Paris Transportation: The Complete 2026 Guide to Getting Around the City

Paris transportation runs on a network of 14 métro lines and more than 300 stations, and your hotel is almost certainly within a five-minute walk of one of them. Once you understand how the system actually works — which takes about twenty minutes of real use, not a full day of study — getting around the city is fast, cheap, and pretty intuitive.

What trips people up isn’t the network itself. It’s the ticketing, which changed substantially in 2025 and 2026. The old paper magnetic tickets have been phased out entirely. The card that holds a weekly pass and the card that holds single tickets are two different products. And one of the airport transport options that still shows up in older guides doesn’t exist anymore.

Here’s the current state of getting around Paris, updated for 2026.

The Ticket System in 2026: What Changed

This is the part most guides get wrong, so it’s worth starting here.

Paris has now fully retired its old paper “ticket t+” system. Sales of new paper tickets stopped on November 1, 2025. Paper tickets stopped working on buses and trams in May 2026, and by June 2026 they were invalid across the entire network — métro, RER, and regional trains alike. If you’re arriving now, don’t count on paper tickets working at all; assume you need a digital option from the start. If you happen to be holding onto old paper tickets from a previous trip, ticket windows can still exchange them during a transitional period, but they won’t get you through a turnstile anymore.

Here’s what you actually use:

Navigo Easy is a reusable, contactless plastic card that costs €2 and holds no personal information — no photo needed. You buy it at a métro ticket window or an automated machine (look for the green-and-purple touchscreens), then load it with individual tickets: €2.55 each for métro, RER, and train journeys within Paris, or €2.05 for bus and tram. A pack of 10 tickets loaded onto the card runs €17.35, a modest discount over buying them one at a time. This is the right choice for most visitors staying a few days who won’t be riding transit constantly. One card per person — they can’t be shared for simultaneous trips.

Navigo Découverte is a separate card, used for weekly or monthly unlimited passes rather than individual tickets — the two systems don’t mix, and you can’t load single tickets onto a Découverte card. The weekly pass costs €32.40, plus a one-time €5 non-refundable fee for the card itself, and you’ll need a small color photo to register it. The pass runs strictly Monday to Sunday, not seven days from the date you buy it, so it’s worth timing your purchase around that if you’re aiming to cover a full week.

Smartphone ticketing, through the Île-de-France Mobilités app or the Bonjour RATP app, lets you buy and store the same tickets digitally instead of carrying a physical card.

Contactless bank card payment is arriving in Paris, but slowly, and it’s easy to overestimate how far it’s rolled out. As of mid-2026, tapping a bank card directly works at a very limited number of points — the Orly exit on métro Line 14 (since late June 2026) and the Montmartre funicular (since early July 2026) — with wider rollout across the network planned in stages through 2030. Where it is available, it costs a bit more per ride than a loaded ticket. For nearly everywhere else on the network, you’ll still need a Navigo Easy card or a ticket loaded on your phone — a bank card alone won’t get you through most métro gates yet.

Whether the weekly Navigo Découverte makes financial sense comes down to how many rides you’ll actually take — it tends to pay for itself somewhere around a dozen or more trips across the week, so it’s worth doing the math against your actual itinerary rather than assuming it’s automatically the better deal.

Where to buy: Navigo Easy cards are sold at métro ticket windows and at machines in most stations, though not every older machine has been updated to sell them. On arrival, a staffed ticket window is the more reliable bet — most central stations have staff on duty during the day. Note that CDG airport itself does not sell Navigo cards, so if you specifically want one on arrival, plan to buy it once you reach a station in the city rather than at the airport.

The Métro: How It Works

The métro runs from around 5:30am to about 1:15am on weekdays and Sundays, extending to roughly 2:15am on Friday and Saturday nights and the eve of public holidays. Outside those hours, you’re relying on night buses.

Trains are frequent — roughly every two to four minutes at peak times, five to eight minutes off-peak — and central Paris is compact enough that most journeys between sightseeing areas take somewhere between ten and twenty minutes.

Lines are numbered 1 through 14, plus two branch lines, 3bis and 7bis, that confuse nearly everyone the first time they see them on a map. Direction signage uses the name of the terminal station at each end of the line, so knowing which terminal you’re heading toward tells you which platform to stand on.

A few practical notes on specific lines: Line 1 runs east-west through the center and is probably the single most useful line for sightseeing, passing near the Champs-Élysées, the Louvre, and Bastille. Line 4 runs north-south through Montparnasse, Châtelet, and up toward Montmartre. Line 14 is the newest and fastest line, fully automated, and now extends all the way to Orly airport.

