Seattle Taxi Fares and Rules: What the Meter Charges on a Sea-Tac Run

Drop

$2.60on entering, first ninth of a mile

Per mile

$2.70above 11 mph

Per minute

$0.50below 11 mph

Metered taxi service in Seattle and unincorporated King County runs on rates set by a rule the city and the county issue jointly, so the fare does not depend on which company answers the call. Three components carry almost all of it: a $2.60 charge the moment the door closes, $2.70 a mile once the cab is moving properly, and $0.50 a minute whenever it is not.

The switch between the last two happens at eleven miles an hour, which is the reason a route that costs thirteen dollars on a Sunday morning can cost eighteen on a Tuesday at five. Seattle taxi fares therefore depend on the clock as much as on the map. The full rate breakdown covers extra passengers, tolls, card fees and the fuel surcharge, and explains why the meter advances in thirty-cent steps.

Guidebooks and travel forums put the downtown-to-airport taxi at a flat forty dollars. No ordinance sets that figure. The regional rule says in terms that it establishes no flat rate between downtown Seattle and Sea-Tac in either direction, and leaves the option to individual dispatch agencies. What the rule does fix is a $20 minimum on any trip leaving the airport, whatever the destination and however short.

The rank itself is not at the kerb either. Getting a taxi at Sea-Tac covers where the stand actually is, what the meter has to do on a departing trip, and which fees the Port is allowed to pass on.

Metered taxi service is licensed separately by the City of Seattle and by King County under an interlocal agreement, which is why the two publish one rate rule instead of two. It also explains a quirk visitors notice: a vehicle that can pick up in one jurisdiction cannot always pick up in the next, even though the meter is identical.

• How Seattle taxis are regulatedWho issues the rate rule, what a smart taximeter has to do, and what changed on 31 March 2026
• Renton and the south valleyCounty licensing, airport-adjacent demand, and how fares there differ from downtown in practice, though not on paper
• Sea-Tac and the airport corridorThe $20 departure minimum, Port fees, and the rank on the garage floor

Most of what goes wrong in a Seattle taxi turns on the receipt, because the receipt carries the vehicle number and the vehicle number is what a dispatcher can actually search. The practical guide works through getting one, what to do when something is left behind, how card payment is regulated, and how accessible service is dispatched.

Seattle and King County regulate for-hire passenger transport under an interlocal agreement, and the practical result is one document instead of two competing ones. The current version carries two numbers because each side files it separately: Director’s Rule FOR-HIRE TRANSPORTATION-11-2025 in the city, Public Rule FHT-10-2025-PR in the county. It took effect on 6 August 2025 and replaced the 2024 edition.

That arrangement is the reason a fare does not jump when a cab crosses out of the city. It is also why a passenger with a complaint has two possible addresses depending on where the vehicle is licensed, which is less convenient than it sounds and worth sorting out before making the call.

A structural change took effect on 31 March 2026 that has not filtered into most descriptions of the city yet. The separate licence category of for-hire vehicle ended, and every such vehicle became a taxicab subject to the regional meter. Advice that still distinguishes between a metered taxi and a rate-book for-hire car is describing a system that no longer exists.

Every dollar figure here is read from the rule that sets it, and the rule is named on the page that uses it. Where a number is left to a dispatch agency and not fixed by ordinance – a flat rate to the airport, a technology fee, the amount of a card convenience fee – this site says that it varies instead of inventing a representative figure.

Two things follow from that, and both are deliberate. The first is that some questions get a shape, not an amount: the fuel surcharge has a published trigger table but no fixed current value, so the honest answer points at the notice on the vehicle’s dashboard. The second is that a few widely repeated numbers are contradicted here, the forty-dollar airport flat rate being the clearest case. It is repeated so often that it reads as regulation, and the rule that would have to contain it says the opposite in a single sentence.

