Taxis in Venice by road: how far the car goes, and then what?

Piazzale Roma is the end of the road for every car

Venice’s historic centre has no roads. Every car, taxis included, stops at Piazzale Roma, the entrance to the city after the Ponte della Libertà, or on the island of Tronchetto. When a website promises a “taxi to your hotel” in Venice, it almost always means a car to Piazzale Roma plus a boat for the last stretch.

This page is about road taxis: the white cars with a meter. You need them in three situations: to get from the airport to Piazzale Roma, to travel between Venice and Mestre, and to arrive from Treviso airport. For everything that happens on the water, see the water taxi from the airport and the private versus shared comparison.

A note if you searched for “cab Venice” from abroad: there’s a Venice in California and one in Florida. Here we only cover Venice, Italy.

Fixed fares: the routes that matter

In Venice, road-taxi fares are set by the Comune together with the trade associations. The current fixed routes derive from council resolution no. 182 of 2013 and are published both by the Comune and by the cooperative that runs the radio service, Radio Taxi Venezia.

The fixed fare is per car, not per person, and includes surcharges and luggage. There are three conditions, though. It only applies if you get in at an official taxi rank during that rank’s service hours. The driver must take the shortest route, with no intermediate stops. And, as a rule, it doesn’t apply to taxis booked by phone.

The advice comes from the Comune itself: ask for the fixed fare explicitly, and before setting off. Mention it afterwards and you risk an argument over the meter.

How the meter works, with numbers

Outside the fixed routes you pay by the meter. The starting fare is €3.20 and the minimum fare is €8 by day, €11 at night and on public holidays. Then it’s €1.70 per kilometre up to €16.52 on the meter, and €2.15 per kilometre beyond that. Below 20 km/h, in other words in traffic, it switches to time-based charging.

There are few official surcharges: €3.20 at night (22:00–06:00) and on public holidays, €4.80 for trips to or from the airport and the Marittima, €1.20 per item when any dimension of a suitcase exceeds 50 cm. These amounts are not added to the fixed fares, which already include them.

A detail that surprises many people: if you call a taxi by phone, the meter starts when the car sets off towards you. At a rank, or when you flag down a free taxi, it starts when you get in. Between Mestre and Piazzale Roma, for trips not covered by a fixed route, where the car is coming from matters too.

Official ranks and numbers to call

According to the Comune there are seven active taxi ranks. Three are on the mainland: at Mestre railway station, at the Ospedale dell’Angelo and in Via Poerio, in central Mestre. Then there’s the one at Marco Polo airport. On the Venice side you’ll find Piazzale Roma, the Lido (in Piazzale Santa Maria Elisabetta) and the Stazione Marittima, which only operates when ships are in port. Tronchetto isn’t one of them.

To call a taxi, the number to use is Radio Taxi Venezia’s, +39 041 5964, available 24 hours a day. It’s confirmed both by the cooperative’s website and by the airport’s. Other numbers circulating online on aggregator sites don’t appear in official sources: avoid them. The cooperative also has an app and an SMS booking service; you’ll find everything in our Radio Taxi Venezia profile.

Don’t confuse the road-taxi number with the water-taxi one. For boats the Comune gives a different number, 199 48 49 50, without saying who answers. Two services, two sets of rules, two fare tables.

Uber and private hire: what you can and can’t do

Uber lists Venice among the cities it serves, but in Italy it doesn’t work as it does in the US: it relies on private-hire cars with driver (NCC, noleggio con conducente) and, where agreements exist, on taxis. Uber doesn’t specify which services can actually be booked in Venice; the airport mentions it among the channels for booking an NCC. Either way, it only takes you as far as Piazzale Roma, the airport or the mainland.

By law, an NCC doesn’t wait at the taxi rank and doesn’t stop in the street. It must be booked in advance and meets you at an agreed point. If someone outside arrivals offers you a paid ride without a booking and it isn’t a licensed taxi, they’re operating outside the rules. The airport’s website lists the NCC operators working there.

The price difference is clear-cut: taxis have fares set by the Comune, an NCC has a free price agreed in advance. That’s why car transfers sold online often cost more than the city’s fixed fare.

Treviso airport: ATVO bus or private car

Many low-cost flights land at Treviso Canova, not Venice. It’s much further from Piazzale Roma, and water taxis don’t come into it: here it’s all by road.

The standard option is ATVO’s Treviso Airport Bus Express (line 351), which stops in Mestre and terminates at Piazzale Roma. ATVO states 30 minutes to Mestre and 40 to Venice; independent sources report 65–70 minutes in practice with the stops. On GetYourGuide the ticket costs about €14 per person, at the time of checking, rated 4.7 out of 5 from over 11,000 reviews. ACTV also sells an integrated ATVO + ACTV network ticket at €19.50 one way, useful if you want to carry on by vaporetto without buying a second ticket.

The door-to-door alternative for an airport transfer from Treviso to Venice is a private car to Piazzale Roma plus a water taxi to your accommodation. On GetYourGuide it costs about €340 per booking, with only 5 reviews: a product still little tested. The price of an ordinary taxi from Treviso to Venice isn’t among the fixed fares published by the Comune di Venezia: Treviso airport is outside the city’s territory, so ask for a quote before getting in. Radio Taxi Venezia also sells prepaid vouchers for trips to and from Treviso in its online shop.

Do the maths for a group. For four, the bus costs about €56 in total, and then you need a vaporetto or water taxi from Piazzale Roma. Car plus boat costs about €340, that is €85 each if the price covers four people (check the listing), but it saves you two changes with suitcases.

Car plus boat: when the combination pays

The product this page is built around is the private “car + boat” transfer from Marco Polo airport: a driver meets you in arrivals with a sign, drives you to the edge of the lagoon and hands you over to a private water taxi to your hotel. At the time of checking it costs about €130, rated 4.2 out of 5 from 37 reviews, with a stated duration of about 45 minutes. The description specifies that the boat is always private.

Compare it with the official do-it-yourself route. Road taxi airport → Piazzale Roma €40, plus water taxi from Piazzale Roma to Rialto €50 or to San Marco €60 under the city tariff. Total €90–100, luggage surcharges excluded. You save, but you have to find the taxi, find the pier and agree the boat trip yourself.

Compared with a direct water taxi from the airport, which on GetYourGuide starts at about €215 per boat, the combination costs less. The limit is the number of passengers: how many people and how many bags the price covers is shown on the product listing, and must be checked before paying.

For two, car plus boat costs €65 each. For four, if the listing confirms the fare covers four people, it drops to €32.50, against €21.50 for bus and vaporetto, which, however, leave you at the nearest stop rather than at your hotel.

Hotel in Mestre: the taxi makes more sense than in Venice

If you’re staying in Mestre you’ll use road taxis far more than in the historic centre. From the airport, the fixed fare to the “Mestre Centro” zone is €35. The Comune defines the zone street by street; if your hotel is inside it, ask the driver for the fixed fare at the rank.

To get into Venice from Mestre, however, a taxi is rarely worth it. The ACTV 75-minute bus and tram ticket costs €1.50, and the regional train between Mestre and Santa Lucia is included in the €25 day pass. A taxi from central Mestre → Piazzale Roma costs €23 and still leaves you at the terminus. For days in the city, compare vaporetto, Alilaguna and water taxi and check the fare list.

If you’re coming off a ship, port fares and the People Mover are on the cruise port page. For a dawn departure, read how to get to the airport from the centre.