Miami Airport Taxi Fares: What MIA Adds to the County Meter

The Miami-Dade meter is the same countywide and three lines on it belong to the airport

A Miami-Dade County taxicab meter reads the same at Miami International Airport as anywhere in the county. Three lines attach because the trip starts there. Two are automatic, a $2.00 charge and a $15.00 minimum. The third is a toll rule that adds $0.00, a fixed SunPass rate, or a variable express lane price.

Miami airport taxi fares run on Miami-Dade County Resolution R-700-22, the countywide maximum rate that starts at $2.95 for the first sixth of a mile. Nothing in that engine changes at the curb outside baggage claim. What changes is what gets added to it, and one of the additions is written as a question addressed to the passenger rather than as a price.

Every figure below was read on 7 September 2026 from miami-airport.com and miamidade.gov. Three documents carry the rate: the airport’s own Taxis and Ride App page, the county’s Taxicabs Passenger Information page, and the PDF rate card the airport links from the words Metered Fares. The three do not say the same things, and the airport’s version is the shortest of the three.

Line on the Miami-Dade County rate card	What it adds to the fare	Who decides whether it applies	What a passenger can do about it at the curb
Metered rate, first 1/6 mile	$2.95, then $0.85 per 1/6 mile to one mile and $0.55 per 1/6 mile after	the route, which the county’s own definition says the passenger controls	choose the destination and the way there
Wait charge	$0.40 per minute, published as $24.00 per hour	traffic, with no cap published by any issuer	nothing at the curb; the charge has no ceiling on the card
Special $2.00 charge	$2.00 per trip	the origin, meaning MIA or PortMiami	nothing; it applies to every trip out of either
Airport and seaport minimum fare	lifts any meter below $15.00 up to $15.00	the origin again, regardless of the meter reading	nothing; the floor is a price for starting at MIA
Large vehicle surcharge	30 percent above the taxicab meter rate	the vehicle, which the passenger picks at the stand	take a sedan if eight seats are not needed, and look for the decal inside
Road tolls	the SunPass rate on any SunPass roadway, on top of the meter	the road where the toll is fixed, the passenger where it is not	answer the lane question before the ramp, not after it
Extra passengers, luggage, car seats, service animals, wheelchair transport	$0.00, by county rule	Miami-Dade County, which forbids the charge outright	refuse it and use the For-Hire Transportation Complaint Form

Read the third column downward and the shape of this rate card appears. Of seven lines, three are settled by the county before the passenger reaches the vehicle, three move with a choice the passenger makes, and one moves with traffic. Both of the airport’s own additions sit in the settled group.

A Miami-Dade taxicab is eight seats and a passenger who controls the route

The Taxicabs Passenger Information page of Miami-Dade County carries the definition. A taxicab is a for-hire motor vehicle that transports “(8) eight or less passengers, exclusive of chauffeur” and provides either street hail or pre-arranged service. The same sentence adds that taxicabs are equipped with a taximeter “and the passenger controls the route and destination”.

That clause is the reason the meter is not a quote. Distance and time are the two variables the fare runs on, and the county assigns both of them to the person paying. The chauffeur drives; the route belongs to the passenger, which is also why the county has to write a separate rule for the one part of the route that costs money on its own.

The eight seat ceiling has an arithmetic consequence at an airport that nobody publishes. A party of nine cannot ride in one licensed taxicab, so it splits into two, and each cab carries its own $2.00 charge and its own $15.00 floor. That doubles the airport’s additions to $4.00 and $30.00 before either meter has moved a sixth of a mile. Every other way out of the terminal is priced per person or per vehicle instead, which is the comparison laid out across every mode the airport permits at its own curbs.

Four identity checks travel with the vehicle, and the county lists them for passengers rather than for regulators. The chauffeur’s registration, issued by Miami-Dade County, must be displayed inside the vehicle. The driver’s picture and registration number must be on the dashboard. The exterior must carry a decal or licence number, and the Passenger Service Company’s logo, telephone number and the cab’s vehicle number sit on the outside of the car. Four numbers, all readable before the door closes.

