I need the next step
Use the checklist when the question has shifted from research to preparation.
Hangzhou · fares by rule
Hangzhou taxi and transit fares
In short
What should a Hangzhou taxi actually cost?
A Hangzhou taxi starts at ¥13 covering the first 3 km, then ¥2.5 per km, with 50% more on the distance fare past 10 km and 30% more between 23:00 and 05:00 — all set by 杭发改价格〔2019〕455号. Below 12 km/h the meter bills every 4 minutes, and over Spring Festival ¥10 a trip is added outside the meter entirely.
Street-taxi guideApplies to
Visitors taking a metered street taxi inside Hangzhou's urban districts, which the tariff itself defines as excluding 临安区 (Lin'an District).
Check before you rely on it
These are Hangzhou-only figures, read off the city gazette and attributed by document number and effective date. This page quotes no Hangzhou metro fare and no complaint hotline, because no official page fixing either could be opened. Every other Chinese city sets its own tariff — do not carry these numbers elsewhere.
The point of a regulated city is that you can check what you are charged against the rule. Below is what Hangzhou's price authority and transport bureau state in their own gazette notices — each row with the clause it was read from — followed by an honest list of the Hangzhou facts this page could not confirm. Two of them matter before you get in: the morning-peak waiting charge, and the ten yuan that is added outside the meter over Spring Festival.
Official rules · read September 28, 2026
What Hangzhou's own notices fix, item by item on the meter
Three gazette documents signed the same day by 杭州市发展和改革委员会 with the transport bureau: the cruising-taxi fare notice 杭发改价格〔2019〕455号 (in force 2019-12-01, gazette validity field reading 有效 on the read date), the fuel-fare linkage notice 457号, and the dynamic adjustment mechanism 458号 whose 15% trigger explains why a 2019 tariff is still the standing one. Each row states what it means for you, the rule as it stands, and where to check it.
| What it means for you | What the rule states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| The meter is six separate charges, not one price | The notice names six items that together make up a Hangzhou cruising-taxi fare: base fare, distance fare, empty-return subsidy, low-speed waiting charge, special compensation charge and fuel surcharge. The last one, 特别补偿费 — special compensation — is a Hangzhou item name no other city page here carries, and it is the bucket holding both the night uplift and the Spring Festival add-on. | 一、运价项目 |
| ¥13 already covers the first 3 km — and Beijing's identical ¥13 is a different tariff | The base fare is 13元/3公里: thirteen yuan buys the first three kilometres, so the meter does not start adding distance money until that is behind you. Beijing's headline number reads the same, but its per-km rate and its night rule are not Hangzhou's. The two tariffs must never be quoted into each other. | 二.1 |
| After the first 3 km it is ¥2.5 per km | The distance fare is 2.5元/公里, charged beyond the three kilometres the base fare already covers. | 二.2 |
| Past 10 km the distance fare rises 50% — the notice prints it as ¥1.25 more per km | The empty-return subsidy compensates a driver for the return trip without a passenger and applies only to the portion beyond the set distance: past 10 km the distance fare is charged 50% higher, which the notice itself spells out in brackets as 1.25元. A long cross-city run getting dearer per kilometre partway through is the rule working, not padding. | 一.3 · 二.4 |
| Between 23:00 and 05:00 the distance fare — and only the distance fare — goes up 30% | The special compensation charge is defined by time window and area, and its night leg is 每日23时至次日5时: the distance fare is lifted 30%, stated in the notice as 每公里加收0.75元. The base fare is not lifted. Shenzhen's night rule raises base fare and per-km rate both; Hangzhou's does not, so the two cities cannot be described in shared wording. | 一.5 · 二.5（1） |
| Over Spring Festival ¥10 per trip is added outside the meter | From New Year's Eve through the sixth day of the lunar new year (年三十至初六) each trip carries 10元 charged 计价器外 — outside the meter. So the meter reading is not the total in that window, and a driver asking for ten yuan more is following the published tariff rather than improvising. This is the single most misread charge on the list. | 二.5（2） |
