Monaco's nightlife is easy to reach and surprisingly awkward to leave. The last regular train towards Nice departs at around 9:48 p.m., the night buses stop at the end of Monaco's own territory, and taxis are in short supply when the casinos and clubs empty at the same moment. For a late night in Monte-Carlo, the dependent answer is a pre-booked private chauffeur with a fixed 2026 rate. We are TranspOnyx, a Nice-based VTC company, and this guide sets out what the public network does after dark, where it stops, and how to plan an evening so that the journey home is the least of your worries.
The problem: Monaco runs late, the rail line does not
The distance between Nice and Monaco is short. SNCF Connect lists 68 trains a day on the route, covering the 19 km in as little as 23 minutes, and the average journey is 24 minutes. By day, it is the sensitive way to travel. By night, the picture changes. On the SNCF Connect timetable, the last departure on the Monaco to Nice line is at 21:48, at an hour when a dinner reservation in Monte-Carlo has barely reached the main course.
That single fact explains most of the stories we hear. A guest from a hotel in Nice or Antibes takes the train out for dinner, extends the evening at a lounge bar near the Place du Casino, and discovers at midnight that there is no rail option left. The trains are excellent, but the schedule was built for commuters and day visitors, not for people who treat Monaco as an evening destination.
If you are staying inside Monaco itself, the question is different and easier. If you are staying in Nice, Cap-d'Ail, Beausoleil, Menton or further west, it is the central issue of the night.
What the public network does after dark
It would be unfair to say Monaco has no late-night transport. The Principality runs a small, well-kept night network, and for short hops inside its borders it works. You simply need to know its limits.
Night buses N1 and N2
After 9 pm, two night routes, N1 and N2, serve the Principality. N1 follows the general pattern of daytime routes 1 and 4, and N2 follows a similar path to routes 2 and 4. The operator, Compagnie des Autobus de Monaco, announced an additional departure at around 2.40 am on selected nights from June 2024, so a later bus exists, but check the current timetable before you plan your evening around it.
Payment is straightforward. A journey costs €1.50 by contactless bank card or the Monapass app, and €2.00 in cash paid to the driver. One detail catches groups out: the same terms limit contactless payment to six people per card, so a party of eight tapping a single card will run into trouble at the door of the bus.
ClicBus after 9:20 pm
The on-demand ClicBus is the useful oddity. After the evening shift begins, it runs from 9.20 pm until 1.30 am, and until 2.30 am on Fridays and Saturdays, serving every regular bus stop in Monaco. You book by telephone on +377 92 00 17 99 or through the app. For anyone climbing back towards the hillside residential districts, it closes a gap that fixed routes leave open.
Both services share a limit that matters more than any timetable: they stay inside Monaco. Neither takes you to Nice, Cannes, Antibes or Menton.
Taxis and ride-hailing
Taxis exist, and at 2 am on a Saturday in summer they are the scarcest thing in Monte-Carlo. One independent guide puts the Nice to Monaco taxi fare at about €95 by day and €110 at night, which gives you a sense of the benchmark, though a metered or tariffed fare for a return leg can vary with luggage, waiting and traffic. App-based cars are a gamble in the Principality, because pick-up rules inside Monaco differ from those in France, and a driver who can drop you off may not be able to collect you. A pre-booked VTC, by contrast, is arranged before you leave your hotel.
Three ways to spend a night out, and how to travel for each
Monaco's evenings tend to follow one of a few patterns, and each has a transport logic of its own.
Dinner and the casino
A table at a Monte-Carlo restaurant followed by the Casino Square is the classic. The evening usually ends between midnight and 2 am, well after the train. We schedule the outbound journey for early evening and agree to a return pick-up time with a margin. If the night runs long, the driver adjusts, and the fixed rate agreed at booking does not move with the clock. Our drivers monitor the schedule on the airport side, but for restaurant pick-ups the rule is simpler: 20 minutes of free waiting time at any address other than the airport, so stepping out of the restaurant without rushing is built in.
