Round-up: Ride-sharing and taxi apps to use while traveling (May 2023)
I started getting serious about traveling and planning my own trips in 2018 - I was in my mid-20s then, pre-COVID, in better shape and had more energy to take walk or public transportation. In fact, I recall when my brother and I went to London and Paris for the first time, we barely took the transit at all!
Now that I’m going into my 30s, I’m noticing that my willpower has been reduced to zero when it comes to lugging my suitcases to and from the airport. Also overall, my energy is so low by the end of a long day of exploring that I find myself always needing to hail a cab or call an Uber just to get back to my hotel.
As a relatively introverted person, the mere thought of hailing a cab manually makes me anxious already and since Uber isn’t your best friend outside of Canada and the US, here’s a list of other ride-sharing or taxi apps I’ve used in the past that I’ve had good experience with. In the post, I’ll go through the different apps and where they worked well and didn’t work well during my travels.
Hot Tip: If you plan on setting yourself up with any of the these apps, make sure to install the app before you leave and while you still have access to your mobile text messages to save on roaming fees. Otherwise, it will get really cumbersome to switch SIMs or data plans just to access your OTP codes (during sign up).
Uber
Uber’s pricing has been steadily increasing over the years, so it’s definitely losing ratings for me in that regard. But as every North American girlie’s go-to ride-sharing app, we can’t publish this list without mentioning Uber, so let’s get this one out of the way:
Uber is great:
in most US and Canadian cities
for reliability, great mobile user experience.
relatively speedy and solid customer service.
for TD Aeroplan Visa Platinum/Infinite/Privilege cardholders - because you get points rewarded to you when you ride.
Uber is not great because:
you’ll actually notice they’re not available at all in most cities outside of the US and Canada.
even in cities where they are available, their pricing is absolutely unreasonable.
if you schedule a ride ahead of time, you’ll actually end up paying more than if you just requested it right when you needed to go.
Lyft
With Uber’s insane pricing recently, I think Lyft is also gaining more traction in the US and Canada. I personally switch to Lyft when I don’t want to pay Uber pricing. I find that most Lyft drivers drive for Uber as well - so at least it goes to the same people! Doesn’t bother me!
Lyft is great:
in most US and Canadian cities.
if you’re not in a hurry, you can opt-in to be picked up in 15 minutes and you save quite a bit - and it almost always ends up being less than a 15 minute wait.
if you want to save money instead of paying premium prices for the same thing via Uber.
Lyft is not great because:
their mobile app is a little more clunky than Uber’s.
there’s not as many drivers available as there are Uber drivers even in the US and Canada.
they don’t even exist outside of the US and Canada (in my experience - I could be wrong though).
Bolt
I used Bolt specifically and only while I was in Prague. I haven’t been to another city as of yet where I’ve had to use it again.
Bolt is great:
in Prague.
at finding drivers really quickly for reasonable pricing.
I didn’t use Bolt enough to learn about its weak points. Overall solid whenever I needed to use it.
FREENOW
I learned about Freenow during my trip to Barcelona with my best friend and I believe it’s quite literally a digitized version of the taxi network in most European cities.
Freenow is great (as in, I’ve used it):
in Paris and most areas in Barcelona - apparently, it’s solid for London, Dublin and Berlin as well.
if you have a language barrier or have no cash on-hand - you order, pay for and tip through the app. It also accepts most major credit cards.
because it’s very easy to use - the app is clean and simple.
Freenow is not so great:
sometimes it will take a long time to get a cab in busy places (could be an app issue) - we’ve seen free cabs roaming around but were somehow not being captured in our app.
Grab
Grab is a technology company headquartered in Indonesia and Singapore and I’ve wished a thousand times that they would eventually make themselves available in North America. My friends and I have used Grab in the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore and it’s my absolute favourite ride-sharing/can-pretty-much-do-everything app.
Grab is great:
in most cities in Southeast Asia.
if you need to someone else to do groceries, drop off/pick-up stuff for you or have food delivered to you - you can do it all in the app (Very similar to North America’s UberEats/InstaCart).
if you have a language barrier - you can order, pay for and tip a cab all within the app.
Grab is not great because:
it’s not available in North America and the rest of the world, frankly.
Viggo
Viggo appears to be one of the most popular taxi apps in Copenhagen. I downloaded this just in case I needed to call a cab but I actually didn’t end up using it at all. I gather that with the sustainability/environmentalist culture in Denmark, prices were absolutely insane and it’s probably done in an effort to discourage people to taxi around. But I will say the app’s user experience is nice, clean and easy-to-use.
