Estimate a standard city fare

Enter miles traveled above 12 mph and minutes spent at or below 12 mph. Do not count the same part of a trip twice. This worksheet does not calculate a route or live traffic.

How to split your trip between the two fields

This is the part people get wrong, and it is the whole basis of a New York fare. The meter charges its unit either per fifth of a mile or per 60 seconds, depending on whether the cab is moving faster or slower than about 12 mph. It never charges both for the same moment.

So split the journey in two. Put the distance you expect to cover at a decent clip — a parkway run, an avenue late at night, anything flowing — into miles. Put the time you expect to spend crawling or stationary into minutes. A six-mile crosstown trip at 5pm might be one mile of movement and thirty minutes of not moving. The same trip at 11pm is closer to six miles and two minutes.

If you enter both the full distance and the full duration, you will double-count and the estimate will read high.

What this includes

The calculation uses a $3 initial charge, $0.70 meter units, $0.50 state surcharge and $1 improvement surcharge. Selected surcharges are added. Tolls, tips and airport-specific fares or charges are excluded. JFK–Manhattan has a separate fare structure.

The two checkboxes are separate things that can both apply to one trip. The first is the long-standing TLC congestion surcharge on trips touching Manhattan south of 96th Street. The second is the newer congestion relief zone charge for entering Manhattan below 60th Street. A trip from Brooklyn to Midtown attracts both; a trip from Harlem to the Bronx attracts neither.

Rates checked September 24, 2026 against NYC TLC taxi fare guidance. This is a comparison worksheet, not a binding fare or our service price.

What it deliberately leaves out

Tolls. Whichever crossing the driver uses, at cost. On a Brooklyn or New Jersey trip this is not a rounding error.
Tip. Fifteen to twenty per cent is the New York norm.
Airport fares. JFK to and from Manhattan runs on a published flat fare instead of the meter, and trips leaving JFK carry an access charge. Newark adds an out-of-city surcharge on top of an uncapped meter. See airport transfer planning.
Traffic on the day. No worksheet can know this, which is the entire argument for a price agreed in advance.

Because it includes the surcharges that flattering calculators quietly omit, this tool tends to read higher than tools quoting a bare metered estimate. That is intentional.

Reading the result

Treat the number as an illustration of how a fare assembles, not a quote. Its value is in the comparison: run your route at standard hours, then run it again at weekday rush hour with thirty minutes of slow traffic instead of five, and watch what the time component does. That difference is the risk a metered trip leaves with you and an agreed price does not.

Looking for an executive vehicle?

Our own reservations are quoted per itinerary rather than metered, with tolls, gratuity and inclusions confirmed in writing, and the number does not move with the traffic. See taxi vs private car service for the full comparison, how each service is quoted, and fleet capacities. Send your actual itinerary for a confirmed executive quote — and if a metered cab is genuinely cheaper for your trip, we will tell you that instead.

NYC Taxi Fare Calculator