Parking a car in central Amsterdam costs upwards of €7.50 an hour.
Leaving it at the edge of the city on a Park and Ride site costs €6 for 24 hours.
The catch is not the price.
It is a set of conditions that quietly disqualify a lot of drivers from the discount, and one of them changed recently enough that people who used P+R last year can get it wrong this year.
What it costs
Arrive on a weekday from 10:00, or at any time on a weekend or public holiday, and you pay €6 per 24 hours.
Arrive on a weekday before 10:00 and the first 24 hours cost €13.
Each of the next three days is charged at the normal €6.
After four days -- 96 hours -- the discount stops and the site’s standard tariff applies.
That is a steep change: €4.20 an hour at Zeeburg III, €5 an hour at the Olympisch Stadion.
Those figures cover parking only.
Your tram, metro or bus fare is separate.
The conditions that catch people out
The discount is not automatic.
You earn it by proving you traveled into the city on public transport.
Take a paper ticket from the machine at the barrier.
Do not tap a bank card or credit card on the way in -- doing so registers an ordinary parking session, not a P+R one.
You can travel into town however you like.
The return leg is what counts: you must come back to the P+R site by public transport, and your final check-in has to be inside the central zone.
Then pay for the parking within one hour of checking out of public transport.
You need both the parking ticket and the travel card in hand at the machine.
OVpay does not earn the discount
This is the change that trips up returning visitors.
Checking in with a contactless bank card, a credit card or a phone -- the OVpay system that is replacing the old chip card -- does not qualify.
Neither does a barcode ticket or a paper NS train ticket.
What works is a personal or anonymous OV-chipkaart, or a paper GVB ticket bought from a machine, a GVB service point or a tram conductor.
The city says it is working on making OVpay eligible, but it is not yet.
If you are unsure which card you are holding, our guide to the OV-chipkaart explains the difference.
Where the sites are
Eleven P+R sites sit inside the city: Bos en Lommer, Boven ‘t Y, Noord, Olympisch Stadion, P1 ArenA, RAI, Sloterdijk, Weekend VUmc, Weesp, Zeeburg II and Zeeburg III.
Which one suits you depends on the direction you arrive from and where you are going.
Sloterdijk has 200 spaces and puts you on tram 19, bus 22 or the train.
Note that a GVB P+R ticket is not valid on the train -- that leg needs an NS ticket.
Noord has 442 spaces and metro 52, the fastest run into the center.
Its drawback is access: the site can only be reached through the metro station while metro 52 is running.
Zeeburg III has 265 spaces, tram 26 and bus 37, and a 2.50 meter height limit -- the most generous in the city for a van or a roof box.
The Olympisch Stadion site has its own entrance, a lift and a toilet, but a 2 meter height limit that rules out taller vehicles.
RAI works differently
At the RAI the P+R rate covers a maximum of 24 hours, not four days.
Stay longer and you pay €5.50 an hour or €35 a day.
Entry is limited to between 07:00 and midnight.
It is also the one site where you can buy a GVB P+R travel ticket on the spot, from the blue machines, within an hour of driving in.
P1 ArenA has its own quirk: it fills up on Ajax match days, and it is the only site where you can reserve a space by buying a day ticket online in advance.
The free sites further out
Eight more sites sit outside the city and most of them cost nothing: Almere ‘t Oor, Breukelen, Duivendrecht, Haarlem Spaarnwoude, Muiden, Nieuw-Vennep, Sassenheim and Alkmaar station.
They are further from the center and the onward journey is longer, usually by train.
For a day trip into Amsterdam from the south or east, they are often the cheaper choice.
Before you set off
Check how many spaces are free before you drive -- the city publishes live availability for every site, and there is a map with addresses and connecting transit lines.
Most sites have charging points for electric cars, though only a handful each: 16 at Noord and Zeeburg III, six at the Olympisch Stadion, one at Sloterdijk.
If you are weighing up whether to keep a car in the city at all, our guide to the real cost of keeping a car in Amsterdam covers permits, insurance and street parking.
For getting around without one, start with the public transport guide.
