Blog Transport

2026-01-125 min readThe Sofia-Grad editorial team

Sofia has 4 real transport modes worth knowing — metro, trams, buses and taxis — and one of them will handle 80% of your trips.

The metro is the spine, use it first

Sofia's metro has 2 lines, M1/M2 and M3/M4, meeting at Serdika, and that intersection is where you’ll change most often. Trains run roughly every 3-4 minutes at peak and every 8-10 minutes late evening, from about 5am to midnight. A single ride is around $0.90, paid contactless directly at the turnstile with any Visa or Mastercard — no ticket machine, no app, no top-up card required. Tap the same card on exit isn’t needed; it's flat-fare. This tap-to-ride system, rolled out fully by 2024, is the single biggest quality-of-life improvement for visitors in years.

The stations you’ll actually use: Serdika (old town, Sveta Nedelya, Banya Bashi mosque), Serdika II (interchange), Sofiyski Universitet (Vitosha Boulevard's north end), NDK (south end of Vitosha), Sofia Airport (Terminal 2, direct to Serdika in 18 minutes for $0.90). That last one matters — the metro to the airport is faster than a taxi at rush hour and costs a tenth as much. If your hotel is anywhere near the M1/M2/M4 corridor, skip the taxi entirely on arrival.

Trams are slow, scenic and useful in specific corridors

Sofia's tram network is old Soviet stock mixed with newer Polish Pesa cars, and it groans along at maybe 15km/h through the centre. Tram 5 is the one tourists use most — it runs from Ovcha Kupel through the centre past the Palace of Justice and up to Knyazhevo, at the foot of Vitosha mountain. Tram 20 links the western districts to the centre. A ticket is $0.90 again, same tap-to-ride card system on newer trams, but on older ones you still need a paper ticket bought from a kiosk or the driver.

Honest verdict: trams are charming but they’re not your main tool. If the metro goes where you’re going, take the metro. Trams make sense for the Knyazhevo run to Vitosha, for reaching neighbourhoods like Krasno Selo or Ovcha Kupel that the metro misses, and for the sheer novelty of rattling past 19th-century buildings on wooden benches. Budget an extra 15 minutes over what Google Maps predicts — the older tram cars break the estimates.

Buses fill the gaps but confuse first-timers

The bus and trolleybus network covers everywhere the rails don’t, which in Sofia means large residential districts like Mladost, Lyulin, Boyana and Dragalevtsi. Bus 64 and 66 go up to Boyana Church and the road toward Vitosha; bus 84 runs to the old Vrazhdebna airport terminal. Fares are the same $0.90 flat, and newer buses take contactless tap. Older buses don’t — you’ll need a paper ticket from a street kiosk, and you validate it by punching it in one of the little orange boxes on board.

The catch: bus routing in Sofia is not intuitive, stops sometimes lack English signage, and Google Maps' Sofia bus data is reliable maybe 85% of the time. For anywhere outside the M-line grid, I’d rather take a taxi than gamble on a bus if I’m short on time. For scenic uphill runs to Boyana or Dragalevtsi on a relaxed day, the bus is fine and costs a dollar.

Taxis: only yellow, only metered, only these companies

Sofia taxi scams are real and specific: fake taxis park at the airport and Central Station with inflated tariff stickers, and they’ll charge you $40 for a $6 ride. The rule is simple — use OK Supertrans (yellow, phone 973-2121), Yellow 333 (91333), or book through the Bolt or Yellow apps on your phone. Legitimate metered rate is around $0.50 per kilometre plus a $0.40 flag fall, so a cross-town ride from the airport to the centre should be $8-12 depending on traffic, not $30.

Bolt is by far the easiest option for visitors — same app you’d use in Tallinn or Lisbon, card on file, no cash needed, no language barrier, and drivers are rated. A typical Bolt ride within the centre runs $3-5. Uber does not operate in Sofia. Yellow taxis hailed on the street are fine if you check the tariff sticker on the passenger window shows something like 0.99 leva/km — anything higher (2.90, 4.90) is the scam version.

What Sofia does NOT have that you might expect

No Uber, no Lyft, no ride-share beyond Bolt. No commuter rail worth using — BDZ trains exist but they run to other cities, not around the metro area. No water transport, obviously, since Sofia is inland at 550m elevation. No cable car currently running to Vitosha from the city; the Simeonovo lift and Dragalevtsi chairlift both had extended closures through the mid-2020s and their operating status is a coin flip, so don’t plan a trip around them without checking that week.

No cycling infrastructure worth mentioning either. Sofia has painted bike lanes on maybe 3% of streets, drivers ignore them, and the road surface in older districts is genuinely rough. A few rental schemes exist but I’d only recommend cycling if you’d cycle in Naples or Athens — this is not Amsterdam. E-scooters (Lime, Bolt) are available and popular in summer, but pavement quality makes them jarring.

Walking is often the right answer downtown

The tourist core — from Sveta Nedelya through Vitosha Boulevard, past NDK, through the yellow-brick centre to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and back through Sredets — is walkable in a large loop of about 4km. Everything you came to see is inside that loop. The metro is faster only if you’re going to the airport or out to Vitosha's base. For distances under 2km in the centre, walking beats waiting for a tram, and Vitosha Boulevard itself is pedestrianised from NDK north to Sveta Nedelya.

The one caveat: Sofia pavements are patchy. Beautiful yellow paving stones in the centre become uneven concrete two blocks off Vitosha Boulevard, and winter ice sticks around in January and February. Wear grippy shoes. In summer, the shade of the linden trees along Tsar Osvoboditel and Vasil Levski boulevards makes even long walks pleasant, and the boulevards run mostly north-south so you can’t get badly lost.

The transport pass question: don’t bother

Sofia sells a 24-hour transport ticket for around $2.40 and a 72-hour for around $5.50, valid on all metro, tram, bus and trolleybus. Sounds like a deal — it isn’t, for most visitors. If you’re using the metro two or three times a day and walking the rest, single tap-to-ride fares total $2.70 a day and you never think about validity windows. The pass only wins if you’re doing five or more rides daily, which usually means you’re doing transit for its own sake.

Skip the tourist card variants too — SofiaCard and similar bundle transit with museum entries at markups that rarely beat paying separately, unless you’d genuinely visit 4+ paid museums in a day, which almost no visitor does. The one exception: the 1-day pass is worth it if you plan a Boyana Church + National History Museum + Vitosha excursion in a single day, since that involves multiple bus rides plus trams.

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