Paris Airport Pickup: The CDG Guide Fake Drivers Don't Want You to Read

The official taxi fare from Charles de Gaulle into Paris is €56 to the Right Bank, €65 to the Left Bank — fixed by prefectural decree, reconfirmed on 1 February 2026, displayed on every licensed cab. Fake drivers at Terminal 2E still charge arrivals €120–360 for the same ride, exactly as they have since at least 2014. And this summer carries a complication most guides haven't caught up with: the RER B, the cheap train in, part-closes for engineering works from 25 July to 16 August. Here is every way into the city, priced and ranked — and the two-minute booking that removes the whole question.

Every way in from CDG, ranked

Option	Price	Journey	Best for	Do this
Pre-booked pickup — named driver meets you inside	From €60, fixed	45–60 min door-to-door	Families, long-haul arrivals, Left Bank hotels	Book a named driver
Licensed taxi, flat fare	€56 Right Bank · €65 Left Bank	45–60 min	Confident solo travellers, Right Bank	Find the real rank ↓
Uber / Bolt (VTC)	€45–70, surge past €90	45–60 min	Carry-on only; departures	When it wins ↓
RER B train	€14, digital ticket only	~35 min to Gare du Nord	Light luggage, hotels near an RER stop	Read the caveats ↓
Van, 6–8 passengers	From €95, fixed	45–60 min	Groups, ski and golf luggage	Compare van prices
Bus 9517 + Metro 14	Standard transit ticket	60–75+ min	Tightest budgets, no deadline	What replaced RoissyBus ↓

The short version: for most arrivals with luggage, the pre-booked car wins. It costs €5–15 more than the taxi flat fare and removes the one genuine hazard CDG has — the fake-driver economy waiting in the arrivals hall.

Official flat fares, set by prefectural decree and reconfirmed 1 February 2026. Day and night, up to four passengers, luggage and tolls included. Card payment is mandatory in every French taxi.

Why the pickup wins at CDG

A pre-booked pickup wins at CDG because it removes every decision a tired arrival can get wrong: the driver is named, vetted and standing inside the hall with your name on a printed sign; the price is fixed before you fly; and you never need to speak to the one species this airport is famous for — the arrivals-hall tout.

Charles de Gaulle handles some 67 million passengers a year, second in Europe only to Heathrow, and the fake-driver economy scales with that volume. The problem is entrenched enough that Aéroports de Paris publishes its own warnings about unauthorised drivers and runs periodic enforcement sweeps at Terminal 2E — the long-haul terminal where most incidents concentrate. Enforcement is real but partial; a self-renewing supply of jet-lagged first-timers keeps the model profitable.

The script barely varies. A well-dressed man — occasionally a woman, often carrying a clipboard or laminated card — approaches within a minute of your exit, speaks good English, and tells you the taxi rank is closed, moved, or hopelessly queued. He walks you to an unmarked door where a dark sedan waits. The figure demanded at the other end runs €120–360. Refusals have their own script: travel writer Melissa Hie of girleatworld.net documented a 2023 incident in which the driver followed her into her hotel lobby until she paid €80 to make him leave. Others report card machines that conveniently fail.

The three scams that keep working

1 · The "taxi rank has moved" redirect

The classic, mostly at Terminal 2E. You are told the official queue is closed and steered towards a different door where unauthorised cars wait. There is no relocated rank. The real one at 2E is outside at Door 10, marked with a blue TAXI panel and managed by a uniformed dispatcher. If in doubt, walk back to the genuine information desk and ask.

2 · The "I'm from your hotel" approach

A variant with a clipboard — sometimes bearing your actual hotel's name, gleaned by listening in the queue. Your hotel has not sent a car unless you booked one and hold a confirmation; a genuine hotel driver knows your name and booking reference and will produce both when asked.

3 · The "broken meter, special rate" taxi

You did everything right, joined the licensed rank, and the driver announces the flat fare doesn't apply tonight — traffic, the hour, the meter. All false. The CDG flat fare applies 24 hours a day regardless of traffic. Note the licence number on the door, step out, take the next cab, and report it: the Préfecture's fare rules are enforceable and complaints accumulate against a driver's licence.

Terminal by terminal: where your driver stands

Your driver waits inside the arrivals hall of your specific terminal, just past the exit doors, holding a sign with your name. CDG's naming confuses people, which is precisely what the touts exploit: there are three terminal buildings — T1, T2 (divided into halls 2A to 2G) and T3 — and your boarding pass states which is yours.

Terminal 2E — long-haul, most US and Asian flights

The busiest hall and the worst scam history. Exit baggage claim through the sliding doors and your pre-booked driver stands to the left of the exit. The licensed taxi rank is a two-minute walk outside at Door 10 — open the rank location in Google Maps before you land and nobody can redirect you.

Terminal 2F — Schengen and intra-European

Smaller and calmer. Drivers meet arrivals near the information desk inside the hall.

Terminals 1 and 3

T1 is the distinctive 1970s concrete ring, now serving mostly non-Schengen European carriers; T3 is the small budget-carrier facility. Both have well-signed meeting areas immediately inside arrivals, with enough space that finding a name-board takes seconds.

Halls 2A–2D and 2G

2B/2D handle Air France short-haul, 2A/2C mostly non-Schengen. 2G is a satellite reached by shuttle bus — your confirmation email states whether the driver waits at 2G itself or at 2F after the shuttle. Read it before you land.

