Jordan costs: taxis vs. hire car

Hi Kornspitz,

your Itinerary seems packed and exciting!

Well you have to look at it in a different way, it is of course cheaper to use public transport like taxis, however, knowing the drivers in jordan they will try to rip you off as you are a foreigner. Also, since you are not staying in amman it is hard to find a taxi driver willing to drive you around and wait for you!

you didn't mention when you will be travelling, shall I assume it is late July/August? if so then I have to warn you it is the Holy month of Ramadan, where 80% of the peopl are fasting, that is from 5 in the morning until 8 in the evening! (No food, no smoke and the heat, not a great combo for taxi drivers) so you are better off renting a car,

I know you wanted to disregard other aspects, but cant really! taking taxis outside Amman is a pain and a hassle.

So my advice, stick to renting the car, it will be cheaper at the end, all the places you are going to are not that far from each other, plus if you get a low petrol consumption car your all set.

I hope this helps and I haven't rambled on!

good luck,

True, I didn't mention when we will go. We will be in Jordan from 29 August until 8 September, so after Ramadan.

The only place where a taxi will have to wait for us is Kerak, all other places we are staying the night, so we just need to get from A to B. We will stay at Wadi Mujib and also at Dana, so no wait there.

Looking forward to some more input!

Taxi drivers are going to ask for double the fare because theoretically, they cannot pick up pax from outside their home district (for his return trip). There is a movement under way in Jordan to colour code the taxis according to region to make them more visible to enforce this rule. For example, a yellow taxi will want JD20-25 to take you to the airport from Amman, where the metered rate would be around JD10-15 because he is not allowed to pick up pax from the airport for the return trip to Amman, and will get fined if he does and gets caught. The white airport taxis have the concession for pax leaving the airport. I have been quoted rates by yellow taxi drivers for JD45 (3 years ago) to JD70(one month ago) to Petra from Amman.
If you rent a car, be sure to get one that uses 90-octane gas; 95-octane has been hiked to JD1 per litre. 90-octane is currently JD0.700/litre.

You will definitely get ripped off (I am assuming that you are not arab and don't speak fluent arabic). When I went to Jordan last fall, we rented a car but at one point had our Jordanian friend catch up with us via shared taxi. When we called him in the taxi, he wasn't even willing to speak English over the phone with us. I remember him paying much less (well under 50 JD) than @amyzengrace was quoting to get from Amman to Petra, but it was for a shared taxi.

For a 6 day trip for 4 people, doing approximately the same itinerary as you, we paid 315 JD, of which 220 was the car rental (chevy aveo, can't remember which fuel). This accounted for 20% of our total budget.

Thanks everyone.

I'm still a bit confused though, because from what I've seen and read so far taxis are the way to get around for those that don't rent a car. No, we don't speak Arabic, so will of course be vulnerable when it comes to rip-offs. (As in any other country) Other tourists seem to get round the country in taxis?!

To/From the airport we'll take the airport bus.

We are still leaning towards are car but as we would like to keep costs down as much as we comfortably can, I just wanted to check how much it would cost us to get from A to B in a taxi.

Given that we will spend two full days in Petra and two full days in Wadi Rum where we won't need the car. However, I also read about the trip from Wadi Rum to Amman/Madaba costing around JD100, so that would be half of the rental car costs in that one trip alone.

Thanks #3 about the info on fuel, would be great if we could save on fuel.

Jordan lends itself well to serendipity and having one's own car aids in the discovery. Until one sets boot to sand in Jordan, one cannot anticipate how much historical interest the country holds and how these historical lodestones may tug at one's internal travel compass.

Perhaps hiring a taxi from one site to another will be a bit cheaper in the end. But from a distance it is hard to calculate precisely where there are monetary savings and where there are cost to one's comfort. Consider, there is likely to be a high annoyance factor with continued taxi hire from one location to the next. The first price quoted will be too high, and as is custom, a negotiation will ensue. Jordanians are skilled negotiators and will likely outlast the foreigner, particularly the foreigner with a tight agenda in a limited amount of time. And that will be how every day will begin. With a protracted negotiation over the fair price for a ride from one point to the next. And for what? To save a few JD? Will that costs savings be worth one's time on holiday?

It is hard for me to answer expertly about the cost of a taxi from various points in Jordan as we rented a car for our trip. But what is not hard to say is that the car rental was worth the cost in convenience, comfort, peace of mind, flexibility and travel memories. Best of luck on your journey.

We hired a car with driver during our visit to Jordan last April and I must say it was a great experience. My boyfriend refused to drive in Jordan after his friends scared him off, saying how easy it is to get lost and how difficult to drive after dark. We've met a lot of Westerners driving there with no problems but I must say being with an experienced driver who knew his way added to the relaxing and pleasant experience. We must have been lucky as he never tried to rip us off and even negotiated better rates for us for water, fruit etc. I have checked the 'going rates' for tourists and he always charged us a little bit less.

So if you want I can send you his details.

We've used him all the way to Dana, as from Dana we had pre-arranged transport.

In Petra you don't need a car and from Petra to Wadi Rum is 40 JOD max. You can haggle for less.

From the airport you take a fixed price taxi so you won't get ripped off. It should be some 35 JOD so not much more than your rental car.

After past experience I would never go for the cheapest car rental (unless recommended by several travellers) as I've had a hair rising journey through Turkish mountain in a cheap car, which literally started falling apart- a good story but not an experience I would like to repeat. You need a car you can trust your life with!

We arranged a local Bedouin to take us from Feynan to Dana via a little known route through Little Petra. This is not a route you can do on your own and even with an experienced local driver it was not for the faint-hearted. So beautiful though that it's one of my most fond memories of Jordan. It cost 40 JOD on a beat-up pick up truck.

Wadi Mujib Chalets to Kerak is not such a long journey, are you going to stay overnight in Kerak?
We went from the Dead sea all the way to Dana village, via the Kings Highway and with 2 hour stop at Kerak and a stop at Wadi Mujib and Tafila mountains and paid 60 JOD.

I will leave doing all the maths to you.

#6
i totally see where you are coming from. waiting, fighting, haggling and feeling ripped off is certainly not a good start to the day, I fully agree :)

#7
Thanks for your detailled reply! We would hire through MonteCar which is highly recommended by other travellers, and Ruth on JordanJubilee. They are not the cheapest, little local hire places are even cheaper but have some iffy insurance policies. Oh talking of crappy cars, that reminds me of our trip back from the Peruvian Amazon to Cusco. It took us 7 hours to cover 120km and we had boiled breaks. That was the first and only time I've seen a Peruvian wear a seatbelt LOL. but that's a different story..

No we would just do a stop at Kerak and continue to Dana.

Well:
Dead Sea to Kerak to Dana JD60
Petra to Wadi rum 40
I've been quoted Wadi Rum to Madaba/Airport is roundabout 100
That's a total of JD 200 right there and that is NOT including getting from the airport/Madaba to Wadi Mujib Chalets, and from Dana to Petra.

I am starting to think a rental car will come out slightly cheaper. And for practially the same money I'd rather have the freedom of driving myself.

As for the airport, we'll just take the airport bus, so no worries there.

Private taxis are more profitable as traffic police do not stop them unless they are violating rules, and during prosecution the driver's non-commercial licence comes in handy. The transport department claims it "regularly" prosecutes vehicles found plying commercially without a valid permit. and hire cars is very costly.so i am prefer first taxi.Would you like.??