| An electric taxi costs the same as any other | Electric cruising taxis run on the ordinary tariff, so the vehicle type tells you nothing about the price you will pay. | 三.1 |
| A premium-model taxi may price up to 20% either side of these figures | Cruising taxis using a premium vehicle class may set their executed fare within a 20% band around the benchmark tariff, under a scheme the transport bureau draws up and the development and reform department approves. Treat the numbers here as the benchmark, not as a hard ceiling for every car on the street. | 三.2 |
| Road and bridge tolls are yours to pay, on top of the meter | Any vehicle tolls incurred during the trip are paid by the passenger at cost. They sit outside the metered fare by rule. | 三.4 |
| The fare is rounded to whole yuan | Hangzhou rounds the metered fare to the nearest yuan, so a reading and the amount charged can differ by up to half a yuan by design. | 三.5 |
| A chartered car is negotiated, and this tariff does not govern it | Charter service — hiring a cruising taxi for a stretch of time rather than a trip — is priced by agreement between operator and passenger. Nothing on this page fixes what that should cost. | 三.6 |
| These figures are the urban districts', and the notice excludes Lin'an | The notice opens by stating it covers 杭州市区 while expressly carving out 临安区 (Lin'an District). The geographic carve-out is part of the fact, not a footnote to it. | 文头（正文引言） |
| In force since 2019-12-01, and it repealed the 2011 tariff | The notice took effect on 2019-12-01, allowed both tariffs to coexist while meters were being reset, and repealed the 2011 notice 杭价费〔2011〕214号. Any pre-2019 Hangzhou taxi figure still circulating in secondary summaries belongs to that repealed regime. | 五、实施时间 |
Read off: Hangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission (杭州市发展和改革委员会) jointly with the Hangzhou Municipal Transport Bureau (杭州市交通运输局) and the Hangzhou Municipal Administration for Market Regulation (杭州市市场监督管理局) — 关于杭州市区巡游出租车运价调整的通知 (Notice adjusting Hangzhou urban-district cruising-taxi fares) (杭发改价格〔2019〕455号, signed 2019-10-30, in force from 2019-12-01; the gazette record's validity field reads 有效 on the read date; read September 28, 2026)
| What it means for you | What the rule states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling counts as waiting — the car does not have to be stopped | The charge is defined to cover both driving below a set speed and standing still. You are billed for time in slow traffic exactly as you are for a wait you asked for, which is why calling it a “waiting fee” misleads. | 一.4 |
| The trigger is 12 km/h, and 12 itself is inside the band | The clause reads 时速12公里（含）以下 — at or below twelve kilometres an hour. The 含 means twelve is counted in, not excluded. | 二.3 |
| Every 4 minutes below that speed bills 1 km of distance fare — the notice says ¥2.5 | Outside the morning peak, each four minutes at or under 12 km/h adds the equivalent of one kilometre of distance fare, printed in the notice as 2.5元. That is the meter climbing while the car barely moves, by published rule. | 二.3 |
| Between 07:00 and 09:00 the same 4 minutes bills 1.5 km — the notice says ¥3.75 | During 上午7点至9点 the same four minutes bills one and a half kilometres of distance fare, stated as 3.75元. Hangzhou is the only city covered here whose waiting charge has a rush-hour tier, so a morning airport run in traffic is dearer than the same crawl at noon. | 二.3 |
Read off: Hangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission (杭州市发展和改革委员会) jointly with the Hangzhou Municipal Transport Bureau and the Hangzhou Municipal Administration for Market Regulation — 关于杭州市区巡游出租车运价调整的通知 — 低速等候费条款 (the low-speed waiting-charge clauses of the same notice) (杭发改价格〔2019〕455号, art. 一.4 and art. 二.3; read September 28, 2026)
| What it means for you | What the rule states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| The surcharge is tied to a published petrol price, at ¥1 a trip per step | The reference is the ceiling retail price for 92-octane petrol announced by the Zhejiang development and reform commission, with a linkage base point of 6.58元/升. Each cumulative rise of 0.95元/升 adds 1元 per trip, and the surcharge comes off again when the price falls back to the matching level. Electric taxis are excluded by name. | 一 |