Clubs and late bars
This is where demand peaks. Venues empty at the same moment, queues for taxis form, and the temptation is to take any car that stops. We suggest sending us a message on WhatsApp at +33 7 67 78 10 26 about thirty minutes before you want to leave. The driver is positioned nearby, and you step into a Mercedes-Benz that is already cool, with chilled water and a phone charger waiting.
Yacht parties and private events
Port Hercule and the neighboring harbors host the parties that never appear in guidebooks. Here the issue is often a group, with different guests returning to different hotels. For this we use the Van 7 pax or the Van 8 pax, or send several vehicles on a single timed plan. Our event transfer guide for Monaco explains how that coordination works.
Event weeks change everything
Monaco and its neighbors are never quiet during the Riviera's major events, and the pressure on transport rises week by week.
The Monaco Grand Prix turns the Principality into a closed circuit, and road access is restricted around the track. Allow extra time and agree a collection point that the driver can actually reach. The Cannes Film Festival, MIPIM, MIPCOM and Cannes Lions all produce a different pattern: delegates finish a conference day, attend receptions in Cannes, and then decide on a late supper in Monte-Carlo. The distance between Cannes and Monaco is considerably more than the Nice to Monaco hop, and the allowance for the road should reflect that, with the better part of an hour in light traffic and more when the motorway is busy.
During these weeks, trains are fuller, hotels are booked months ahead, and taxis disappear. Booking a driver in advance is not a luxury at that point but the only reliable arrangement. Corporate accounts, concierge teams and travel agencies often reserve a block of vehicles for the full week, a service we are set up for through our Nice to Monaco chauffeur offering.
A fixed 2026 rate against a night of variable fares
The main reason people choose a chauffeur for a late return is predictability. Every TranspOnyx rate is fixed per vehicle, confirmed at booking, with no surge pricing. That matters at 2 am, when a fare that would be reasonable at noon can become something else entirely.
Here are our published 2026 fixed rates for the routes our readers ask about most. These are per vehicle, per journey, not per passenger.
| Road | 2026 fixed rate per vehicle |
|---|---|
| Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE) to Monaco Monte-Carlo | 90-140 EUR |
| Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE) to Cannes | 90-150 EUR |
| Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE) to Antibes and Juan-les-Pins | 68-110 EUR |
| Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE) to Menton and Beausoleil | 108-158 EUR |
| Driver Nice to Cannes | 75-110 EUR |
| By-the-hour hire (provision) | 60-90 EUR per hour |
The published ranges reflect the vehicle and the exact address. A transfer between a Nice hotel and a Monte-Carlo restaurant is not on this list as a separate item, so we quote it at booking, at a fixed amount, before the evening begins. For a long night out, hourly hire is worth considering: the driver stays with you from dinner to the last venue, and the vehicle becomes your base for the night. The full list is on our VTC Nice airport page.
Choosing the right vehicle
Our fleet is made up entirely of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, in four categories. The Standard Sedan seats up to three passengers. The Business Sedan also seats up to three, with a premium finish that suits a dinner for clients. The Van 7 pax and the Van 8 pax are for groups, and for luggage that does not fit elsewhere. All of them carry Wi-Fi, air conditioning, chilled water and phone chargers, and child seats are available on request. If you are unsure which configuration suits a group with bags, our guide to the Mercedes V-Class and its seating shows what actually fits.
For couples and pairs, the Business Sedan is the natural choice for an evening in Monte-Carlo. For a wedding party or a yacht group, the vans keep everyone together, which also keeps the evening together.
Our view: why late-night Monaco needs a plan, not a hope
We drive this corridor every day, and a pattern has become very clear to us.
Most late-night problems in Monaco do not come from a lack of transport. They come from a lack of decision. People assume the train will be there, or that a taxi will appear, or that an app will find a car. At 1 am in July none of these is certain. Visitors then accept the first offer, often at a price they would never have agreed to at dinner.
What we recommend is simple. Decide the return before you decide the evening. Give the booking a time window, not a precise minute, because nights drift. Tell the driver which venue, and whether you can change it. If you are with a group, name one person to speak to us rather than five.
Our drivers are licensed VTC professionals who speak English and French as a minimum, and several also speak Italian, Spanish, Russian or Arabic. That helps in Monaco, where a night can include guests from half a dozen countries and a hotel concierge who needs a quick call. The service runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so at 3 am pick-up is no different from at 3 pm one.