One component of Seattle taxi fares moves without the rule being rewritten. A temporary fuel surcharge offsets the driver’s cost of regular unleaded when that cost passes set levels, and it is added per trip on top of whatever priced the journey. The trigger table starts at four dollars a gallon with no surcharge and climbs in fifty-cent steps to $3.50 per trip at $7.50 a gallon, then keeps climbing by fifty cents for every further fifty cents of fuel. The full trigger table sits with the rest of the rate structure.

The mechanism has deliberate friction in both directions. Fuel has to sit at or above a trigger level for fourteen consecutive days before the Director may authorise a surcharge or an increase, measured against the American Automobile Association’s published price for the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area. It comes off the same way: fourteen consecutive days below a level, and the surcharge may be reduced or removed. A short spike at the pump does not reach the fare.

While one is in force, every affiliated vehicle carries a printed notice on the dashboard stating the amount, and the notices go back to the Director when the figure changes or ends. A smart meter may add the surcharge automatically and describe it on the receipt, and where it has, the driver may not add it again by hand. Contract-rate trips are exempt, and a dispatch agency running its own meter schedule may not levy a surcharge of its own.

The amount in force on any given day is the one printed on the dashboard notice in the vehicle, which is the copy that governs the trip you are in. It changes on the Director’s authorisation, following the fourteen-day rule above.

A visitor arriving from New York or Chicago expects one colour and finds several. Seattle’s licensed fleet runs in distinct liveries, orange among the most recognisable of them, and the difference is regulatory before it is decorative. Exterior and interior markings, the colour scheme a vehicle wears included, are fixed by a joint rule of the City of Seattle and King County that sits beside the rate rule and is referenced by it. A dispatch agency is issued its scheme and its affiliated vehicles carry it. A driver can no more repaint into another association’s colours than invent a fare.

That makes the paint useful to a passenger. The colour identifies which association a vehicle answers to, and the association is the body that chose the rate type your trip was priced on, holds the trip record and the lost-property log, and appears on the receipt. Where a company runs its own meter schedule in place of the regional rate, the same requirement obliges it to post those rates on the outside and the inside of every affiliated vehicle, so the livery and the posted price arrive together.

None of it changes the arithmetic. Every licensed vehicle in Seattle and unincorporated King County runs the same regional meter rate whatever colour it wears, so a cab in one livery and a cab in another quote an identical drop, distance and time charge. The colour tells a passenger who to call afterwards; the rule settles what the trip should have cost. Out in Renton and the valley the same pairing holds, on the same rate. It is also the reason the fleet here never converged on the single yellow of New York, where one colour and one medallion system arrived together.

How much does a taxi cost in Seattle?

$2.60 when you get in, then $2.70 a mile above eleven miles an hour or $0.50 a minute below it, plus $0.50 for each passenger beyond two who is twelve or older. Tolls, an authorised card fee and a fuel surcharge can be added on top.

Is there a flat rate from downtown to Sea-Tac?

Not one set by any rule. The regional rule states that it establishes no flat rate in either direction. A dispatch agency may create one, and if it applies it must be shown to you before the trip is confirmed. What the rule does set is a $20 minimum on trips leaving the airport.

Do all Seattle cab companies charge the same?

On the regional meter rate, yes: it is identical across every licensed vehicle in Seattle and unincorporated King County. A company may instead file its own meter schedule or use flat, contract, up-front or dynamic pricing, and in every one of those cases the rate must be posted on the vehicle or presented before you confirm.

Who do I complain to about a taxi trip?

The dispatch agency first, using the vehicle number from the receipt. If that does not resolve it, the licensing authority – the City of Seattle for a city-licensed vehicle, King County for a county-licensed one.

• Seattle water taxisThe passenger-only runs to West Seattle and Vashon, and where they fit against a road trip. Sailings differ between the summer and winter timetables, so the King County page is the one to check before setting out; amphibious taxis sit at the far edge of the same category.
• Self-driving taxis in San FranciscoWhat the permit regime allows, and what a driverless permit does not cover
• The New York yellow cabHow a medallion became the shape of a city, and what happened to its value
• Where American taxi service came fromFrom the hansom to the meter, and the regulation that followed each