Málaga Airport to Benalmádena is the shortest airport run on the Costa del Sol – 15 to 20 km, around 20 minutes on the toll-free A-7, and the only one of the western resorts with a train. The Cercanías C1 runs direct from the airport to Benalmádena-Arroyo de la Miel with no change at any point.
It is also the route most guides get mechanically wrong, in two ways. They send you to change trains in Málaga city, which is travelling in and back out for nothing. And they quote one taxi fare, when there are three Benalmádenas and the fare for two of them is €7 apart by day.
What are the options, and what do they cost?
| Option | Price | Time | Booking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cercanías C1 train | ~€2.20–€2.70 per person | ~25 min, direct | None – buy at the platform |
| Taxi, Benalmádena Costa | €22.02 day / €25.10 night | ~20 min | Rank outside T3 |
| Taxi, Benalmádena Pueblo | €29 day / €34 night | ~25 min | Rank outside T3 |
| Private transfer | ~€40–€65 per vehicle | ~20 min | Pre-booked |
| Bus M-110 | A few euros | ~35–45 min | None |
At €22.02 for a daytime run to the Costa, the taxi is genuinely competitive here in a way it is not anywhere else on this coast. Two people with a bag each, staying on the seafront, arriving at a civilised hour: take the taxi and stop reading.
Which Benalmádena are you going to?
Three places share the name and they are not walking distance from each other. Settle this before you price anything.
Benalmádena Costa is the seafront strip – the marina, the hotel blocks, most of the tourist accommodation. It is what almost everyone means, and every form of transport serves it.
Benalmádena Pueblo is the whitewashed hilltop village a few kilometres inland and several hundred metres up. No bus and no train reaches it from the airport.
Arroyo de la Miel is the residential town in between, and it is where the railway station is.
The taxi fares reflect that geography, which is why a single quoted price for "Benalmádena" is meaningless. These come from the fixed-price list carried in every licensed taxi and posted at the airport rank:
| Destination | Weekday daytime | Night, weekend, public holiday |
|---|---|---|
| Benalmádena Costa | €22.02 | €25.10 |
| Benalmádena Pueblo | €29 | €34 |
Arroyo de la Miel is not listed separately and sits between the two, geographically and in price. The gap is the uphill run inland – short in kilometres, slow in practice.
Is there a direct train to Benalmádena?
Yes, and this is the correction worth reading twice. The C1 runs Málaga Centro-Alameda – María Zambrano – Aeropuerto – Torremolinos – Benalmádena-Arroyo de la Miel – Torremuelle – Carvajal – Fuengirola on one through service. The airport and Benalmádena sit on the same line in the same direction. You board at the airport station and stay on the train.
The second thing to get right is which station. Torremuelle and Arroyo de la Miel are two separate stops, one after the other, and it is Arroyo de la Miel that puts you in the middle of the town of that name. Torremuelle is further down the coast and serves a residential stretch.
Trains run roughly every 20 to 30 minutes, seven days a week, with the first service around 05:20 and the last around 23:30. That first departure matters: it is the only way out of Málaga Airport before about 08:00 that is not a car.
Renfe prices Cercanías by zone – €1.80, €2.05, €2.70 and €3.60 across one to five zones – but publishes no station-to-zone map, so the exact airport-to-Arroyo fare cannot be quoted from the official tariff. Aggregators put it at €2.20 to €2.70, cheap enough that the precise figure changes nothing.
The catch is the last mile. Arroyo de la Miel station is roughly 2 km from the Costa beachfront and 3 to 4 km from the Pueblo, uphill in the second case. Perfect if Arroyo is your destination, an extra taxi if it is not.
How much is a taxi from Málaga Airport to Benalmádena?
Licensed white taxis queue outside Terminal 3 around the clock, and the fares in the table above are the whole fare. Málaga's €6.49 airport supplement applies to journeys to the airport, not from it – journeys starting at the airport run on higher minimum bands instead, and those are already inside the destination rates.
There is no toll to add either. Taxis take the free A-7 coastal road west; the AP-7 plazas start at Calahonda, well past Benalmádena, so nothing appears on top the way it does on the Marbella and Estepona runs further west.
Which airport bus actually serves Benalmádena?
This is murkier than most guides admit, and worth being straight about.
Line M-110 is the better-documented option: a CTMAM local bus running Málaga – Torremolinos – Benalmádena Costa, with stops along the whole seafront strip.
Between 21 June and 8 September 2026 it runs a reinforced summer timetable of up to 76 services on weekdays and Saturdays, with night departures as late as 03:10. For an overnight arrival in high summer it is the only public transport still moving.
Two honest caveats. Its airport stop is Cruce Aeropuerto, the junction on the main road rather than a stand at the terminal door, so there is a walk with your bags at the start. And CTMAM publishes fares by zone crossing without mapping M-110's stops to zones, so no exact fare for this leg can be quoted – budget a few euros and 35 to 45 minutes.
Should you hire a car instead?
Benalmádena works better as a driving base than most of the coast. It sits where the A-7 is still free, with Torremolinos and Fuengirola either side and Málaga city twenty minutes back east, and not a toll on any of it.
The counter-argument is parking. The Costa strip has workable seafront parking; the Pueblo has lanes laid out for donkeys, where a car is an active liability. The Málaga car hire guide covers the excess and fuel-policy terms that decide whether a €25 daily rate is really €25.
Should you pre-book a private transfer?
Private transfers here run about €40 to €65 for a standard car or minivan. Against a €22.02 taxi that is the widest proportional gap of any route on this coast, which makes the recommendation conditional rather than automatic – and on the shortest run off this airport, it should be.
What you are buying is a named driver waiting in arrivals, a price agreed before you fly, and a drop-off at an exact address rather than a town. Two of those three are worth very little on a daytime arrival to a seafront hotel. All three are worth a lot at 01:00, with children, or when the address is 200 metres up a Pueblo lane a driver will need directions for.
So the honest split is by destination rather than by budget. The Costa does not need solving: it has a €22 taxi and a €2.20 train. The Pueblo has neither, and that is the case for booking ahead.
Once you are there, the Benalmádena cable car up Monte Calamorro is the one attraction worth planning a day around. Leaving again? See Benalmádena to Málaga Airport. Every route off the airport is compared in the Málaga Airport transfers hub.
Sources: Ayuntamiento de Málaga taxi tariff schedule and the airport rank's fixed-price list, Renfe Cercanías published zone fares and C1 line order, CTMAM M-110 timetable, private-transfer operator pricing (September 2026).
