The TFI Leap Card
The card almost everyone in Dublin pays with: what it costs, where to buy one, how to top it up, the daily and weekly caps, and who travels free.
What the Leap Card is
TFI Leap Card is a public transport payment card for the TFI network and some commercial bus services. It is a plastic smartcard you load money onto — “travel credit” — and then tap against a reader before and after each journey. There is no open-loop contactless in Dublin: you cannot tap a bank card or a phone on a Luas validator or an Irish Rail gate the way you can in London, so for a visitor staying more than a day or two the card is not optional in practice.
One card covers the lot: Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead Ireland city services, TFI Luas (both tram lines), DART, commuter rail in Dublin Zones 1 to 4, Bus Éireann and TFI Local Link services, the Cork to Cobh and Midleton trains and some commercial bus operators. That is the point of it, and it is why the 90-minute fare and the caps work across operators rather than per company.
The operator’s own claim for what it saves is up to 30% on adult fares and up to 50% with a Young Adult or Student card against paying cash.
What you are charged
Prices valid from 28 April 2025; read from the operators’ own pages on 2026-10-20.
| Who | TFI 90 Minute Fare | Short Fare | Daily cap | Weekly cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | €2.00 | €1.50 | €6.00 | €24.00 |
| Young adult | €1.00 | €0.75 | €3.00 | €12.00 |
| Student | €1.00 | €0.75 | €3.00 | €12.00 |
| Child | €0.65 | €0.65 | €1.95 | €7.80 |
Inside Zone 1: TFI Dublin — which includes every Luas stop and the city-centre railway stations — one tap-on starts a 90-minute window. Change from the Red Line to the Green Line, then onto the DART, then onto a bus, and it is still one fare. Tap on before and tap off after every tram and train leg; on the bus you tap on only.
A cap is the most the card can be charged. Reach it and the rest of the travel in that period costs nothing, although you still tap. The daily cap period starts at 04:30 and ends at 04:29 the next morning. The weekly cap period runs Monday 04:30 to the following Monday 04:29.
An adult needs at least €2.50 of travel credit on the card before an Iarnód Éireann gate will let them through. You can use your TFI Leap Card to travel if your card is in a positive balance, even if the balance does not cover the full fare. Your card will then go into a negative balance and will not work for subsequent journeys until topped up.
Which card, and what it costs to get one
From TFI Leap Card Types, read on 2026-10-20.
| Card | Who it is for | Deposit | Minimum first top-up | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | anyone paying the adult fare | €5.00 | €5.00 | Online or from any of the 2,500 TFI Leap agents nationwide |
| Adult Personalised | named card with your photo; needed for Taxsaver tickets | €5.00 | €5.00 | Online only |
| Child 5-8 | children from 5 up to their 9th birthday — travels free | None | — | Online application; the card arrives by post |
| Child 5-15 | children from 5 up to their 16th birthday | €3.00 | €5.00 | Online or from a TFI Leap agent |
| Child 16-18 | named card, up to the 19th birthday | €3.00 | €5.00 | Online only |
| Young Adult 19-25 | named card, up to the 26th birthday; half the adult fare | €5.00 | €5.00 | Online only |
| Student | in full-time education in Ireland (15+ hours a week, course of 6 months or more) | €5.00 | €5.00 | Online only |
The deposit is not a fee: on a registered card it comes back with any unused credit when you close the card. The minimum first top-up is credit, so it is yours to spend.
The named cards — Young Adult, Student, Child 16-18 and the personalised adult card — carry your photo, cannot be lent to anyone else and are only sold online. The plain Adult and Child 5-15 cards can be bought over the counter from any of about 2,500 agents.
Children under five travel free with no card at all. From five to eight they also travel free, but they need the Child (5-8) card to prove it, and it is valid until the end of the month they turn nine.
The Leap Visitor Card
A time ticket rather than a pay-as-you-go card, aimed at visitors to Dublin.
| Period | Price |
|---|---|
| 1 day (24 hours) | €8.00 |
| 3 days (72 hours) | €18.00 |
| 7 days (168 hours) | €24.00 |
Unlimited travel for a fixed period on Dublin city buses, Luas, DART and commuter rail inside Zone 1: TFI Dublin City. It is a time ticket, not a pay-as-you-go card, so there is no fare to work out and no credit to run down. The period starts the first time you use the card, not when you buy it. It can be topped up with further 1, 3 or 7 day periods at any Leap Card outlet in Dublin, up to five times.