Châtelet–Les Halles is the largest interchange in the network and also the busiest — changing lines here can genuinely take five minutes of walking through underground corridors that are, frankly, a little maze-like in places, with signage that isn’t always as clear as it should be. Follow the line number and terminal name rather than relying on color alone, and you’ll get where you’re going.

If you have any flexibility in your schedule, it’s worth avoiding Lines 13 and 7 during the height of morning rush hour, roughly 8:00 to 9:30am, when both get extremely crowded.

One unwritten courtesy worth knowing: the fold-down seats nearest the doors are the ones people with mobility needs or strollers often need first. Giving them up isn’t a posted rule anywhere, but it’s one locals follow consistently, and it’s a good habit to pick up.

Buses and Trams

The métro gets most of the attention, but Paris buses are underrated, especially for sightseeing, since you actually see the city rather than tunneling under it. Traffic makes them slower than the métro, which is part of the tradeoff. Bus route 69 is a particularly good example — it runs between Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower and the Gambetta/Père Lachaise area in the east, passing the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, Hôtel de Ville, and the edge of the Marais along the way, essentially functioning as a cheap sightseeing loop if you’re willing to just ride and look out the window.

A single bus ticket costs €2.05, cheaper than a métro ride, and covers transfers between buses and trams for 90 minutes after validation — though not onto the métro itself. A Navigo Easy card loaded with the right ticket type, or a weekly Navigo Découverte, covers any mode with the same tap.

Buses also reach a fair amount of the city the métro doesn’t cover as directly — pockets of the 13th, 15th, and 20th arrondissements, for instance. If your hotel is a bit off the métro grid, there’s almost always a short bus connection to the nearest station. Both the RATP app and Citymapper show real-time arrivals and can route you across any mix of métro, bus, and RER; Citymapper in particular tends to handle service disruptions a bit more gracefully than Google Maps does in Paris.

After the métro closes for the night, the Noctilien night bus network takes over, with routes marked by an “N.” They’re slower and less frequent than daytime service but cover most of the city. The main interchange point is the Châtelet hub. If you’re not in a rush and don’t mind waiting a little longer between buses, Noctilien is a genuinely usable late-night option; if you’d rather not wait, taxis and rideshares are the faster (if pricier) alternative.

From CDG Airport to Paris

Charles de Gaulle sits northeast of the city. For most visitors, the RER B train is the most practical route in — it runs directly to central Paris, stopping at Gare du Nord, Châtelet–Les Halles, and Saint-Michel–Notre-Dame, in around 30 to 35 minutes. This particular journey requires a dedicated airport fare called the “Paris Region ↔ Airports” ticket, priced at €14 for an adult (roughly half that for children aged 4 to 9) rather than the standard €2.55 métro fare — it’s worth buying this ticket specifically rather than assuming a regular ticket covers it.

One important 2026 update: the RoissyBus, the long-running direct coach between CDG and the Opéra area, was permanently discontinued on March 1, 2026, after more than three decades of service, largely due to chronic traffic delays on the A1 motorway. Any guide still recommending it is out of date. The nominal replacement is a new bus, the Express 9517, which runs a different route via the Saint-Denis-Pleyel transit hub, connecting to métro Lines 13 and 14 and the RER — it’s not a like-for-like swap and typically involves a transfer rather than one direct ride into the city center. For most travelers, the RER B remains the simpler, more direct option; the ordinary local buses that serve the airport (routes 350 and 351) are a slower, cheaper fallback if buses are your preference. A dedicated CDG Express train, running non-stop from Gare de l’Est in about 20 minutes, is under construction and slated to open in March 2027 — worth knowing about if your trip falls after that date.

Taxis from CDG run on fixed, government-regulated rates: €56 to the Right Bank, €65 to the Left Bank. These are set fares — the driver can’t quote you anything different, and there’s no need to haggle. Use the official taxi rank outside each terminal rather than accepting an offer from anyone approaching you inside the arrivals hall.

Rideshare apps typically run somewhere between €45 and €70 depending on the time of day and demand, and can climb higher during surges — right after a wave of major flights lands, for instance. In those moments, the fixed taxi rate sometimes ends up being the cheaper option.

Private transfers and shared shuttles are also available, generally in a wide price range depending on the service, and can be worth it if you’re traveling with a lot of luggage or need to manage tight early-morning logistics. For solo travelers or couples with normal luggage, though, the RER B remains the straightforward choice.

