Toei Bus commuter pass: prices, where to buy, break-even

A Toei Bus pass has no route section on it

Unlike a railway season ticket, a Toei Bus commuter pass does not name the section you travel on. The Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation calls the product a Free Card (フリーカード), and it lets you board and alight as often as you like on any Toei Bus route inside Tokyo's 23 wards. The one exception is route 江東 01, which is excluded. The scheme works precisely because the 23 wards use a flat fare, so there is no section to write on the application form in the first place.

The commuting version carries no holder's name. It is valid for whoever is carrying it, one bearer at a time, so the same card can be used by a different person on different days. That changes as soon as you load the IC commuter pass onto a named PASMO or Suica, because a named card is valid only for the person registered on it. If sharing is the point, you need either a magnetic ticket or an unregistered PASMO. Note that an unregistered PASMO can only carry a commuting pass: a student pass always requires a named card.

The absence of a designated section applies to passes for the 23 wards only. Passes for the Tama area are sold for a specified section, and if you ride beyond it you pay the regular fare for the extra distance on top. If the Tama area is where you will be riding, do not carry the 23-ward rules over to it.

Types and prices as of September 2026

There are two categories, commuting and student, and three periods: one month, three months and six months. The six-month pass is sold on IC cards only, including mobile ones, and is not issued as a magnetic ticket. The commuting side has one extra option, a flat-rate pass (定額定期券) valid for 34 days, that is one month plus three days, for 10,000 yen. The fares as of September 2026 are as follows.

Student passes come in three brackets, adult, junior high school student and child, and for one month each of them is exactly 80 percent of the commuting price.

If you only ever use one particular line, there are also passes tied to a specified route. On the school bus routes 学 02, 学 03, 学 05 and 学 06 a one-month commuting pass costs 8,100 yen, and on route 豊洲 01 the one month plus three days pass costs 4,000 yen. These, together with the common passes valid on sections operated jointly with other bus companies, are issued as magnetic tickets only and cannot be loaded onto an IC card.

Through passes that combine Toei Bus with the Toei Subway or the Nippori Toneri Liner are sold at about 10 percent off the sum of the two pass fares. They are not handled at Toei Bus depots or bus pass offices, so you buy them at a subway or liner counter instead. A through pass for the Toden streetcar and Toei Bus costs 15,220 yen for one month of commuting use. Where a disability discount applies, pass fares are reduced by 30 percent, with the route 豊洲 01 pass as the only exclusion.

How many rides a month it takes to break even

The one-month commuting pass at 9,450 yen is exactly 45 single rides at the 210 yen fare charged inside the 23 wards. On paper, then, 45 rides a month cost you the same either way, and from the 46th ride the pass wins. Counting a round trip as two rides, a person who travels 23 days a month makes 46 rides, which puts the pass barely ahead. Whether you also go out at weekends, or add a single extra stop on the way home, is what decides it.

The break-even points for each period and type are set out below. Each is a rough figure obtained by dividing the price by the 210 yen adult single fare, and any fare revision changes it.

• Commuting, 1 month, 9,450 yen = 45 rides
• Commuting, 3 months, 26,930 yen = about 43 rides a month
• Commuting, 6 months, 51,030 yen = about 41 rides a month
• Flat-rate pass, 10,000 yen, valid 34 days = about 48 rides
• Student, adult, 7,560 yen = 36 rides
• Student, junior high, 6,930 yen = 33 rides

Because a three-month or six-month pass lowers the break-even point by several rides, the longer the period the better the deal, as long as you know you will keep making the trip. If a move or a transfer at work may be coming, the safer choice is a short period, since cancelling partway through returns very little, as explained further down. The mechanics of the fares themselves are covered in Toei Bus fares and how to pay.

The other comparison that trips people up is with the one-day pass. A Toei Bus one-day pass costs 500 yen, so if you have 19 days a month on which you ride three times or more, that comes to 9,500 yen, marginally above the one-month commuter pass. Anyone whose days with three or more rides fit into roughly 15 a month is better off buying a one-day pass on those days alone. In short, the commuter pass suits people who ride on many days, and the one-day pass suits people who ride on few days but several times within each of them.

Where to buy one: the counter depends on the medium

Where you can buy a pass is decided by the medium you want it on. Magnetic tickets are handled at Toei Bus depots and their branch offices, at bus pass offices, and at the Toyo and Yamato bus yards. An IC commuter pass on PASMO or Suica can be bought at those depots, branch offices and pass offices, and also at the automatic pass vending machines in Toei Subway stations, at subway pass offices, and on the Nippori Toneri Liner. Student passes that require a school certificate are the exception: they cannot be issued by the vending machines.

