Paying for the subway and bus
Tap the contactless card or phone you already own on the black OMNY reader. There is nothing to buy in advance, no app to install, and after enough rides in a week the rest are free.
Just tap what's already in your pocket
Every turnstile and every bus has a round black OMNY reader. Tap a contactless credit or debit card, or a phone or watch with Apple Pay or Google Pay, and go.
No ticket, no queue, no app, no registration. For a visitor this is the single best thing about the system — you can walk off a plane and onto a train with the card you already have.
MetroCard is gone. It was retired at the start of 2026, so old advice telling you to buy one at a machine is out of date.
What a ride costs
A subway or local bus ride is $3.00, flat, regardless of how far you go. A trip from the top of the Bronx to the bottom of Brooklyn costs the same as one stop.
Express buses cost more — they're the coach-style ones with luggage racks, mostly used by commuters, and are rarely what a visitor wants.
The weekly cap does the work of a travel pass
Keep tapping the same card or device and once you have spent $35 — around 12 rides — every further ride is free for the rest of the period.
The seven days start from your own first tap, not on a Monday. It is a rolling window, so there is no bad day to arrive and no advantage in waiting.
You never need to work out in advance whether a pass is worth buying. Tap the same thing every time and the discount applies itself.
The catch: it must be the same payment method. Each card, phone or watch keeps its own separate tally, so alternating between your phone and your plastic card splits your rides across two counts and neither reaches the cap.
Express buses sit outside this cap and have a separate, higher one of their own.
Transfers are free within two hours
One free transfer between subway and local bus, or between two local buses, within two hours of your first tap.
Tap as normal on the second leg — the reader recognises the card and charges nothing. Subway-to-subway transfers inside the system have always been free; you simply don't exit through the turnstiles.
One person, one card
The reader will not let the same card through twice in quick succession at the same station — an anti-passback rule to stop one fare covering several people.
So a couple or a family each need their own card or device. If everyone's cards are on one phone, that phone can't tap four people through. Give each person a physical card, or add cards to each person's phone.
If the tap doesn't take
- Tap flat and hold for a second. A quick swipe past the reader often misses.
- Take the card out of the wallet. Several contactless cards together confuse the reader; so can some metal card holders.
- Watch the little screen. It tells you whether it accepted, declined, or counted a free transfer.
- Foreign cards work, but occasionally a bank blocks the first overseas transit charge as suspicious. Travel-notifying your bank before you fly avoids a bad moment at a turnstile.
A staffed booth is at most stations if you get properly stuck.