| It does not switch on the day the trigger is hit | The trigger has to hold for 30 days or more before the mechanism starts; the development and reform department and the transport bureau then issue a joint notice within 3 working days setting the adjustment. So whether a surcharge is being collected on any given day is answered by that joint notice, not by the mechanism. | 二 |
| When it is live, the operator must display it | Once a surcharge is in effect, operators are required to post the price clearly. Expect to see it displayed in the car rather than only hear it asserted. | 三 |
| In force since 2019-12-01, the same day as the tariff | The linkage notice took effect on 2019-12-01 alongside the fare notice and repealed the 2011 linkage notice 杭价费〔2011〕215号. | 四 |
Read off: Hangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission (杭州市发展和改革委员会) jointly with the Hangzhou Municipal Transport Bureau (杭州市交通运输局) — 关于完善杭州市区巡游出租车油运价格联动机制的通知 (Notice refining the fuel-fare linkage mechanism for Hangzhou cruising taxis) (杭发改价格〔2019〕457号, signed 2019-10-30, in force from 2019-12-01 (served by the gazette under a 2025 upload path, which is not the document's date); read September 28, 2026)
| What it means for you | What the rule states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| Hangzhou publishes the formula its taxi fare moves by | The tariff is derived as Pn=P(n-1)×K, with the adjustment coefficient K=C1×L+C2×E+C3×CPI-D — driver wages, energy prices and the city CPI, weighted to sum to one, less a labour-productivity term. Future changes come out of that formula rather than out of a negotiation. | 一、运价动态调整公式 |
| Fuel price is deliberately kept out of that formula | Because the separate fuel-fare linkage already handles petrol, the dynamic formula excludes the fuel price change rate for fuel-powered taxis. The two mechanisms are disjoint, and the page keeps them apart for the same reason. | 一（燃油除外说明） |
| Costs are reviewed every year — but a review is not a price change | The development and reform department and the transport authority assess the change in cruising-taxi operating costs annually, themselves or through a third party, against the same formula inputs. | 二、实行年度评估 |
| Nothing moves until cumulative costs shift 15% | The adjustment procedure starts only when cost change against the base period reaches 15%. Below that, the tariff does not move that year and the gap carries into the next cycle. That published gate is why figures signed in 2019 can still be the standing ones — read them as the tariff in force, not as “this year's price”. | 三（一）启动条件 |
| Even once triggered, a rise is capped twice and announced in advance | A triggered change is drawn up after public consultation, may not exceed either the formula-derived amount or the local transport, warehousing and postal sector wage growth rate, and has to be published before it takes effect. Any successor to the current tariff will therefore appear on this same gazette host. | 三（二）调整方案制定实施 |
Read off: Hangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission (杭州市发展和改革委员会) jointly with the Hangzhou Municipal Transport Bureau (杭州市交通运输局) — 关于建立杭州市区巡游出租车运价动态调整机制的通知 (Notice establishing the dynamic fare-adjustment mechanism for Hangzhou cruising taxis) (杭发改价格〔2019〕458号, signed 2019-10-30, in force from 2019-12-01 (served by the gazette under a 2025 upload path, which is not the document's date); read September 28, 2026)
| What it means for you | What the rule states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| The tariff has to be posted inside the car, where you can read it | Operators must display the fare items and standards at the designated position in the vehicle and run a meter that meets the requirements. Both are checkable from the back seat during the ride, which is the point of the clause. | 四、公示和监督 |
| Ask for the 发票 — the invoice is the record any complaint needs | The same article requires invoices to be issued as prescribed. A printed invoice ties the trip to the operator and the vehicle, so asking for one at the end of the ride is what turns a dispute into something that can be followed up. | 四、公示和监督 |
| Overcharging is handled by the municipal departments — the notice names no hotline | Where an operator charges in breach of the rules, the relevant municipal departments deal with it under the applicable regulations. The article stops there: it names no phone number and no single department, and neither does this page. | 四、公示和监督 |
