Schiphol to Amsterdam: The 5.50 Train and the Check-Out Gate People Miss
The train costs about 5.50 euros and runs all night. Forgetting to tap out costs 20 or 33.30. Verified 2026 fares, the 2026 taxi maximums and the pass that does not cover the airport.
Sammie O
The train from Schiphol to Amsterdam Centraal costs about 5.50 euros and takes 14 to 17 minutes. There are eight an hour, and there is no last train, because night trains run right through. The expensive mistake is not the fare. It is forgetting to tap out, which costs you 20 or 33.30 euros depending on which page of the railway’s own site you read. This page sets out what every option costs, checked against Schiphol, NS, Connexxion and the Dutch government in September 2026.
What each option costs
| Option | Price | Time | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| NS train | About 5.50 euros | 14 to 17 minutes | Amsterdam Centraal |
| NS train to Zuid | 3.70 euros | About 7 minutes | Zuid, for the museum quarter |
| Bus 397 | 6.50 euros | 28 to 38 minutes | Museumplein, Leidseplein, not Centraal |
| Taxi | 40 to 80 euros | 25 to 45 minutes | Your door |
Schiphol station sits directly beneath Schiphol Plaza. The rail distance to Centraal is about 12 km. By road it is about 18.
The check-out gate, and why it matters more than the fare
Dutch public transport charges you on the way out, not the way in. You tap a card at the start and tap the same card at the end, and the system works out the fare.
At Schiphol the yellow readers are at the top of the escalators and lifts in Schiphol Plaza, not on the platform. People walk past them.
Miss the check out and you are charged a correction fee. NS publishes two different numbers on two of its own live pages, 33.30 euros on one and 20 on the other, both refundable through the OVpay site within about six days. On buses and trams the equivalent charge is around 4 euros and reclaimable for up to six months.
Two more rules that catch people. You must tap out with the same physical card or device you tapped in with. And on NS one card covers one traveller, so a couple cannot tap one card twice.
Paying, and which cards are refused
A foreign contactless card works. NS, and the other operators, accept contactless Maestro, V PAY, Mastercard and Visa issued abroad, plus Apple Pay and Google Wallet backed by those cards.
NS explicitly does not accept Vivid, Paysafe or the Revolut digital debit card. If you travel on one of those, find out before the gate.
Nothing is taken at the gate. A day’s travel is bundled and debited overnight, appearing on your statement as NLOV followed by fourteen characters. Travellers report it as fraud every week.
The system holds or requires about 20 euros for trains and 4 for bus, tram and metro. Sources disagree on whether that is a genuine card pre authorisation or a legacy balance rule carried over from the old chip card, so treat it as your maximum exposure rather than a confirmed hold.
Buying a paper ticket from an NS machine or desk adds a 1.60 euro service fee per ticket. The old anonymous chip card costs 7.50 euros and its replacement, the OV-pas, costs 6 and lasts five years. Neither is worth buying for a short visit when contactless works.
The supplement that does not apply to you
The Intercity Direct supplement is 3.20 euros a journey and it applies only between Schiphol and Rotterdam. It is not charged on Schiphol to Amsterdam Centraal.
Guides regularly warn about it as if it were an airport surcharge. It is not.
There is no last train
NS runs night trains on this corridor every night, roughly hourly, on the Rotterdam to Den Haag to Leiden to Schiphol to Amsterdam Centraal to Utrecht route. The fare is the same as by day with no night supplement.
Booking sites that show a last departure just before midnight are showing a booking window, not a service gap.
We could not pin the exact clock times for the first and last daytime service or the night train departure minutes, because NS’s own timetable page would not render for us.
Bus 397, and where it does not go
The Amsterdam Airport Express is 6.50 euros one way and 11.75 return, with the return valid for 14 days. Children 4 to 11 pay 1 euro on board and under 4s go free. It leaves from stop B17, straight out of Schiphol Plaza.
It does not serve Centraal Station. It runs to Museumplein at about 28 minutes, the Rijksmuseum at 32, Leidseplein at 34 and terminates at Elandsgracht at 38. If your hotel is near the museums it beats the train. If you are heading for Centraal it does not go there.
Buses come every 10 minutes or so through the day. Payment is by contactless card on board. There is no cash.
Overnight the N97 Niteliner takes over between 1am and 5am, and unlike the daytime 397 it does serve Amsterdam Centraal. Sources disagree on whether it runs hourly or every 30 minutes. Connexxion lists 397 and N97 together from 6.50 euros and we could not find a separate night fare.