How the booking works

You enter CDG, your flight number, the date and your Paris address; the system quotes a fixed price per vehicle class and you prepay by card. About an hour before landing you receive the driver's name, photo, car model and WhatsApp contact. Three choices matter specifically for Paris:

• 1Left Bank or outer arrondissement? The taxi fare jumps €9 the moment you cross the Seine; the pickup price rises far more gently for the 13th–15th and 19th–20th. For Left Bank addresses the pre-booked car is frequently better value than the taxi, not merely safer.
• 2Children under 10 or 135 cm need a booster by French law. Rank taxis often don't carry one and may refuse the ride. Add the child-seat option at booking and the driver brings it.
• 3Connecting to a train at Gare du Nord or Gare de Lyon? Leave 90 minutes between wheels-down and departure. The A1 into Paris is reliably slow 07:30–09:30 and 17:00–19:30, and its rolling roadworks add 15–20 minutes on bad days.

Pickup vs taxi vs RER B vs Uber in 2026

Two fixtures of older guides no longer exist: the RoissyBus was withdrawn permanently on 1 March 2026 after 34 years, and the CDG Express rail link will not open before March 2027. Here is the honest 2026 comparison:

Option	Cost	Time	Best for
Pre-booked pickup	€60–140 by vehicle	45–60 min	Families, long-haul arrivals, fixed price certainty
Licensed taxi, flat fare	€56 / €65	45–60 min	Solo travellers to the Right Bank
RER B train	€14 (digital only)	35 min + onward Metro	Light luggage, hotels near Gare du Nord or Châtelet
Uber / Bolt (VTC)	€45–70, surge above	45–60 min	Departures; arrivals with carry-on only
Bus 9517 + Metro 14	Standard transit ticket	60–75+ min	The lowest possible spend, no time pressure

The RER B remains genuinely fast and genuinely cheap — but it changed in January 2026. The old paper airport ticket is gone: the €14 Paris Region–Airports ticket is digital only, loaded to a Navigo Easy card (€2 extra), a phone app or Apple Wallet, and it now covers onward Metro and RER connections across zones 1–5 for two hours. The train reaches Gare du Nord in about 35 minutes, running 04:50–23:50. Its weaknesses are unchanged: no luggage space at rush hour, well-organised pickpockets, and — critically this summer — engineering closures between Gare du Nord and southern Paris from 25 July to 16 August 2026, with replacement buses that stretch the journey badly. If you land inside that window with bags, take a car.

The RoissyBus replacement, line 9517, runs to Saint-Denis Pleyel for a Metro 14 connection — workable with a transit pass and zero luggage, tedious otherwise. Uber and Bolt remain the smart pick for departures, when there is no meet-and-greet to lose and a 05:00 pickup to your door typically undercuts everything else.

Orly and Beauvais

Orly (ORY)

Orly's flat fares invert CDG's logic: €36 to the Left Bank, €45 to the Right Bank — the south side of the Seine is the near side here. The drive is 30–45 minutes, the tout problem exists at Orly 4 international arrivals but at a fraction of CDG's volume, and a pre-booked sedan runs €45–65 — level with or under the taxi for Right Bank addresses. Metro 14 now also runs direct from Orly into the city on the same €14 airport ticket.

Beauvais (BVA)

Beauvais is 85 km out — a 90-minute drive — and served almost exclusively by Ryanair and Wizz Air. The official shuttle to Porte Maillot costs about €17 booked online and takes 75 minutes on a good day, luggage piled in the aisles. A pickup from BVA runs €120–160, and with a family or real luggage it is frankly the only civilised option. Staying in Beauvais town itself? A local taxi is €15–25; don't pay transfer prices for a five-minute hop.

Arriving by private aircraft

Private arrivals into Paris mostly land at Le Bourget — Europe's busiest business-aviation airport — with CDG and Villacoublay taking the overflow. FBO-side handling changes the arithmetic entirely: the transfer is arranged ramp-side, customs is cleared in the lounge, and the onward car is part of the charter brief rather than an afterthought. Our guide to Europe's best private jet airports and FBOs covers the Paris trio in detail. Price the flight with FBO transfer and onward car included and the arrivals-hall question never arises at all.

When a pickup is the wrong call

Same standard as everything else we publish — the recommendation has to survive the cases where it loses:

Solo, carry-on, Right Bank hotel. The €56 flat-fare taxi and the €14 RER B are both perfectly good. A pickup is overkill.

Early-morning departure. Uber at 05:00 to CDG typically runs €55–70 with no meet-and-greet value lost, because you're leaving, not arriving.

Genuinely flexible plans. If there's a real chance you change hotels last-minute, a taxi or VTC forgives; a prepaid pickup requires an email.

Overnighting in Beauvais itself. Local taxis, €15–25. Done.

The five-minute pre-arrival checklist

• 1Book the pickup 12–24 hours before landing — same price, better driver matching.
• 2Save the driver's WhatsApp and the 24/7 support line to your phone before you board.
• 3Land connected: a France eSIM from Airalo costs under €5 for 1 GB and means WhatsApp works in the arrivals hall, not after the hotel Wi-Fi.
• 4Know your terminal before you land. Confusion between T1, 2E, 2F and T3 is the tout's raw material.
• 5Taking a taxi anyway? Walk straight to the signposted outdoor rank and ignore every offer made indoors.
• 6Inbound flight delayed three hours or more? Run it through our EU261 compensation calculator — you may be owed up to €600, and AirHelp files the claim in about ten minutes.
• 7For departures, book the car 3.5 hours before long-haul, 2.5 before Schengen — CDG security runs to 45 minutes at peak. If you carry SafetyWing cover, confirm missed-connection protection applies to pre-booked ground transport.