It is sold online and over the counter at a short list of places: WHSmith, Terminal 1, Dublin Airport (24-hour cards), Spar, Terminal 2, Dublin Airport, Dublin Bus, 59 Upper O’Connell Street, Spar, 63 Upper O’Connell Street, Spar, 19-20 Dame Street, Mullins Newsagent, Unit 1B, Heuston Station, Spar, 50 Talbot Street, Spar, 70/72 Talbot Street, GPO, O’Connell Street, Trinity College Dublin Student Union, 6 Trinity College and Tom Stanley, Connolly Station, Amiens Street. Online, posted to a home address before you travel — it is not an e-ticket, so allow 3 to 5 working days in Ireland, up to 7 in the UK, up to 10 in the rest of Europe and up to 14 elsewhere, after up to 2 working days to dispatch.
Two things to know before you buy: An unused Leap Visitor Card expires 12 months from the day it is bought. It is not valid on hop-on hop-off tours, other tour services or Bus Éireann. A Leap Visitor Card cannot be refunded or replaced.
If you are staying longer than a week, or travelling outside Dublin, an ordinary Leap Card with the €24.00 cap is usually the better buy.
Topping up and checking the balance
- The Leap Top-Up app. Free, no account needed. Hold the card to the back of the phone to top up, check the balance, see the last five transactions and watch the daily and weekly cap. Needs NFC: iPhone 7 or newer, or an Android phone running Android 6 or later. A phone number is required for Strong Customer Authentication.
- TFI Leap agents. About 2,500 shops and Post Offices around the country, which can also tell you the balance.
- Ticket machines. The machines at Luas stops and at Iarnód Éireann stations top up a card and read its balance.
- Your online account. Register the card to see the balance and recent transactions, though they can take up to 24 hours to appear.
Auto Top-Up tops the card up from your bank account whenever the balance falls below €10.00, by €30.00, €40.00 or €50.00, whichever you choose.
There is no published maximum balance, and the operator does not say that ordinary travel credit expires. We are not going to put a number or a deadline on either.
If you lose it, and getting your money back
Only a registered card can be refunded or replaced. An unregistered card that is lost is simply lost, with whatever is on it. Register it the day you get it.
Travel credit and the €5 deposit can both be refunded on a registered Adult, Young Adult, Student or personalised Child card. A Child 5-8 card can be replaced by applying again. After you report a card lost or stolen it can take up to 48 hours to block it fully.
Refunds are made by bank transfer only, to an Irish or other SEPA account; you need the IBAN and the BIC. Outside SEPA the operator offers to donate the balance to one of four charities instead. A disputed transaction has to be raised within 30 days of it happening. The customer care number on the operator’s own site is 0818 824 824.
Who travels free or cheaper
Under 5: free, no card needed. 5 to 8: free, with a Child (5-8) Leap Card. 9 to 18: the child fare, €0.65 for a 90-minute journey, with a Child Leap Card.
Young adults (19 up to the end of the month of the 26th birthday) and students in full-time education in Ireland pay €1.00, half the adult fare, with their own named card. The Free Travel Pass is valid on all Luas services.
None of the reduced rates apply to a paper Luas ticket from the machine: there is no student or young adult price on a cash single or return.
What nobody publishes
| Question | Why there is no answer here |
|---|---|
| The maximum balance a Leap Card can hold | The operator does not publish a ceiling for travel credit. We will not print a number for it. |
| Whether travel credit expires | about.leapcard.ie states an expiry only for the Leap Visitor Card (12 months if unused). It says nothing about ordinary travel credit expiring, so neither do we. |
| Which Luas journeys get the cheaper Short Fare | Only "selected Luas journeys of up to approximately 3 km" is published. There is no list of stop pairs, and we have not computed one. |
| The TFI fare zone of most railway stations | The NTA publishes the Dublin zones as a sketch map naming a few towns. Eleven stations are named; the rest carry no zone on this site. |
These are not oversights on our part. Each one was looked for and is genuinely unpublished; the alternative would be a plausible figure that is wrong.