The $2.00 charge is named for the airport and written for the airport and the seaport

Miami International Airport prints one sentence about it: “A $2.00 airport origination fee also applies.” The county rate card the same page links, under the hyperlinked words Metered Fares, prints something wider: “A $2.00 per trip charge has been added to meter fare for trips that originate from the Airport or PortMiami.”

The name and the scope disagree by a seaport. A passenger leaving a cruise terminal pays a charge that the airport’s page calls an airport origination fee and that the county’s document does not call an airport fee at all. It appears on the card under the heading Special $2.00 Charge, with no name attached to it beyond the amount.

Being a fixed addition to a variable fare makes it heaviest where the fare is lightest. Run it against the county’s own figures and the $2.00 is 13.3 percent of the $15.00 floor and drops to 5 percent once the meter reads $40.00. That arithmetic is ours, on rates Miami-Dade County publishes and read in September 2026. The shortest ride out of the terminal pays the largest proportional airport charge, and short rides out of MIA are the common case, as the survey of the 34 hotel addresses the airport lists shows.

One boundary is worth reading precisely. The large vehicle surcharge is written by the county as “30 percent surcharge above the taxicab meter rate”, and the $2.00 is not the meter rate. By the county’s own wording the surcharge base excludes it, so the charge stays $2.00 in a van.

The $15 floor carries a seaport in its heading and MIA prints only half of it

The rate card gives the clause a heading: “AIRPORT/SEAPORT MINIMUM RATE: Minimum fare of $15 for trips originated at MIA or the PortMiami. If the meter shows a number greater than $15.00, then the greater number shown on the meter shall be paid.” The county’s passenger page repeats it and adds three words, “regardless of what the meter reading shows”.

The airport prints the shorter version. The MIA taxi page says a minimum fare of $15 is established “for trips originated at MIA” and stops there. A reader who only ever sees the airport’s page has no reason to expect the same floor on the return leg from a cruise terminal, which is where the identical clause lands going the other way.

What the floor buys, in miles, is arithmetic already worked against the airport’s hotel list, so it is not repeated here. The point that belongs to the airport is different. The $15.00 is not a price for distance. It is a price for starting where you started, and the county says so in the same sentence by making it independent of the meter. Below a certain distance the taxicab stops being a metered service at all and becomes a flat charge with a meter running inside it.

One line on the card is written as a question, and it is the toll line

Two sentences on the county rate card set the principle: “Road tolls are in addition to the meter fare. Passenger pays Sunpass rate only on any Sunpass roadway.” The county’s passenger page sets the exception, and the exception is the one place a passenger is handed a decision.

The exception’s wording is unusual for a rate document. “Taxicabs that pick-up passengers in Miami-Dade County shall have and utilize a SunPass device where the toll is fixed. Where the ‘SunPass Only’ or ‘SunPass Express’ toll is not fixed, the chauffeur shall determine whether the passenger desires to use the ‘SunPass Only’ or ‘SunPass Express’ lane and comply with the wishes of the passenger.”

Two regimes, then. Where the price of the lane is fixed, the driver runs the transponder and the passenger pays the SunPass rate, which the card says is the only rate a passenger owes. Where the price is not fixed, the county instructs the driver to ask, and to do what the answer says. It is the only line in the whole document that the county writes as an obligation to consult the person paying.

Neither issuer tells the passenger where the question arises. The county’s passenger page names no roadway of either kind, and the airport’s Taxis and Ride App page contains the words toll and SunPass zero times across 36,620 bytes of source read on 7 September 2026, while linking, from the heading Metered Fares, the document that carries the rule. Someone who has not read the county’s page will meet the question at a ramp, at speed, with the meter running at $0.55 per sixth of a mile. Tolled and untolled routes across the same county are laid out in the account of what a causeway crossing adds to a Miami-Dade meter.

The 30 percent surcharge leaves a $4.50 question that neither document answers

A “30 percent surcharge above the taxicab meter rate” is what Miami-Dade County establishes for sport utility vehicles and vans. That clause also exempts wheelchair accessible taxicabs while serving wheelchair users, and requires authorised vehicles to display a 30 percent surcharge decal inside the vehicle. The airport reproduces all three clauses on its own page.

Set the surcharge against the floor and a gap opens. The surcharge is written against the meter rate; the minimum is written to apply “regardless of what the meter reading shows”. Neither the card nor the passenger page says whether a van whose meter reads $11.00 bills $15.00 or $19.50. That is $4.50 of unsettled text on a resolution the Board of County Commissioners adopted on 19 July 2022 and still publishes as the current maximum rate.

