Taxi Apps in Armenia: Yandex Go from 300 AMD, GG, No Uber

A ride from Zvartnots airport into central Yerevan costs about 3,000 AMD, call it $8, if you book it in an app. Take one of the drivers working the arrivals hall instead and the same 20 minutes of road can cost three to five times that. There’s no Uber and no Bolt in Armenia. You get GG, the local app almost everyone here has on their phone, and Yandex Go, the only one of the two that publishes its Yerevan rates: a 300 AMD minimum, then up to 60 AMD per km inside the city and up to 130 AMD per km once you cross the city limit, rounded up to the nearest 100.

Both apps take cash, and both will take a card if yours agrees to attach, which plenty of foreign cards don’t. So the two things that really decide how your first evening goes are the phone number you register with and whether you’re carrying small dram when a driver has nothing to break a 5,000 note.

What a ride costs

Those figures come off the operators’ own pages - the Yandex tariff pages re-checked on 20 August 2026, the rest checked on 1 August 2026 - and convert at the Central Bank of Armenia’s rate of 366 AMD to the dollar. One honest caveat about where they come from: GG publishes no tariff table at all. Its price appears in the app once you set a destination and is fixed from that moment, which the company confirms in its own replies to app-store reviews, but there’s no public rate card to check it against. Yandex is the one you can audit, so it’s the yardstick used here. Its card carries its own validity date and gets reissued every few days, so treat the numbers below as an order of magnitude and open the card if you need today’s exact rate.

Zvartnots to central Yerevan

The airport sits 12-15 km west of the city, a 20-30 minute drive. Order in an app and you’ll pay somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 AMD depending on the hour, the weather and how deep into town you’re going, with around 3,000 the number most arrivals land on. The men who approach you inside the arrivals hall are a different business, and they price by how tired you look.

Two of the alternatives are published by the airport itself, and they’re not the same bus. Elitebus route 201 runs to the centre for 300 AMD a head, every 30 minutes from 07:00 to 22:00, cash in dram only. Route 100 costs 500 AMD one way, goes every 30 minutes until 22:00 and then hourly through the night, and takes a Visa or Mastercard tapped on board, or a QR ticket from the TelCell terminals in the terminal halls. Route 100 is the quiet hero of a 03:00 landing: it’s the only cheap thing still moving, and it’s the only one that doesn’t need you to have found dram first.

There is also one licensed taxi desk on the first floor of arrivals, Eco Taxi, staffed around the clock (GoMotion sits on the same floor but the airport lists it under car hire, not taxi), with Eco Taxi answering a 24-hour line on +374 11 400300 and publishing its own minimums from 500 AMD. They cost more than an app and much less than a stranger with a lanyard. And if you’d rather not think about any of it, a pre-booked transfer with your name on a board starts around $28 - that’s the “from” price the booking platforms advertise for the smallest car, so the exact quote can run higher - roughly three and a half times the app fare, which is what certainty costs at the end of a long flight, and plenty of tired arrivals decide it’s worth paying. Our guide to Zvartnots airport to Yerevan lays the four options side by side.

Cash, cards and the number you register with

Yandex Go’s Armenian site says plainly that you can pay in cash or by card, and GG takes both as well. The catch is the word attach. Travellers report again and again that foreign Visa and Mastercard numbers are simply refused when added in either app, with no useful error message, and neither company publishes a policy explaining which issuers work. If yours doesn’t go through after a couple of tries, stop retrying and treat an attached foreign card as a bonus, not a plan.

The plan is cash. Keep 5,000-10,000 AMD in 1,000 notes and the problem disappears; drivers routinely have no change, and one holding your 5,000 for a 900 AMD ride will often just keep it, which isn’t a scam so much as the local norm. Where a foreign card does work without drama is public transport: the airport’s route 100 takes it on board, and Yerevan’s metro, buses and trolleybuses run on a flat 150 AMD tap of a contactless card with no registration at all, which our guide to Yerevan public transport explains. For ATMs, exchange rates and how much cash to carry, see money in Armenia.

Registration is the other trap. Both apps sign you up by SMS, and some foreign numbers never receive the code, which leaves you standing outside the terminal unable to order anything, and that’s exactly the moment a pre-booked transfer earns its keep. A local SIM or eSIM fixes that and gives you the data to book from the kerb; our Armenia SIM card and eSIM guide covers which network to pick. And if the phone is dead altogether, Yandex still takes orders by voice on +374 10 770 770 for an extra fee of up to 65 AMD.

GG or Yandex Go: which to open when

Install both of the big two and price-check the same trip, because that’s exactly what locals do. GG has the deeper supply of cars in Yerevan and is what an Armenian friend will open on your behalf. Yandex is the one whose numbers you can verify against a published tariff, and it usually finds a car faster when the weather turns. Neither charges you to sit on your phone unused, so carrying both and letting them compete costs nothing.

GG Shuttle: the intercity button nobody mentions

Behind a Shuttle button at the bottom of the GG app sits something the other apps don’t do: fixed intercity seats sold by the destination itself. Yell Extreme Park in Yenokavan, a long haul north into Tavush, sells a 3,000 AMD shuttle from Matenadaran (Koryun St 16) departing 10:00 on Saturdays and Sundays, booked in the app under Shuttle, with payment details added at the time and seats to be reserved in advance.

Be clear about what that price isn’t. The park publishes the outbound departure and nothing else: no return time anywhere on the page, and no statement of whether 3,000 AMD covers the way back. Assume one way, confirm both directions in the app before you pay, and don’t board it without knowing how you’re getting home. Our Yell Extreme Park guide has the rest of the day. For a group there’s a sharper option, incidentally: Yandex’s separate City to City class runs on its own published tariff - a 300 AMD pickup fee plus up to 60 AMD per km whether you’re in town or out of it (the 130 AMD suburban rate belongs to the everyday Start class), with up to 15 AMD a minute on top. On the 141 km to Yenokavan the distance alone comes to roughly 8,800 AMD, and with a bit over two hours of the time meter the whole car lands around 11,000 AMD - the price of three or four shuttle seats, it comes back when you want, and the app shows the exact quote before you confirm.

Night, rain and rush hour

Late arrivals are where the cheap options fall away. The Elitebus stops at 22:00, and after that it’s route 100 hourly or a car. The apps themselves run all night and Yerevan is a low-drama city for a late ride, but this is exactly when surge does its work, and when the drivers outside the terminal push hardest, because they know your alternatives just thinned out.

Rain is the other one. Locals will tell you fares roughly double when it rains and triple in snow. Neither company publishes a multiplier, though Yandex’s terms of use openly list surge pricing among the things that can move the quoted number, along with a pickup fee based on how far the car has to come to you. The counter is fifteen seconds of work: open both apps, glance at both quotes, take the cheaper or the nearer car. On a clear Tuesday the gap between them is loose change. In a January storm, a hop that runs 800 AMD in September can genuinely ask 3,000, and that’s the moment a 150 AMD metro ride starts to look clever.

App or street taxi?

You can still flag a car on the street, and outside an app that’s a negotiation, so agree the fare before you get in. An app is almost always the better call: a price up front, a tracked car, no haggling, and it matters most exactly where skipping it’s most tempting, which is at the airport at midnight with bags.

A few honest quirks either way. Drivers smoke in the car and talk on the phone while driving; neither is worth worrying about, but if the smoke bothers you it’s fine to ask or open a window. Tipping isn’t expected, rounding up is a nice touch, and cars can be older and plainer than you’re used to, which has no bearing on the fare. For the wider picture of buses, minibuses and trains, getting around Armenia ties it together, and once you’re mobile, things to do in Yerevan is a good place to point the driver.