Getting Around Portugal Without a Car: Trains, Trams & Tips

Do you need a car in Portugal? For city life: no. For village life: almost certainly yes. Here is how the in-between actually works.

Trains: Better Than You Expect

The national rail company, CP (Comboios de Portugal), runs several tiers of service:

Book Alfa and Intercidades tickets a few days ahead online for meaningful discounts. Regional trains you just turn up for.

City Transport

Lisbon: metro, buses, ferries, funiculars and the famous trams — including the vintage 28. The navegante monthly pass covers the whole metropolitan area for around 40 EUR. Tap-and-go with contactless works on the metro too.

Porto: a clean, efficient light-rail metro (the airport line is a gift), buses, and one gloriously rickety historic tram to Foz. The Andante card ties it together.

Elsewhere — Braga, Coimbra, Faro, Aveiro — compact centres mean your feet do most of the work.

Intercity Buses

Where trains do not reach, buses do. Rede Expressos and FlixBus connect nearly every town in the country cheaply. The Algarve's inland villages and much of the interior are bus-or-car territory.

Taxis and Apps

Uber and Bolt operate in all major cities and are inexpensive by northern European standards. Traditional taxis run on meters — perfectly fine, just less predictable in price.

So When Do You Need a Car?

Many expats land car-free, live car-free for a year in Lisbon or Porto, and only buy one when they move somewhere quieter. It is a very reasonable strategy — cars here are expensive to buy and to run.

The Vocabulary You Will Need

Um bilhete para o Porto, por favor — a ticket to Porto, please. The Portugal Lifestyle Pro app covers all the transport vocabulary, from platforms to validation machines, with native European Portuguese audio.