Ventra

Chicago Transit Authority

About this app

Use transit in and around all of Chicago: It's easy to manage and pay your fare on CTA, Metra and Pace buses and trains with the Ventra app. Find all the features you're used to on the Ventra website and more, including mobile ticketing for Metra trains!


With the Ventra app, you can:


• Check your balance and available passes in your Ventra Card's transit account.
• Instantly load value or passes to your Ventra Card's transit account.
• Switch autoload for transit value or passes on and off.
• Buy and use Metra mobile tickets to ride any Metra train.
• Use transit value you've loaded to buy a Metra ticket.
• Get real-time account notifications so you know when it's time to load more fare or buy more tickets.
• Get real-time arrival/departure information from CTA, Metra and Pace all in one app—by picking a stop, using favorites or looking at service near where you're standing.

Ratings and reviews

why is this transit app so slow? it freezes multiple times for each individual action. It takes about a minute for the homepage to load, but then as soon as I tap to load money on my card, it takes a whole additional minute to load that screen. This is just not efficient at all. The app itself doesn't need to be changed, the UI is fine, but whatever code that's behind the sluggishness MUST GO!

This app has been around for seven years. I appreciate being able to purchase CTA / METRA fares from it. However, its overall function hasn't improved. I should be able to see the fare I have left before I get an email about the low amount. I have to constantly restart the app in order for the information to update.

Update 12/30/22: I really hope Ventra updates this app asap. The Metra line I take added new train schedules a month ago, but it is not reflected on the app. Terrible app. Very unreliable. Slow to load. Crashes all the time. Sometimes shows blank page for tracker. I get so frustrated I just want to smash my phone, but I forget it's not my phone because the rest of my apps work fine. Please fix all the glitches!

What's new

This regular update includes enhancements to trip planning and transit tracking tool, performance improvements, and various bug fixes.