Taxis
The Netherlands sets a national maximum tariff, revised every 1 January. It went up 3.86 percent on 1 January 2026.
| Charge | Up to 4 passengers | 5 to 8 passengers |
|---|---|---|
| Starting rate | 4.31 euros | 8.77 euros |
| Per kilometre | 3.17 euros | 4.00 euros |
| Per minute | 0.52 euros | 0.59 euros |
Waiting is capped at 59.41 euros an hour. These are maximums for a street or rank hail. An operator may charge less.
Applying the official rates to the 18 km run into the centre gives a legal ceiling of about 72 euros over 20 minutes and 77 over 30. That is arithmetic from the tariff, not a price anyone quoted.
What people actually report paying ranges from 40 to 80 euros depending on the source, with most clustering around 55 to 65. Two figures in circulation are wrong and worth naming. A claimed city cap of about 47 euros matches no official source and contradicts the national maximum. And a claimed base fare of 7.50 euros is not the 4.31 in the government’s own tariff.
The official rank is in front of Schiphol Plaza, with signs and floor stickers.
Uber and Bolt
Both are legal in the Netherlands and drivers work under Dutch taxi regulation. The ongoing court cases about whether Uber drivers are employees affect driver status, not whether you can book a ride.
What matters on arrival is that app booked cars cannot collect you at the taxi rank. Schiphol opened a dedicated app pick-up point in February 2024, outside, signposted for taxis ordered by app, with free Wi-Fi. We could not establish which level or deck it sits on. Schiphol points you at its interactive map rather than naming it.
Fare estimates range from about 28 to 60 euros depending on the source, and an airport surcharge applies whose amount we could not verify. A metered official taxi is capped by law. An app fare is not, and it surges.
The passes, and the one that does not cover the airport
The Amsterdam Travel Ticket costs 20 euros for one day, 27 for two and 34 for three. It covers unlimited GVB tram, bus, metro and ferry inside Amsterdam plus the NS train between Schiphol and Amsterdam stations in second class, or bus 397. Validity runs by calendar day, not in 24 hour blocks.
The Amsterdam and Region Travel Ticket costs 23, 34 and 44 euros and adds regional trains to Haarlem, Zandvoort and Hilversum, plus the regional bus operators and the Keukenhof shuttles.
The trap is the ordinary GVB ticket. A GVB day ticket costs 10 euros for 24 hours and covers the city, but it is not valid on the Schiphol train and not valid on bus 397. The only GVB valid airport link is bus 369 to Amsterdam Sloterdijk.
GVB city tickets for 2026 run 3.40 euros for one hour, 10 for 24 hours, 16 for 48, 21.50 for 72, and up to 43 for a week. Pay as you go on GVB is 1.16 euros to board plus 21.7 cents a kilometre. GVB’s own site blocks automated access, so we could not check those against the operator directly.
The museum quarter
Two clean routes. Take the train to Zuid, about seven minutes, then Metro 52 to Vijzelgracht, about five minutes with trains every six, then a six minute walk. The whole thing is under half an hour. Or take bus 397 straight to the Rijksmuseum stop.
Trams 2, 5 and 12 stop at Rijksmuseum and tram 3 at Museumplein once you are in the city.
Two 2026 price changes worth knowing
Dutch VAT on accommodation rose from 9 percent to 21 percent on 1 January 2026. Separately sold extras such as breakfast, the pool or attraction access stay at 9. That is a hotel bill change, not a transport one, but it lands on the same trip.
Amsterdam’s tourist tax stays at 12.5 percent of the room price through 2026, the highest in Europe, and the city has signalled a possible rise from January 2027.
What we could not confirm
Whether the NS single to Centraal is 5.50 or 5.40. Two sources each way.
Which of 20 or 33.30 euros is the current missed check out charge. Two live NS pages disagree.
Whether the 20 and 4 euro figures are a real card pre authorisation or a legacy balance rule.
Exact first and last daytime trains and the night train departure minutes. NS’s timetable is rendered client side and would not load.
GVB’s own price table and its missed check out charge. Its site returns an error to automated access.
The N97 fare as a separate figure, its frequency, the Uber and Bolt airport surcharge, and the exact level of the app pick-up point.
Sources
- Schiphol, by train
- Schiphol, taxi and app pick-up
- NS, consumer rates and the paper ticket fee
- NS, Intercity Direct supplement
- NS, night trains
- NS, travelling with a debit card
- Connexxion, Amsterdam Airport Express 397
- Government of the Netherlands, taxi maximum rates
Sammie O publishes Germ Trips, a travel guide covering hotels, restaurants, airport transfers and chauffeur services. The guides aim for practical detail and a clear recommendation rather than an undifferentiated list. Where a town has no good option, the guides say so and point to the nearest one that does. Guides are AI drafted. A small number have been checked against official listings, and those say so on the page.
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