The decal the passenger is told to look for is harder to check than the rule. The link MIA gives for it redirects to a county document address that returned 404 when followed on 7 September 2026, so a traveller cannot see in advance what an authorised surcharge decal looks like. What remains checkable is its location, inside the vehicle, and the exemption, which the county states twice: no surcharge for wheelchair accessible service to a wheelchair user, and “no additional surcharge to wheelchair users for the use of a wheelchair accessible taxicab”.

The accessible fleet has a published size and a third regulator attached to it. The only operator list Miami International Airport publishes is a PDF of wheelchair accessible taxicabs naming eleven companies with 37 adapted cabs across the county, and that document states that taxicab service in Miami-Dade County “is regulated by the Consumer Services Department”, which is not the division the county’s own passenger page names.

Five charges Miami-Dade County forbids, and the hover text that promises a sixth

The county’s list is short and absolute. There is “no additional charge for wheelchair transportation, service animal, baggage charge, infant/toddler car seats, or per passenger/additional passengers”. That prohibition reaches the rate card too, in the line that fixes waiting time: “no additional charge for extra passengers, or luggage”.

Cruise and family parties are the ones that clause reaches. Two adults with four cases and a child seat ride against the same meter as one adult with a backpack, so the only thing that moves the fare upward for a larger party is the vehicle class, not the headcount or the bags.

One place on the airport’s own site says otherwise, and it is not a place a reader sees. Two links on the MIA frequently asked questions page carry hover text headed “Taxi and SuperShuttle Rates” that offers “destination rates and maps” and then “Fuel Surcharge: add $1.00 per passenger”, and both point at the taxi page. A per passenger charge is one of the five the county forbids. The text lives in an HTML title attribute, verified in the raw source on 7 September 2026, which means it never appears in the page body and survives every rewrite of the visible content.

The same page has drifted in a smaller way. Its address is taxicabs-shuttles.asp, its title is Taxis and Ride App, and its three tabs are taxicabs, ride app and a safety notice. No shuttle section remains, while six hover texts elsewhere on the site still name SuperShuttle or American Shuttle vans as things to find there.

Which of these decisions actually moves the bill, by party size and vehicle

Two adults in a sedan on a fixed toll route win by doing nothing, on published rules. Every line that applies to them is settled: the meter, the $2.00, the floor if the ride is short, and a toll the card prices at the SunPass rate. The nuance is that the meter has no ceiling above the floor.

A party of five with cruise luggage wins with one van rather than two sedans, on the county’s own eight seat definition and its own arithmetic. Two cabs carry two $2.00 charges and two $15.00 floors, which is $34.00 before either meter moves. One van carries $2.00 plus a floor of either $15.00 or $19.50 depending on the unsettled clause above, so between $17.00 and $21.50. The margin runs from $12.50 to $17.00 on the shortest rides. The nuance is that it narrows as distance grows, because 30 percent of a large meter eventually beats a duplicated minimum. The same trade appears on longer runs such as the trip from MIA to the cruise terminals.

A wheelchair user wins with an accessible taxicab, on two written exemptions rather than on price. No surcharge attaches to the vehicle and none attaches to the wheelchair, and the airport says accessible taxis are available on request. Supply is the catch: the eleven companies on the airport’s own list hold 37 adapted cabs between them.

Anyone leaving in rush hour wins nothing anywhere on the card. Waiting time bills $0.40 per minute, published as $24.00 per hour, which is $1.00 less than a full day in the airport’s own garages at their published maximum daily rate of $25.00. Standing still for an hour in a Miami-Dade taxicab and leaving a car at MIA for a day cost almost exactly the same. The nuance is that the county publishes no cap on wait time at all.