| Three municipal bodies stand behind these numbers | The notice is signed on 2019-10-30 by the development and reform commission, the transport bureau and the market regulation administration together. Those are the authorities to name when a driver disputes what the tariff says. | 落款（发文单位） |
Read off: Hangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Hangzhou Municipal Transport Bureau and Hangzhou Municipal Administration for Market Regulation (the three signing authorities) — 关于杭州市区巡游出租车运价调整的通知 — 四、公示和监督 (the display and supervision article of the fare notice) (杭发改价格〔2019〕455号, art. 四, signed 2019-10-30 by the three departments; read September 28, 2026)
These are Hangzhou's own taxi fare rules, read off the city gazette's record of 杭发改价格〔2019〕455号 and its two same-day companions, 457号 and 458号. They hold inside the Hangzhou urban districts only, and the notice itself excludes 临安区. This page quotes NO Hangzhou metro fare — no starting price, no distance band — because no official metro fare page could be opened this pass, and it prints NO complaint hotline, because none appears in the official text; both are named in the could-not-confirm block instead of being filled in from a third party. The fuel surcharge is described as the published mechanism it is, with no current amount asserted. And the ¥13 / 3 km base fare reading the same as Beijing's does not make the rest of the tariff shared: the per-km rate, the night rule and the Spring Festival add-on are Hangzhou's alone — do not carry any figure here to another city.
What this page could not confirm
Where these rules stop
Every row above was read verbatim off an official Hangzhou gazette page. These are the Hangzhou facts this page deliberately does not state, because no official page opened this pass fixes them.
- Hangzhou Metro fares — every number of them. No official Hangzhou metro fare document could be opened this pass: www.hzmetro.com failed at the TLS layer and, when reached another way, served only a browser-compatibility notice with no fare text; the development and reform commission's fare explainer page and the municipal portal both timed out. So this page states no starting fare, no distance band, no band step and no single-journey price for the metro — and does not assert what discounts a card or a code gets. Copying bands off a travel-summary site is the one thing this page will not do.
- Any Hangzhou taxi complaint hotline. No phone number was read off any official Hangzhou page this pass. The supervision article carries none, and the two municipal hosts that might have one both timed out. So this page prints no hotline — not the number that third-party summaries attach to every Chinese city — until one is read verbatim off an official Hangzhou page.
- Whether a fuel surcharge is being collected right now. The linkage mechanism above is published and current; the joint notice that switches a surcharge on or off at a given amount is a separate document, and none was opened this pass. So the page explains how the surcharge is triggered and states no current amount.
- What a premium-model taxi actually charges. The tariff allows a 20% band around the benchmark for premium vehicle classes under a scheme the transport bureau issues separately. That separate scheme was not opened, so the executed price for those cars is not stated here.
- Lin'an District, and anywhere else outside the urban districts. The notice writes its own exclusion for 临安区, so none of these figures is claimed there. Nothing here is claimed for the rest of Zhejiang either.
- Any other city. Every Chinese city sets its own taxi tariff and its own rail fare table; nothing on this page transfers to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, or elsewhere.
National layer
The numbers here are Hangzhou's; a ride-hail passenger's rights are national
This page carries the tariff that holds only inside Hangzhou's urban districts. What every licensed ride-hailing platform in the Chinese mainland owes a passenger — receipts, the fare shown before you ride, and how a dispute is handled — is set by national regulation, not by any one city. That sits, article by article, on the national ride-hailing page, and it is the layer to lean on when the ride you took was booked through an app rather than flagged down in the street.
Read the national ride-hailing regulation