The part that causes most confusion is the mobile version, where PASMO and Suica work the opposite way round.

• PASMO on Apple Pay and Mobile PASMO are bought by operating your own mobile device. They cannot be sold at depots, branch offices, bus yards, pass offices or stations. Users must be 13 or over.
• Mobile Suica passes are bought at Toei Bus depots, branch offices and bus pass offices. You cannot buy one through the device itself.

Sales open seven days before the date a new pass starts, and 14 days before for a renewal. With PASMO on Apple Pay and Mobile PASMO, even a new pass goes on sale 14 days ahead. Pass counters at the depots are open every day of the year from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. as of September 2026. For a new IC pass there is also the TOEI Smart Teikiken reservation service: apply in advance, then hold the completed-reservation QR code up to a ticket machine on the Toei Subway or the Nippori Toneri Liner to collect the pass.

A credit card can be used only toward the price of an IC commuter pass, Mobile Suica included, and only as a single payment. The Toyo and Yamato bus yards do not accept cards. A PASMO or Suica without the commuter pass function cannot have an IC pass issued to it at all.

On-board sales inside the 23 wards cover just one product, the magnetic flat-rate pass, and only for use starting that same day, from 4 a.m. onwards. You need a 10,000 yen note, and it cannot be bought on board route 江東 01. These on-board sales end on 31 March 2027. Since counters open and close over time, the surest way to confirm locations and which media they handle is the commuter pass page of the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation.

A commuter pass also cuts the fare for your family

A commuting pass comes with a discount for days off when you travel with your family. The Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation calls it the environmental commuter pass scheme (環境定期券制度): when the holder of a commuting pass rides together with family members from the same household, each of those family members pays 100 yen as an adult or 50 yen as a child. The holder pays nothing extra in the first place, so in a household that goes out together often the scheme works as a real reduction in what the pass costs you. Student passes are not eligible.

The conditions are as follows.

• Eligible days: Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, 12 to 16 August, and 25 December to 7 January
• Eligible people: family members within the second degree of kinship, living in the same household, riding together with the commuting pass holder. Where certification under the partnership oath system applies, people living in the same household who correspond to family within the second degree are treated the same way
• Payment is in cash only, and the discounted fare cannot be paid by IC card
• Route 江東 01 is excluded

To use it, tell the driver as you board that you are using the environmental commuter pass, have the pass holder show the pass or touch the IC pass to the reader, and pay in cash for the family riding along. For one accompanying adult making a round trip, the usual 420 yen in cash becomes 200 yen. If you often go out with your family at weekends, working out the value of a pass from weekday commuting rides alone will leave you underestimating it.

Refunds, and the extra rules for student passes

If you stop partway through, the refund is smaller than most people expect. The amount is worked out as the purchase price minus the regular fare multiplied by two and by the number of days elapsed, minus a handling charge of 500 yen, and only passes still inside their validity period qualify. Refund a one-month commuting pass of 9,450 yen after using it for 10 days and you receive 4,750 yen, because 10 days of round trips at 210 yen come to 4,200 yen and the 500 yen charge is taken off as well. Once 22 days have elapsed the calculation reaches zero and nothing at all comes back.

For the paperwork you need something that proves your address and name, and the Toyo and Yamato bus yards do not handle refunds. An IC pass bought with a credit card cannot be refunded by a proxy, and Apple Pay PASMO and Mobile PASMO passes are refunded through the device itself.

Student passes carry extra conditions on documents. When you buy one you need the original document certifying that you attend the school, and copies are not accepted (for primary school children a document proving age can be used instead). From 1 April 2024, registering your expected graduation date lets you skip showing the certificate. A pass bought against a certificate that runs to the end of the school year is valid at the longest until 30 April of the following school year, and for students in their final year a one-month pass runs to 9 April and a three-month pass to 14 April. A child PASMO expires on 31 March at the end of the school year in which the holder turns 12.

Three things are worth settling before you buy: how many days a month you really ride, whether you will have occasions to ride with your family on days off, and whether you might stop partway through. For more ways to make the bus work in daily life, see bus know-how for everyday life. The finer conditions can be checked in the guidance from the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation. The fares and charges given in this article are those current at the time of writing and do not reflect any later revisions.