Is Pame or Aloya better for Cyprus buses?

It depends on what you ride. Pame is excellent if you almost exclusively use Nicosia OSEL routes, its single-operator focus shows up in clean schedule screens. Aloya is the better choice if you cross municipal boundaries (any intercity trip, any airport transfer, anything between two cities), need bilingual stops, want the Motion wallet in your phone, or use Bolt / Nextbike / the Kapnos shuttle alongside the bus. Aloya covers all seven public operators plus partners; Pame covers a subset of public operators.

Is Aloya free, like Pame?

Yes. Aloya is free, live ETAs, planning, Motion wallet, offline schedules and Pulse, with no account required, just like Pame.

Plenty of riders do, and that's fine. If you're a daily Nicosia OSEL commuter who occasionally takes an intercity, Pame for the commute and Aloya for the intercity is a perfectly reasonable setup. Most riders who try both eventually consolidate on one to avoid duplicate notifications.

Does Pame have the Motion wallet?

Not at the time of writing. Pame shows schedules and live data; payment still happens at the kiosk or on board. Aloya is the only app on the island that lets you provision your Motion card to your phone, see balance and recent taps, and top up with Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Why did you build Aloya if Pame already exists?

We built Aloya because we needed something Pame wasn't trying to be, a single bilingual screen for the whole island, including the operators outside Nicosia, the long-distance lines, the airport shuttles and the bike/scooter partners. Pame is a fine answer to a narrower question; Aloya is our answer to the broader one.

Pame, Aloya,
and the truth.

We get this question a lot. Pame and Aloya both help you ride buses in Cyprus, both are free, and both have happy users. They were built for different riders. Here's the honest side-by-side, written by us, with the bits where Pame is better called out clearly.

Two apps, one network

Two phones lying side by side on warm limestone, abstract pastel UI mockups, olive leaf shadow.

The honest comparison table.

Pame

Aloya

Operator coverageSubset of public operators, strongest in Nicosia OSEL.All seven public operators + Intercity Buses long-distance + Kapnos + Bolt + Nextbike.
LanguagesGreek-first, partial English.Full Greek and English on every screen, every stop, every alert.
Live ETAsOn covered routes, refreshed regularly.Every realtime feed on the island, refreshed every 15s, with rider-sighting backup on routes without GPS.
Multimodal planningBus-only.Bus + bike share + scooter + shuttle + walk, in one fare and one map.
Motion card walletNot currently.Balance, top-up via Apple/Google Pay, recent taps, lost-card recovery.
Offline schedulesPartial cache.Every village timetable cached on first load, works in Akamas, Karpas and Troodos.
Pulse / island contextNot offered.Weather, news, cruise calls, flight delays, what's on tonight, plus a Greek word a day.
Account requiredNo.No.
CostFree.Free.

Credit where it's due.

If you ride only Nicosia OSEL routes day in, day out, Pame's single-operator focus gives you cleaner schedule screens than Aloya, fewer toggles, and a smaller download. It loads fast and does its narrow job well. We've recommended it to friends whose entire transit life happens inside the Nicosia ring road.

What we built for the rest of the island.

The moment your trip crosses a municipal boundary, airport to hotel, Larnaca to Limassol, Limassol to Pafos beach, anywhere a tourist actually goes, single-operator apps run out of road. Aloya is the only app that plans the whole journey, in your language, with one fare displayed.

Add the Motion wallet, the bike-share and scooter integration, and the Pulse feed (sea conditions, sunset times, derby nights, festival shuttles) and the difference compounds. For a deeper read, see our overview of the Cyprus bus app and the intercity network guide.

Common questions

Free, bilingual, every operator. Open it now.

No account, no email, no setup. If it isn't better for your trip than what you use today, just close it, but most riders who try it for an intercity or airport leg keep it.

Launch Aloya Read the full guide