Manchester Metrolink — independent guide to the Manchester tram network
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Metrolink tickets and fares

How Metrolink ticketing works — zones, contactless capping and off-peak — and why this page does not quote prices.

Why there are no prices on this page

We do not publish Metrolink fares, and that is deliberate. The operator’s own ticket pages are closed to automated access, and the third-party guides that do quote prices contradict each other — we found £1.40 and £1.70 given for the same one-zone single. A wrong price on a transport site is worse than no price: it sends somebody to a platform with the wrong money. Until we can read the fares from a source we can stand behind, this page explains the system and sends you to the operator for the numbers.
Fares on the operator’s site

How Metrolink ticketing works

Three things decide what a Metrolink journey costs, and none of them is the distance in kilometres.

Zones. The network is divided into fare zones, and a single is priced by how many of them you cross rather than by how many stops you pass. Manchester Airport sits at the far edge, which is why an airport single costs noticeably more than a trip across town.

Capping. If you touch in and out with the same contactless card or phone, you are charged for what you use up to a daily and weekly cap, so repeated journeys stop adding up after a point. The cap only works if you use the same card or device every time — switching between a phone and a plastic card splits your travel into two separate tallies and you pay two caps.

Peak and off-peak. Off-peak fares and caps are lower, and concessionary passes are not valid on trams before 09:30. “Off-peak Metrolink times” is one of the most searched things about the network, and that 09:30 line is usually what people are actually asking about.

Touch in, touch out

On Metrolink you must touch in at the start and touch out at the end of every journey. A missed touch-out is charged as the longest fare from where you started, which is the single most common way people overpay on the network. The readers are on the platform, not on the tram.

Questions about Metrolink tickets

We do not quote a figure, for the reason at the top of this page: the sources we can reach disagree with each other. The operator publishes the current fares on its own site.

Off-peak fares and concessionary passes apply from 09:30 on weekdays. Weekends and bank holidays are off-peak all day.

Yes, every time. If you only touch in you are charged the maximum fare from that stop.

Yes, for contactless travel, and a weekly one too — but only if you use the same card or device for every journey.

There are combined bus-and-tram products under the Bee Network, but an ordinary bus single is not valid on a tram. Check which product you are buying before you travel.

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On this page

Tram times on this page come from the Traveline National Dataset (TransXChange, Open Government Licence v3.0); stop names and coordinates from NaPTAN, the Department for Transport stop register. Manchester Metrolink is an independent guide: it is not run by Metrolink or Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and has no connection with either. Check tfgm.com before you travel.