Buy a ticket in Bratislava

The transport company in Bratislava (»Dopravný podnik«) offer various tickets. Single tickets refer to time and zones.

  • Printed Tickets of a vending machine in Bratislava © echonet.at / rv

Always devalidate the ticket!

In general, a ticket in Bratislava is not valid if the ticket has not been validated. From this time a stamp is printed on the ticket. The stamp indicates at which station the ticket was canceled. In addition, the time and the date can be read on it. The prices for the tickets differ just by the duration of the validity and also by the number of zones. Mostly, tourists will be traveling in zone 100 in Bratislava. This zone is the city center. When calculating with the zones, this zone should always be calculated as 2 zones.

Printed Tickets have various information

What you can do with a ticket is relatively easy to recognize in Bratislava. There are three different things that are printed large on the ticket:

The zone number is a large digit above the code for scanning. The tickets usually have 2, 3, 4 or 5 imprinted. Next to this at the right side of the ticket is the time. This is stated either in minutes or in hours. When it comes to hours, there are cards for 24 hours, 72 hours, 168 hours. Tickets valid for minutes ware available for 15, 30, 60 or 90 minutes.

For the tickets, which you can buy in printed form, the arrow for the validation is always directed downwards. At the bottom of the ticket is also in Slovak, English and German, that you should devalue the ticket here.

Tickets from the vending machine

The tickets from the machine in Bratislava look a little bit different. But also on these tickets these three pieces of information are printed. The ticket, however, is not valued below but on the left side. Also, an arrow is printed on the ticket. If you buy a ticket in the machine, you still have to validate the ticket on the bus or in the tram.

Ticket Pricing

The short term tickets in Bratislava are really cheap. There are reduced or full price tickets. Reduced tickets are for children and elderly people. Pay attention to the sign on the printed tickets or to the text on the tickets from a vending machine. The printed tickets show either two adults. This means, that the ticket is a full price ticket for an adult. But it does not mean two persons, it is only for one person. The reduced tickets show a child and an elderly person as an icon. This means that the ticket is only valid for people who have a confirmation to be allowed to buy reduced tickets.

Basic tickets, which means, adult tickets for the full price start at around 0,70 euros for 15 minutes. They cost about 1,20 euros for 60 minutes. The reduced tickets for children and elderly people are half the price of a full price ticket. (As of 2017)

Public Transport in Bratislava