From Orly Airport to Paris

Orly sits south of the city, with a different set of options than CDG.

The big recent change here is that métro Line 14 now runs directly to Orly, making it the fastest public transit route into the city. The line is fully automated and generally more frequent than the older OrlyVal shuttle it has largely replaced for journeys into central Paris. The ride to the city center takes around 25 minutes, and like the CDG route, it requires the same €14 “Paris Region ↔ Airports” ticket rather than a standard fare.

Taxis from Orly run on fixed rates as well: €45 to the Right Bank, €36 to the Left Bank — Orly’s position south of the city makes the Left Bank the shorter, cheaper trip, the reverse of the CDG pattern.

Walking and Cycling

Paris is more walkable than most first-time visitors expect, at least within the central arrondissements. Notre-Dame to the Louvre is roughly a fifteen-minute walk. The Eiffel Tower to the Musée d’Orsay is about twelve minutes on foot. A lot of what visitors want to see is genuinely close together, and factoring in the walk to a platform and the wait for a train, the métro is sometimes slower than just walking for short hops.

Vélib’, the city’s bike-share system, is worth knowing about for longer stretches. Docking stations are scattered across the city; you register through the Vélib’ app or website, pay a small membership fee for a day or a week, and check bikes out as needed. Electric-assist bikes are part of the fleet and worth the slightly higher rate if your route involves any real elevation. Helmets aren’t provided, so bring a compact one if that matters to you.

Paris has also expanded its dedicated cycling infrastructure substantially in recent years, with separated lanes now common along the Seine and through the central arrondissements. Cycling between sightseeing spots on a weekday morning, before traffic builds up, is genuinely pleasant. A Saturday afternoon in July is a different experience entirely.

Renting a car for the city itself is generally not worth it. Driving in central Paris is slow, parking is scarce and expensive, and the city’s low-emission zones restrict older vehicles from certain areas, with automatic camera-issued fines for violations. Public transport and walking will outperform a car on nearly every measure — and spare you the one-way street systems that were laid out for horses, not hatchbacks. If you’re planning a day trip somewhere like Versailles or the Loire Valley, trains from Gare Montparnasse or the RER are the more sensible option; renting a car for regional travel, arranged through one of the airport rental counters at the end of your Paris stay, makes far more sense than renting one for the city itself.

Getting Around After Dark

The métro runs until roughly 1:15am on weeknights and Sundays, or about 2:15am on Friday and Saturday nights. After that, Noctilien night buses cover much of the city, though less frequently than daytime service.

Taxis run around the clock, and Paris taxis are metered, regulated, and generally reliable. A higher night rate applies after a certain hour, which is worth factoring in if you’re comparing the fare to a rideshare quote.

Uber and Bolt both operate in Paris and are usually a bit cheaper than a licensed taxi late at night, though the gap isn’t always large enough to matter much.

FAQ

Do I need a Navigo card, or can I just use my bank card? In most of the network, you’ll still need either a Navigo Easy card loaded with tickets or a ticket on your phone — direct contactless bank card payment is only live at a couple of specific points, like the Orly exit on Line 14 and the Montmartre funicular, with wider rollout planned gradually through the rest of the decade. A Navigo Easy card is cheap (€2) and works everywhere, which makes it the simplest option for most visitors.

Is the RoissyBus still running from CDG? No — it was permanently discontinued on March 1, 2026. The RER B train, using the dedicated €14 airport ticket, is now the main public transit route from Charles de Gaulle into central Paris. A new bus, the Express 9517, offers a partial alternative via a transfer hub north of the city, but it isn’t a direct replacement.

How do I get from Orly airport to central Paris? Métro Line 14 runs directly from Orly into the city in around 25 minutes, using the same €14 airport ticket as the CDG route. Fixed-rate taxis are also available: €45 to the Right Bank, €36 to the Left Bank.

What’s the cheapest way to get around Paris? Walking, wherever it’s practical. After that, the bus at €2.05 per ride is cheaper than the métro at €2.55. If you’re staying five or more days and plan to use transit heavily, the weekly Navigo Découverte pass at €32.40 (plus a one-time €5 card fee) can bring your per-trip cost down significantly — just remember it only runs Monday to Sunday, not from your purchase date.

Are Paris taxis safe to use? Yes. Licensed Paris taxis are metered, officially regulated, and required to display driver identification. Fixed rates apply for airport transfers, so there’s no need to negotiate. It’s best to avoid anyone approaching you unsolicited at the airport offering a ride — these are unlicensed and worth declining.