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Getting Around Madrid: The Metro, the Abono, and Why It's Europe's Most Underrated System

Getting around Madrid is so cheap and so good that nobody talks about it, which is a crime. Here's the tourist pass vs single tickets vs the 10-trip card, plus the airport supplement that catches everyone out.

For the full day-by-day version of everything below, read the the day-by-day Madrid itinerary.

Getting around Madrid is one of those quiet pleasures nobody hypes, and I genuinely don’t understand why. The metro is clean, fast, dirt cheap, runs deep into the night, and reaches every corner you’d want, and yet people rave about Paris and London and skip right over the system that’s frankly better than both for a visitor. Madrid’s metro is Europe’s most underrated. I’ll die on this hill. Let me show you how to ride it for next to nothing.

You can’t tap a bank card on the turnstile in Madrid like some cities, you need a transit card. The one you want is the Tarjeta Multi, a rechargeable plastic card you buy once from any metro machine for a small fee (around €2.50). It’s not personal, anyone can use it, but only one person at a time per ride, so a couple can share if you load enough trips and pass it back.

Onto that card you load tickets. Your options:

• Single ticket: a few euros for one ride, scaling by distance/zones. Fine if you’ll barely use the metro.
• 10-trip ticket (Metrobús): roughly €12.20 for ten rides, and crucially it’s shared, two people can each use trips off the same card. This is the value pick for most visitors. Per ride it’s massively cheaper than singles.
• Tourist pass (Abono Turístico): unlimited rides for 1–7 days. Sounds great, but do the math, you have to ride a LOT each day to beat the 10-trip card, and most tourists don’t, because the center’s so walkable. Only worth it if you’re crisscrossing the city constantly or going out to the suburbs daily.

My standard advice: buy a Tarjeta Multi, load a 10-trip ticket, share it if you’re two people. You’ll likely not even finish the ten trips because, again, Madrid’s heart is small.

Here’s the gotcha that gets everyone. The metro reaches Barajas airport (Line 8) and it’s a quick, easy ride to the city. BUT there’s a separate airport supplement of €3 on top of your normal fare, every time you enter or exit at an airport metro station. The 10-trip Metrobús ticket does NOT cover the airport stations on its own, you pay the supplement extra.

So an airport metro trip = your normal fare + the €3 supplement. It’s still cheap, around €4.50–5 total, far less than a taxi or the express bus when you’re solo, just don’t be surprised when the machine asks for the add-on. People stand there confused at the gate all the time.

For the record, the official airport Express Bus (the yellow one) runs 24 hours to Atocha/Cibeles for a flat €5, which is handy late at night when the metro’s shut. And a taxi from Barajas to the center is a fixed flat rate (around €33), worth it if you’re a group splitting it with luggage.

Here’s the thing that makes Madrid’s transit “underrated” in a backhanded way: the bits you came to see are clustered tight. Sol, Plaza Mayor, the Prado, Retiro park, the Royal Palace, Gran Vía, you can stroll between most of them. The “art triangle” of the Prado, Reina Sofía, and Thyssen are all a short walk apart along the Paseo del Prado. I tell first-timers to plan on walking the center and using the metro mainly to jump between neighborhoods, out to Malasaña or Lavapiés for dinner, say, or across town to a barrio you’d never reach on foot.

That’s exactly why the unlimited pass usually loses, you simply don’t ride enough to justify it.

A few last bits. The metro runs until about 1:30am, late, but not all night, so for a proper Madrid night out you’ll want a night bus (the “búho” owl lines) or a cab home at 4am, because the locals eat dinner at 10 and party till sunrise and the metro can’t keep those hours. Line numbers are colour-coded and the network’s well-signed in the stations, transfers are easy, just follow the line colour to your platform. And the trains are frequent enough that you basically never check a timetable, you just turn up.

So: one Tarjeta Multi, a 10-trip ticket loaded on, remember the €3 airport supplement, and otherwise let your feet do most of the work. It’s cheap, it’s clean, it’s quietly excellent.

Get the Multi card, load ten trips, mind the airport supplement, and otherwise just walk, Madrid’s the rare city where the best transit tip is to use the transit less. Underrated, every bit of it.

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