Bike Rental Apps: Tap, Unlock, Cycle!

You chose not to travel with a car, but you don’t want to adjust your travel plans to trains and buses’ departure times. You miss the flexibility car travels offer.

What is your alternative transport?

Get yourself a bike.

But how, if you are traveling in a foreign land where you don’t know the way around? Or else – you just found out your current location does not have any bike shop to borrow a bike for a day. Or the shop was already closed for the day.

Bike apps will be your best bet.

If you read this blog on your smartphone, your smartphone will be able to install bike rental apps I’ll introduce to you shortly:

Nextbike

You should choose Nextbike if:

• You’d like to keep the rental cost low and access well-maintained bikes.
• You’d like to hire a bike in multiple cities and (20+) countries.

You shouldn’t choose Nextbike if

• You don’t want to return the bike to next available Nextbike stations and to avoid 20€ charges.

RideMovi

You should choose RideMovi if:

• You’d like to take advantage of multiple ride pass offers that could save you a lot of money and allow you a lot of rides.
• You’d like to take advantage of RideMovi stations that have been always well-supplied with both of e-bikes and non-e-bikes.
• You travel in one of very-populated and large cities in Italy right now and need to hire a bike there.

*Those cities are Bologna, Caorle, Florence, Imola, Lignano Sabbiadoro, Lucca, Mantua, Milan, Padua, Piacenza, Piombino, Pisa, Ragusa, Reggio Emilia, Santa Margherita Ligure, Turin, Vicenza, Venice (source: ridemovi website)

You shouldn’t choose RideMovi if:

• You are outside the RideMovi network

Lime

You should choose Lime if:

• You definitely need an e-bike with you and are in the city where Lime operates.
• You’d like to save money and to take advantage of multiple pass offers ranging from 30minutes to 5 days.
• You want the app to navigate you to next available parking space.

You shouldn’t choose Lime if

• Your phone battery is low. Lime app will make you photograph to confirm you have parked the bike “correctly” at the end of every ride, which might consume some green juice.
• You hate occasional bugs on Lime app: The app does not show your current location on maps quickly
• You’d like to pay as you go, not purchasing the passes. Standard fees (0.29€/minute) are probably most expensive out of the apps I detail here.

Bolt

You should choose Bolt if:

• You’d like to ever hire a taxi and a bike on the same app