Details of the Miami-Dade rate card that a passenger has to bring to the curb

• The footer of the rate card sends readers to the county’s For-Hire Transportation page, which is the licensing page for operators. The page that carries the toll rule and the five forbidden charges is a different one, Taxicabs Passenger Information, and only the airport’s in-page link reaches it.
• The form is stamped 133_01-36 8/22 and the file is named Taxicab Rates_09.2022.pdf, so Miami International Airport has served the same rate card since 2022 without a change of stamp.
• Three names exist for the regulator. The county’s passenger page gives Public Transportation Regulatory Division, its For-Hire page gives Passenger Transportation Regulatory Division, and the accessible taxi PDF gives the Consumer Services Department.
• Two complaint numbers follow from that. One, 305-679-7873, comes from the county’s passenger page, with TTY at 711, at Overtown Transit Village South, 601 NW 1st Court, 18th floor; the accessible taxi list gives another, 305-375-3677.
• Two forms exist as well, and only one of them chases money. The Taxi Complaint Form covers the driver or the cab; the For-Hire Transportation Complaint Form is the one the county names “if you feel you were overcharged and are demanding a refund”.
• The Airport Regional Taxicab Service, the Blue Cabs programme, still runs. Passengers are charged the meter rate instead, the county states, so the airport’s own taxi programme no longer has a fare of its own.
• Miami International Airport calls solicitation of ground transportation inside the terminal an illegal activity and directs arriving passengers to designated taxi stands at the lower level curb, staffed by uniformed Miami-Dade Aviation Department employees with MIA ID badges.

Five ways a MIA taxi bill goes wrong before the meter does

Reading the $2.00 as an airport charge is the first. Its name says airport and the county’s text says “trips that originate from the Airport or PortMiami”, so a cruise passenger meets the same $2.00 on the way back and has no airport page telling them to expect it.

Waiting for a destination price is the second. No table of fares by destination exists on the airport’s pages or on the rate card, and the hover text that promises destination rates and maps points at a page that has neither. The meter and the floor are the whole published answer.

Getting into a van without looking inside is the third. The 30 percent is legal only in a vehicle displaying the county decal, and the decal is required to be inside the car, which makes it a glance that costs 30 percent of the meter if it is skipped.

Meeting the express lane ramp without an answer ready is the fourth. County text obliges the chauffeur to ask and to comply with the wishes of the passenger where the toll is not fixed, and a question asked on the approach to a ramp usually gets whatever answer is fastest to say.

Filing the general complaint is the fifth. The county routes an overcharge with a refund demand to the For-Hire Transportation Complaint Form specifically, so the obvious form is the wrong one for the only complaint that involves money.

The month each of these Miami taxi figures was read and the page it came from

The figures in this guide were verified in September 2026 against the sources named in each section. Parking rates usually change in January, shuttle fares and cruise line transfer prices change by season, and ship schedules change weekly; check the issuer’s page before you travel. No provider paid for placement here and none can pay to appear. As of September 2026 no affiliate link is live anywhere on this site, and any that ships will be marked as sponsored and flagged in this line.

Airport figures came from miami-airport.com: the Taxis and Ride App page, the frequently asked questions page and its title attributes in raw source, the ground transportation index, and the two PDF files those pages link, the county rate card and the wheelchair accessible taxicab list. County figures came from miamidade.gov, from the Taxicabs Passenger Information page and the For-Hire Transportation page. All were read on 7 September 2026, and the arithmetic marked as ours was run on the rates those documents publish.

Questions the MIA taxi page raises and the county rate card answers

The answers below use the same September 2026 readings as the tables above, taken from Miami International Airport and Miami-Dade County.

A rate card that prices six lines and asks a question on the seventh

Miami-Dade County wrote a document that prices a taxi ride to the cent and then, in one clause, stops pricing and starts asking. Where a toll is fixed, the county decides. Where it is not, the chauffeur has to find out what the passenger wants and do that. Nothing else on the card behaves that way, and nothing on the airport’s version of the card mentions it at all.

The odd result is that the only negotiable line is the one no traveller knows exists. A passenger will argue about a $2.00 charge that is fixed by resolution, accept a $15.00 floor that is fixed by origin, and hand over the one decision the county wrote into their hands, because they met it on a ramp, at speed, with no page having told them it was theirs.

The county gave the passenger one lever. The airport’s page never mentions it.

Related guides

• What a car costs by the hour and by the day at MIA
• The Rental Car Center and the people mover that reaches it
• Sleeping inside Miami International Airport
• Thirty-four hotel addresses the airport publishes
• Every published way out of MIA, mode by mode