Get a card. The gap is on every single ride

Subway, one ride	With a card	Single-journey ticket
Adult	₩1,550	₩1,650
Youth (13–18)	₩900	₩1,650
Child (6–12)	₩550	₩550

An adult pays ₩100 more per ride without a card. A teenager pays ₩750 more — the single-journey ticket has no youth rate at all.

That is before the larger loss: transfers between bus and subway are free only with a card. Pay separately each time and a two-leg journey costs two full fares.

The card also unlocks the early-bird discount: tap your first ride before 06:30 and the base fare drops 20%, to ₩1,240 on the subway.

Bus fares by type

Seoul runs several bus classes and they are not priced alike. The number and colour on the bus tell you which.

Bus type	Card	Cash
Blue / Green (간선·지선)	₩1,500	₩1,500
Circular (순환)	₩1,400	₩1,400
Red — wide-area (광역)	₩3,000	₩3,000
Late-night (심야)	₩2,500	₩2,500
Village / neighbourhood (마을)	₩1,200	₩1,200

The trap is the red bus at ₩3,000 — double a normal city bus. Red buses run to satellite cities outside Seoul. If one arrives first and you are travelling inside Seoul, you have paid twice the fare for no benefit.

The distance surcharge nobody mentions

Base fare covers the first 10 km. After that:

• 10–50 km: +₩100 for every 5 km
• Beyond 50 km: +₩100 for every 8 km

For most journeys inside Seoul this is nothing — a market run, a palace day, an evening in Hongdae all sit inside the base fare. It matters when you go out to Incheon, Suwon or the airport — a long metro run can add several hundred won you did not expect.

Taxis

The standard medium taxi, on the schedule effective 1 February 2023:

Base fare	₩4,800 for the first 1.6 km
Distance	+₩100 per 131 m
Time (below 15.33 km/h)	+₩100 per 30 s

Deluxe and large taxis are a different schedule: ₩7,000 for the first 3 km, then ₩100 per 151 m or per 36 seconds.

Two things that surprise visitors:

There is no tipping. None is expected and rounding up is not customary.

Late-night surcharge applies in the small hours, and travel outside the city boundary can carry an intercity surcharge. Both are added by the meter, not negotiated.

Airport buses

Limousine buses to Incheon are priced by class, not by distance:

Route	Typical fare
Seoul ↔ Incheon Airport	₩17,000–18,000
Seoul ↔ Gimpo Airport	₩5,000–8,000
Gimpo ↔ Incheon Airport	₩5,000–8,000

Incheon limousine fares are set per route, not by a single citywide price. On the operators’ published tables the 6001 (Dongdaemun), 6002 (Cheongnyangni) and 6015 (Myeongdong) services run at ₩17,000, while 6701 (City Hall / Gwanghwamun) and 6703 (Gangnam / COEX) run at ₩18,000. Night routes are ₩18,000. Cash and card are the same price.

The full route-by-route table with first and last departures is in getting from Incheon Airport into Seoul.

Who rides free

On the subway: children under 6 (up to three accompanied by an adult, who pays normally), passengers aged 65 and over holding a senior transit card, registered disabled passengers, and holders of national merit status.

On buses the free category is narrower — under-6s accompanied by an adult. The over-65 exemption does not apply to buses.

The over-65 rule, stated precisely

This is the item visitors most often get wrong, so we are going to be exact about it.

Free subway travel for over-65s runs on a senior transit card (우대용 교통카드). It is issued on application, and Seoul’s own transport-card page — re-checked 16 August 2026, page last updated July 2026 — states the residence condition in one clause:

수도권 도시철도 무임승차 대상자(만 65세 이상 경로우대자, 장애인, 유공자) 중 주민등록 기준 서울시에 거주하는 자에 한함

Limited to those eligible for free metropolitan urban-rail rides (seniors 65+, disabled persons, persons of national merit) who reside in Seoul per resident registration.

Seoul Metropolitan Government transport site, Senior transit card 서울특별시 교통 누리집 「우대용 교통카드」 14 July 2026

Residence per resident registration is the hinge: Korean nationals, and also registered permanent residents and overseas Koreans, can hold it — a tourist cannot. The simple free card is issued at any dong community centre (주민센터) in Seoul, the credit/check version at Shinhan Bank branches, and since 2026 there is a mobile version inside the T-money app. Other cities run their own equivalents for their own residents.

It is not granted at the gate on sight of a passport, and a short-term foreign visitor is not entitled to it. If you are 68 and visiting for a fortnight, plan and budget for the ordinary adult fare.

One quirk from the same page even locals trip on: the card is free on the metro only. Board a bus and the fare charges — and a free-ride metro trip followed by a bus gets no transfer discount, so the bus leg costs full price.

This is separate from palace and museum admission, where over-65 foreign visitors genuinely do get in free on their passport. The two rules are different and it is easy to carry the second across to the first.

The arrival boards are telling you the truth

Another Korean particular that visitors distrust on arrival, and should not.

Almost every bus stop in Korea has a live arrival display, and it is not an estimate in the way you may be used to. Buses are tracked continuously, and the board shows, for each route:

• how many minutes until it arrives
• how many stops away it currently is
• often the vehicle’s own number plate, so you know which bus is coming
• on many boards, how full it is — 여유 (space) / 보통 (normal) / 혼잡 (crowded)

The same is true underground: platform boards show the next two trains and how many stations away each one is.

Believe the number. If it says 3 minutes, stand there for three minutes. The most common visitor mistake is walking off to look for a taxi at minute two.

Two figures side by side are the next two buses, not a range. “3 · 14” means one bus in three minutes and the one after it in fourteen — which is the information you need to decide whether to let a crowded one go.

곧 도착 means arriving now. Have your card out.

And the last-bus problem is real. City buses in Seoul mostly stop somewhere around midnight, earlier outside the capital, and the boards go blank rather than announcing it. If you are out late, check the last departure before you need it rather than after.

The two rules that cost money

Tap out. Every time. Seoul Transportation Corporation applies a penalty for failing to tap off: the base fare — ₩1,550 for an adult — is charged again on your next journey. It is not a fine you can dispute at a counter; it lands automatically.

Youth and child rates require registration. The discounted fares above are not automatic. The card has to be registered as a youth or child card first, through T-money, or the adult rate is charged.

What this article does not claim

Fares are as published by the City of Seoul on the date shown above. Korean transport fares change by administrative decision and the subway base fare has already moved once in the last two years — confirm on the city’s page before you rely on an exact figure for budgeting.

We have not verified fares for the AREX airport railway, KTX, intercity coaches, or any operator outside the Seoul metropolitan fare system. Those are separate schedules set by separate operators, and we will cover them separately rather than guess here.