We also think the public network deserves credit. The night buses and ClicBus are well run and inexpensive, and for a quick hop between a hotel inside Monaco and a venue across the Principality they are a fair choice. They solve a different problem from ours. Ours begins at the border.
— Dany
Planning the evening, step by step
A good night in Monaco starts with a timeline. Here is how we would build one for a visitor staying in Nice.
First, decide the outbound. The train is fast and cheap and perfectly sensitive in the early evening, given that it takes an average of 24 minutes. If you prefer to arrive without the station, a chauffeur from your door to the restaurant takes the same road in comfort, and the Nice to Monaco journey time comparison lays out the difference honestly.
Second, fix the return before you leave. Send us the hotel address, the venue, and the likely finish. We confirm the rate, and you do not have to think about it again.
Third, give us a number to reach. The WhatsApp line, +33 7 67 78 10 26, is the fastest route when plans change. For anything formal, the reservations line is +33 6 10 30 71 84.
Fourth, if you are flying in on the same day, book the airport and the evening together. We monitor flights on every airport transfer and include 60 minutes of free waiting after landing, so a delayed arrival does not collapse the dinner plan. Tea Nice Airport to Monaco transfer The page has the details.
Fifth, keep the morning in mind. The day after a late night is rarely the day for a train timetable. Many guests extend the booking into a half-day Onyx Tours excursion, such as the Monaco and Eze Express Tour, at 350-500 EUR per tour, with the Mercedes-Benz already known to them from the night before.
When the night ends somewhere else
Not every evening ends where it began. A birthday dinner in Monaco can continue in Cannes, and a business group from a conference may be staying in Antibes. We run these routes regularly: Nice to Cannes at 75-110 EUR, and the airport to Antibes and Juan-les-Pins from 68 EUR to 110 EUR. Longer returns, for example towards Menton or even across the border into Italy, are also possible, with the rate confirmed before departure.
A small note for readers who like to bring something home from the region. Provence and the Riviera are not the only wine country on the route, and if a long evening has you thinking about Italian wine, an option worth a look is adopting a vineyard in Piedmont online, which sends you the bottles at harvest. If you would rather taste in person, our Onyx Wine Collection arranges chauffeured wine tours in Provence and on the Côte d'Azur.
Book your Monaco night with TranspOnyx
For a late return from Monte-Carlo, we offer a Mercedes-Benz and a licensed bilingual driver at a fixed rate at booking, 24 hours a day. You can reserve through transponyx.com, by calling +33 6 10 30 71 84, or via WhatsApp on +33 7 67 78 10 26. For airport arrivals that continue into the evening, start with our airport transfer service.
Frequently asked questions
What time is the last train from Monaco to Nice?
According to SNCF Connect, the last departure on the Monaco to Nice timetable is at 21:48. Times can change with the season and with engineering work, so check on the day. If your evening may run past that time, arrange a private chauffeur in advance.
Do night buses in Monaco go to Nice?
No. Routes N1 and N2 and the on-demand ClicBus operate within the Principality. ClicBus runs until 1.30 am, or 2.30 am on Fridays and Saturdays. To return to Nice, Cannes or Antibes at night you need a taxi or a pre-booked VTC.
How much is a private chauffeur from Monaco after a night out?
Our rates are fixed per vehicle and confirmed at booking, with no surge pricing. The airport to Monaco Monte-Carlo range is 90-140 EUR, and a Nice to Cannes journey is 75-110 EUR. For other pick-ups, such as a restaurant in Monte-Carlo to a Nice hotel, we quote the exact fixed amount before you travel.
Can I book a driver for the whole evening?
Yes. Our by-the-hour hire is 60-90 EUR per hour, and the driver stays with you from dinner to the last venue. It follows groups moving between several places in one night. Free waiting time at non-airport addresses is 20 minutes.
Can a group of eight travel in one vehicle?
Yes, with our Van 8 pax, and our Van 7 pax for seven passengers. Both are Mercedes-Benz vehicles with Wi-Fi, air conditioning and chilled water. For larger groups we coordinate several vehicles on one timetable.
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