How to get from Mexico City airport into the city

The short answer

Which one is right depends on one question: how much does a smooth arrival matter on this particular trip? If you are travelling light in daylight and nothing is scheduled, the authorized taxi counter inside the terminal works with no preparation at all. If you are landing at night, with luggage, with family, or with somewhere to be, arranging the car before you fly removes every variable at once.

Authorized taxis, and how they actually work

This is not like hailing a cab on the street. You buy the ride first, at a marked counter inside the terminal, and you pay a fixed price for a zone rather than a metered fare. You are handed a ticket, you walk out to the taxi rank, and you give the ticket to the driver.

The price depends on the zone you are going to, not on traffic, so a bad traffic day costs you time but not money. As a rough guide, Centro Histórico runs about $260–320 MXN, Roma and Condesa about $300–380, and Polanco about $380–450. Tell the counter the neighbourhood, not the street address — the zones are what they price.

Pay at the counter, never to someone who approaches you in the hall. If a person offers you a ride before you have reached a counter or an official rank, walk past them. This is the single most common way visitors get overcharged here.

The main drawback is that you join a queue at the rank, and at peak arrival times — late evening, when the long-haul flights land together — that queue is real.

What changed with Uber and DiDi

This is the part most guides get wrong. Mexico's Supreme Court ruled in November 2025 that ride-hailing apps are not authorized to operate inside the country's airports, and since March 2026 the rule has been actively enforced at AICM, with National Guard officers at the terminal access points.

In practice this does not mean the apps stop working. It means the pickup point moves outside the airport perimeter. You order the car, and then you walk to meet it: roughly 500 to 900 metres from Terminal 1, and 500 metres to 1.2 kilometres from Terminal 2, along airport roadways rather than a pedestrian route.

With two suitcases, a child, or a 1 a.m. arrival, that walk is the whole story. The fare is still the cheapest of the door-to-door options — it is the twenty minutes of dragging luggage along an access road that decides whether it is worth it.

This is also a live legal dispute: the platforms have fought it in court repeatedly and the enforcement has come and gone. Check the current situation before you fly rather than trusting any article, this one included.

The Metro — when it genuinely works

Line 5 has a station called Terminal Aérea, a short walk from Terminal 1. A ride costs about $5 MXN, which is roughly fifty times less than any other option on this page, and in heavy traffic it can be faster than a car.

The catch is luggage. The Metro is genuinely crowded, there are no lifts at many stations, and large suitcases are discouraged outright. If you are arriving with a carry-on and nothing else, in daylight, it is a perfectly sensible way into the city. With checked bags it is not.

Booking a driver in advance

The fourth option is to arrange the car before you fly. Someone is waiting in the arrivals hall with your name on a sign, the price is agreed before you land, and if the flight is delayed the driver is still there.

It costs more than the other three, and what the difference buys is specific: the plane is tracked, so a delay moves the pickup instead of losing it; the wait is absorbed when immigration takes an hour longer than it should; the price is agreed in advance and a queue cannot change it; and there is nothing to negotiate in a language you may not speak after eleven hours in the air.

It earns its price in specific situations, and they are more common than people expect: arriving after dark, travelling with children or a lot of luggage, a group of four or more where the cost per person stops being the point, a first visit where you would rather not improvise, or any trip where being late is expensive. If none of those apply to you, the options above will do the job.

Three things worth knowing before you land

• Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 are separate buildings and you cannot walk between them. If you booked a connection or someone is meeting you, confirm the terminal first.
• Mexico City has a second airport, Felipe Ángeles (AIFA), about 50 km north. It is not the same place as AICM, and ending up at the wrong one is an expensive mistake.
• ATMs inside the terminal give you pesos at a far better rate than the currency exchange desks. Take out enough for a taxi before you leave the building.