El Prat to Barcelona: The 5.90 Metro Ticket and the 1.30 Train

The metro from Barcelona airport costs 5.90 euros. The train from the same airport costs 1.30 euros on a T-casual. Both take about half an hour. The difference is that the train leaves from Terminal 2 and the metro charges a special airport fare that most travel cards do not cover. This page sets out what every option costs, checked against Aena, TMB, ATM and the AMB taxi authority in September 2026.

What each option costs

The ticket trap, in one paragraph

The T-casual is the standard Barcelona travel card at 13 euros for ten journeys, which works out at 1.30 a trip. It does not work at the Aeroport T1 and Aeroport T2 metro stations on line L9 Sud. ATM states this plainly. If you tap in with one, you will be buying the 5.90 euro Airport ticket at the gates before you can leave.

The same T-casual does work on the R2 Nord train from Terminal 2, and on the N17 and N18 night buses. So the trap is not the airport. It is the metro line.

What does cover the metro from the airport: T-usual, T-jove, T-dia, T-70/90 and the Hola Barcelona pass. What does not: the single ticket, T-casual, T-familiar and T-grup.

The metro, and where it actually goes

L9 Sud does not reach Placa Catalunya and does not reach Sants. It is a suburban line that meets the rest of the network at four points, and the 5.90 euro ticket covers the change.

• For Placa Catalunya, change at Zona Universitaria onto L3.
• For Sants station, change at Collblanc onto L5.
• The other interchanges are Torrassa for L1 and Can Tries Gornal for L10 Sud.

Trains run every 7 minutes. The airport section runs from 05:00 to midnight on weekdays, until 02:00 on Fridays and the eve of a holiday, and all night on Saturdays.

The headline 30 minutes is the airport to interchange leg. With the change and the second line, budget rather more.

The train, and the terminal problem

The R2 Nord station is at Terminal 2 only, on floor 0, reached from T2B along a raised walkway. It runs about every 30 minutes from roughly 06:00 to midnight, and calls at Sants, Passeig de Gracia and El Clot Arago.

All integrated passes are accepted, which is what makes it 1.30 euros a journey rather than 5.90. If you buy a Renfe ticket instead of using an integrated card, Renfe prices the airport as zone 4 and charges about 4.90 euros. Both prices are real. They are different products.

If you land at Terminal 1 you have to take the free shuttle to Terminal 2 first. That bus runs 24 hours. T1 to T2 takes 10 minutes and T2 to T1 takes 14. It comes every 5 minutes between 08:00 and 20:00, every 7 minutes in the shoulders, and every 10 minutes overnight. It stops at T1 level 0 in arrivals, T1 level 3 in departures, and outside T2B and T2C.

Add the shuttle, the wait and a 30 minute train headway and the cheapest option stops being the fastest.

The Aerobus, and two things most guides get wrong

First, it runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The idea that it stops overnight is out of date. The metro is what closes.

Second, the operator changed. The domain most guides still link to is no longer the operator’s site. The current operator is Monbus and the current site is aerobusbarcelona.es.

The operator publishes 7.45 euros one way and 12.85 return, and the transport authority ATM quotes the same 7.45. A third party guide updated in August 2026 says 7.75 and 13.30. Resellers charge 9.50 and 16.50, which is a markup, not the fare.

A1 serves Terminal 1 and A2 serves Terminal 2. Getting that wrong is the most common Aerobus mistake. Going into town the stops are Placa Catalunya, Carrer Sepulveda and Placa Espanya. Coming back from town the route is not symmetrical and adds Gran Via Borrell and Placa Universitat.

The journey takes 30 to 35 minutes, buses come every 5 to 10 minutes, and the ticket stays valid for 90 days. Travel cards are not accepted, so the Aerobus is always a separate purchase.

Taxis

The AMB set new tariffs on 1 January 2026, an average rise of 2.3 percent.

The 21 euro minimum includes all supplements. It is a floor, not a fare. The realistic total to the centre is 35 to 45 euros, which comes from third party observations rather than an AMB figure.

Two other supplements worth knowing. Sants station adds 2.55 euros and Fira Gran Via adds 3.30. A party of five to eight adds 4.60.

The cruise port

There is no public transport to the cruise quays at Moll Adossat. The taxi fare from the airport is a fixed 46 euros under the AMB’s T-4 tariff, not a meter reading plus a supplement.

The CruiseBus at 3.50 euros one way or 5 for a day ticket runs between Moll Adossat and Colom at the bottom of La Rambla. It does not serve the airport. The World Trade Center terminals sit on the normal transport network and need no shuttle.

Uber, Cabify, Bolt and Free Now

Catalonia has a law in progress that would push private hire vehicles out of urban work across the 36 municipalities of the Barcelona metropolitan area, which would cover airport runs into the city. It is not in force. In April 2026 the Parliament referred the text to the European Commission over freedom of establishment concerns. We could not find any source covering what happened between then and September, so do not treat the ban as live.

What works today. Free Now dispatches licensed taxis, runs on the meter with no surge, and has the widest coverage. Cabify and Bolt are private hire, with upfront pricing that surges. Uber offers both private hire and a taxi product.

Uber publishes these averages for the airport. UberX 31 euros, Comfort 34, Taxi 38, Wait and Save 28, Taxi XL 42, Van 56, on an average 25 minute, 17 km trip. Note that Uber’s own page also quotes an average in dollars on the same screen, so treat the figures as indicative.

At night

The Aerobus runs all night. The N17 and N18 night buses run to Placa Catalunya every 20 to 30 minutes, and they take integrated passes, so a T-casual works at 1.30 a journey. N18 serves both terminals. N17 serves Terminal 1. The metro runs all night on Saturdays. The R2 train does not run overnight at all.

Private transfers

One operator publishes 39 euros for a sedan in the day and 42 at night, 67 for a minivan for up to eight and 108 for a minibus for up to twelve, on a journey of about 24 minutes. That is a single rate card rather than a market range.

What we could not confirm

The current Aerobus fare. The operator’s own page is dated March 2025 and a credible August 2026 source gives a higher figure.

R2 Nord journey times and first and last trains. The regional operator’s site blocks automated access, so those times come from a third party page that also carries a 2023 fare.

The exact N17 and N18 timetables.

What happened to the Catalan private hire law after April 2026.

Peak hour road journey times. No official source publishes one. The trains and the metro are unaffected by traffic, which is the point worth making.

Sources

• TMB, 2026 fares
• TMB, metro to the airport
• ATM, getting to Barcelona from the airport
• Aena, free transport between terminals
• AMB, taxi tariffs
• Aerobus, questions and answers
• Port of Barcelona, passenger transport
• Uber, Barcelona El Prat