Transit - Subway & Bus Times

Transit Review: Ad-Free Live Departures, With Far-Off Lines Behind Royale

What stays free without Royale: three trip results and nearby lines

Since August 2021 part of the app has sat behind Royale, and the help center spells out the split. Free users get the trip planner capped at three results, departures for at least three lines plus every line with a stop nearby, unlimited GO navigation, and an account for pinned favorites. Tapping a nearby line still opens its future departures, vehicle tracking and route map. Lines farther away, timetables days ahead, extra trip results, custom themes and 20-plus extra place icons need the subscription. Neither tier shows ads: the founders wrote that they chose subscriptions over ads and selling data, and neither store flags advertising. The limit bites riders who plan away from their usual stop. Of 59 one- and two-star English Play reviews posted from September 20 to October 1, 2026, six object to the paywall, one to a $25 charge just to see a bus route.

GO crowdsourcing: riders' phones fill the gaps in agency data

Arrival times blend three sources: agency real-time feeds, the company's own ETA prediction engine and GO, its step-by-step navigation mode. While a rider has GO running on board, the app broadcasts that vehicle's position to others on the line and uses it to estimate arrivals on routes with no live data at all; the help center cites Vancouver's SkyTrain. Your exact position is never shared with other riders, GO switches off at your destination, and a typical 20-minute trip costs about 5% battery and under 100 KB of data. Rate-My-Ride adds anonymous crowding and timeliness ratings, and since September 2026 a GO trip can be shared as a live link showing your location and ETA. Where nobody rides with GO, accuracy rests on the agency feed, as the developer notes in replies to complaints. Of those 59 recent low ratings, 18 describe wrong times or buses that never came.

Royale at $24.99 a year, or free when your agency pays

Royale costs $4.99 a month or $24.99 a year in the US, and only the annual plan comes with a seven-day trial, one per user. The US App Store also lists $2.99 monthly and $19.99 annual offers; prices are regional and may change. Riders who cannot afford it can request a free community subscription that lasts a year. The bigger route to free is an agency deal: more than 180 transit agencies sponsor Royale for their riders, with Toronto's TTC and Vancouver's TransLink added in June 2026, and Denver's RTD and Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus among the first partners named in 2021. Frequent riders are upgraded automatically, and the upgrade lapses if you stop riding with that agency. It does not include a bus pass. Moovit funds its free tier with ads and sells Moovit+ to remove them; Google Maps charges nothing for transit directions.

Paying fares through Masabi and Token Transit, and where location data goes

In more than 100 cities the app sells transit fares or bikeshare passes through partners such as Masabi and Token Transit, and the company takes a small cut. Tickets work with a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, some agencies add scan-to-pay with fare capping, and any payment needs a Transit account. Eight of the 59 recent low ratings involve buying or showing fares, and seven report crashes or freezes, mostly since the late-September update. The privacy policy says location is recorded only while the app is open or a GO trip is running. Account data is encrypted on servers in Canada, while pseudonymized trip data goes to agencies and researchers with coordinates truncated to city-block level, never to advertisers or data brokers. Google Play's Data safety form still lists installed apps and device IDs among data collected for marketing, and deleting your account leaves pseudonymized history in place.