Moscow is among the cheapest cities to catch a cab, according to the recently released Taxi Price Index 2017.
A ride in Moscow costs $0.27 per kilometer on average the study found, putting Moscow behind just Bangkok and Cairo. At $0.10 per kilometer, the Egyptian capital was ranked the cheapest city in the world.
Taxi prices in Moscow have dropped dramatically since the arrival of app providers, including Yandex-Taxi, Gett and Uber. Last month, Yandex announced it would be pairing up with Uber in Russia.
Moscow taxi regulations are among the world’s most liberal. There are no fixed minimum charges or enforced quotas and taxi licenses are easy to obtain — all of which have pushed fares down.
The study, conducted by the British online car selling platform Carspring, compared prices in 80 cities around the world by wait times, costs per hour and the price from the city’s airport to the center.
In Moscow, that journey will cost on average $29.77, according to the ranking.
Visitors to Moscow would do well to take the price as a benchmark. In June, a Chilean journalist who traveled to Russia to cover the Confederations Cup was charged 50,000 rubles ($834) for ride to his hotel from Domodedovo Airport. The driver was later detained by police.
The city that was ranked the most expensive overall was Switzerland’s Zurich, where the price per kilometer is on average $5.19.
