GVB travel app

GVB Amsterdam

About this app

The app for travelling by tram, (night) bus, metro and ferry in Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. Your indispensable travel buddy for frequent travellers or for just a visit. Quickly and easily plan your trip from home to work, a restaurant or the theatre or from Schiphol to your hotel or B&B. Check whether there is a diversion or delay on your route. You always have your favourite line’s up-to-date departure times at your fingertips. And now it’s also possible to purchase a barcode ticket for immediate travel.

What the GVB travel app offers you:
- Up-to-date travel information: always the most reliable and up-to-date travel information for the GVB network as well as for all other public transport companies in the Netherlands.
- Trip planner: plan your trip to any address in Amsterdam or the rest of the Netherlands.
- Alert for disruptions: turn notifications on for your favourite line(s). You will receive an Alert if there’s a diversion or disruption. You can set this for certain days and time periods.
- Crowd indicator: in each requested travel advice, you can immediately see how busy a service is expected to be.
- Bicycle as before and after transport: under travel preferences, you can easily indicate whether you will start or end your trip by bicycle.
- Travel only with GVB: if you have a GVB travel product, e.g. a GVB hour/day or GVB Flex, and only want to travel with GVB lines, it’s easy to set this in your travel preferences.
- Save favourites: save your favourite locations in Amsterdam with just one click. It’ll then be even easier to plan your next trip.
- In-app ticket purchase: you can buy tickets via the app for one hour or for more hours/days and activate them immediately so you are ready to travel. Easily check in and out using your mobile.

Why are travellers using the GVB app even more?
- Unique Touch Swipe planner – The most personalised trip planner in the Netherlands. Simply swipe from your current, favourite or any other set location to the key places of interest in the city and your trip will be planned instantly. Then you can personalise your destinations. Select your destinations from a list of main locations in Amsterdam and surroundings, and save them for later use.
- Personal dashboard based on your travel profile. Directly access the key functions for your travel profile via your main screen. For example, if you use the app mainly for commuting, you will find your set regular route in your dashboard. In that way you always have the up-to-date departure times at hand.
- You can compose your own menu to display the functions which are most useful to you.
- Check the latest updates on disruptions and planned diversions.
- Search for up-to-date departure times by location, stop name or line. (available from mid-May 2021)
- Get in touch with GVB Customer Service quickly and have direct access to GVB Services such as lost & found or missed check-out (claim a refund for missed check-ins or check-outs).
- Fully available in Dutch and English.

Ratings and reviews

WARNING if you use this application for the first time, and you are new to Amsterdam. This app will easily misguide you if you are near both train and metro station (both are trains). I got in results ONLY ONE timeline with the train icon. Other options with time and price are not shown, only the fastest path. I entered into metro thinking this is the only path, traveled longer and charged more, like a taxi who rounds to take you more money. I paid the price, don't make the same mistake.

App is ok, but doesn't work very well. Was sat at the tram stop wanting to go to Van Gogh museum. It said to walk to another tram stop to catch a different tram, then walk 3 mins, then catch another tram to the museum. Google Maps told me to wait at the team stop I was at and wait for a number 12 tram which was direct to where I needed to be. Used Google Exclusively after that. Also the reader on the bus/tram takes a while to read your QR code, which can annoy some of the other travellers.

We had a very poor experience with trams on our visit to Amsterdam, and this app didn't help. Both the app and the displays at the tram stops showed trams that never arrived, like they simply didn't exist. An app that's supposed to show live information has no purpose whatsoever if the information it provides is inaccurate.

What's new

The latest release has improvements for the travel planner, features for ferry services, and general improvements to the way the app is used. In addition the instructions on how to use barcode ticket have been clarified. Finally, the stability and security have been enhanced through an upgrade of the technology underlying the app.