Is Uber or Careem Available in Islamabad?

Uber shut its app in Islamabad, Karachi, Multan, Faisalabad and Peshawar in October 2022, leaving Lahore as its only Pakistani city. On 30 April 2024 it closed Lahore too, ending Uber-branded rides across Pakistan after about eight years. Uber owns Careem, so riders were pointed at that app instead.

Careem then announced on 18 June 2025 that it would suspend ride-hailing in Pakistan, and did so on 18 July 2025, citing macroeconomic conditions and competition. Its support line stayed open until September 2025 for refunds. As of the most recent reporting we could verify, the service has not returned.

A lot of travel advice online has not caught up. If a page tells you to "just get an Uber from Islamabad airport", it is out of date — and Uber’s own global airport landing pages still render a booking widget for cities it no longer serves, which is where much of the confusion comes from.

Three apps are active in the twin cities. inDrive is the most used — it works on a bid model, where you name a price and drivers accept or counter, so there is no published fare table at all. Yango operates across Islamabad, Rawalpindi and the major cities. Bykea is mainly motorcycle rides and deliveries, useful for short hops but not for luggage.

All three are covered by rules the Islamabad district administration introduced in February 2026: drivers must register through the official city app, display an issued QR code on the windshield, and record the passenger’s CNIC number before a trip begins. Passengers can verify a vehicle by scanning that QR code.

What none of them offers is a price agreed before the day, a driver committed to a specific flight, or someone waiting inside arrivals with a name board.

Islamabad International Airport does not run a regulated or prepaid taxi system. The airport’s own passenger information page states plainly that taxis there are "not controlled by any centralized agency" and advises passengers to "bargain and decide the fare before start of journey".

That is the real choice on arrival: negotiate a price at the kerb after a long flight, open an app and hope a driver accepts your bid at 3am, or have a fixed price and a named driver arranged before you fly.

You may also see claims of a "prepaid taxi booth" issuing fixed-fare vouchers in the arrivals hall. We could not verify that from the airport or any official source, and it contradicts the airport’s own guidance — so do not count on it.

We deliberately do not publish a market rate on this page. Fuel prices in Pakistan swung sharply through 2026 and app fares followed — one operator made six separate fare revisions between March and May 2026, with increases reported to be steeper in Islamabad and Rawalpindi than in Karachi or Lahore because average trip distances here are longer.

Any per-kilometre figure you find on a comparison site is likely to be stale, and several of those sites still list Uber rates for a city Uber left in 2022. For a number you can rely on, ask us for a quote — the price we confirm is the price you pay.