Day Trips from Boston by Train and Bus (No Car Needed)
by Wanderu
Boston is one of the few American cities where skipping the car is the power move. The commuter rail reaches Salem for $8, Amtrak makes Providence in about 35 minutes, the Downeaster rolls out of North Station for the Maine coast, and the bus terminal above South Station fans out across New England all day. Here are 16 day trips worth the ride, sorted by how long they take, plus the weekend classic at the end of the line, with live fares on the routes Wanderu sells and the T’s own fares where the commuter rail is the way.
We first wrote this page in 2018 as a list of 26 places you could reach from Boston for under $20. Some of it held up. Most of it didn’t. Seven of the 26 lost their service entirely, the New York fare we bragged about has well more than doubled, and of the 95,000 tickets booked from Boston on Wanderu in the past year, about three in a hundred came in under $20. But Boston kept more of the promise than any city we’ve rechecked: a pocket of New Hampshire routes still sells most of its seats under $20, the Providence train is outright cheap, and the MBTA will take you anywhere on its commuter rail map for $13.25 or less. So we rebuilt the list around what’s true now, kept the fares honest, and wrote the eulogies where they were owed.
| Destination | Travel time | From |
|---|---|---|
| Salem, MA | About 30 minutes on the commuter rail | $8.00 MBTA Zone 3 |
| Providence, RI | From about 35 minutes on Amtrak, an hour by bus | $6 Amtrak$9 Bus |
| Worcester, MA | From about 45 minutes by bus | $7 Bus$16 Amtrak$12.25 MBTA Zone 8 |
| Salem, NH | 35 minutes by bus | $15 Boston Express |
| Nashua, NH | About an hour by bus | $15 Boston Express |
| Londonderry, NH | From about 55 minutes by bus | $12 Bus |
| Manchester, NH | About 1 hour 10 minutes by bus | $12 Greyhound |
| Portsmouth, NH | From about an hour by bus | $14 Bus |
| Cape Ann and Newburyport | About an hour on the commuter rail | $11.00 MBTA Zone 7 to Gloucester$12.25 MBTA Zone 8 to Rockport or Newburyport |
| Fall River and New Bedford, MA | About 90 minutes by train or bus | $9 Peter Pan$9 Peter Pan$12.25, $10 weekends MBTA South Coast Rail |
| Cape Cod: Hyannis, MA | From about 1 hour 15 minutes by bus | $29 Peter Pan$26 Peter Pan |
| Concord, NH | From about 1 hour 25 minutes by bus | $16 Bus |
| Portland, ME | From just under 2 hours by bus, 2 and a half on the train | $16 Bus$26 Amtrak |
| Springfield, MA | From about 1 and a half hours by bus | $12 Bus$16 Amtrak |
| Hartford, CT | From about 2 hours by bus | $12 Bus |
| New Haven, CT | From just under 2 hours by train | $17 Amtrak$20 Bus |
| New York, NY | From about 3 and a half hours, bus or train | $12 Bus$22 Amtrak |
Where the trains and buses leave from
- South Station: Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and the Lake Shore Limited at track level, and the intercity bus terminal upstairs, with a concourse expansion that opened in late 2023. On the Red Line.
- North Station: the Downeaster to Maine and the Newburyport/Rockport commuter line to Salem and Cape Ann. If your trip is in this page’s first band, odds are it leaves here. Green and Orange Lines.
- Back Bay: most Northeast Corridor trains and the Worcester line also call here, one Orange Line stop from downtown.
- Coming from Logan? Our guide to buses to and from Logan Airport covers connecting straight to an intercity ride.
Under an hour
Salem, MA
About 30 minutes on the commuter rail
- MBTA Zone 3$8.00
Salem turned 400 in 2026, and it’s spending October the way it spends every October: Haunted Happenings runs the whole month, opening with the Grand Parade on October 1 and building to Halloween night itself. The witch trials get the headlines, but the Peabody Essex Museum is the better reason to come back in November, when the crowds thin and the maritime history gets the town to itself again.
The Newburyport/Rockport line runs from North Station about every half hour and costs $8 each way. In October, go early; the whole region has the same idea. A seasonal ferry also runs from Long Wharf if you’d rather arrive by sea.
Providence, RI
From about 35 minutes on Amtrak, an hour by bus
- Boston to Providence trainsfrom $6
- Boston to Providence busesfrom $9
The best fare story left in New England: more than half of last year’s Providence tickets cost under $20, and the typical Amtrak fare was about $20 for a ride of barely half an hour. That’s less than most Boston parking garages charge to sit still.
Time the trip to WaterFire, the bonfire installation that turns the downtown rivers into a procession of flames on select nights; the 2026 season includes an October 17 lighting. Between fires there’s the RISD Museum, Federal Hill for red-sauce dinners, and Benefit Street for the best mile of colonial houses in the country. Newport is a RIPTA bus onward from Providence, not a one-seat ride from Boston, so give the mansions their own day.
Worcester, MA
From about 45 minutes by bus
- Boston to Worcester busesfrom $7
- Boston to Worcester trainsfrom $16
- MBTA Zone 8$12.25
Worcester was the cheapest ride on the 2018 list at $5, and it’s still one of the few that kept its promise: just over six in ten tickets last year came in under $20. The city is mid-construction-boom, with cranes over Main Street and a downtown that looks less like a punchline every year. The Worcester Art Museum holds one of the best armor collections outside Europe, and the diners are the real civic monument. The commuter rail from South Station also does the run for $12.25 if the bus times don’t suit.
Salem, NH
35 minutes by bus
- Boston to Salem busesfrom $15
The most reliably cheap ticket out of Boston: 94 percent of last year’s fares came in under $20, on a bus that takes 35 minutes. What’s in Salem, New Hampshire? Canobie Lake Park in summer, and the Mall at Rockingham Park the rest of the year, where New Hampshire’s lack of sales tax quietly refunds your bus fare on any serious shopping day. It’s not a postcard. It is a very good deal.
One to two hours
Nashua, NH
About an hour by bus
- Boston to Nashua busesfrom $15
Nashua never made the 2018 list, which was an oversight: 82 percent of last year’s tickets cost under $20, with a typical fare of $17. Boston Express runs the hour-long hop all day. Mine Falls Park threads miles of wooded trails between a canal and the Nashua River right behind Main Street, and the tax-free shopping math works the same here as in Salem.
Londonderry, NH
From about 55 minutes by bus
- Boston to Londonderry busesfrom $12
Three bus companies run here and last year all three charged about the same $19. Londonderry is honest about what it is: a park-and-ride surrounded by apple country, with orchards a short ride from the stop that make it a real September and October destination. Eight in ten tickets last year came in under $20, which keeps it on the cheap list on merit.
Manchester, NH
About 1 hour 10 minutes by bus
- Boston to Manchester busesfrom $12
Manchester’s bus story changed: Boston Express dropped the city in 2023, so Greyhound carries it now, with about half of last year’s fares still under $20. The Currier Museum of Art is the draw, a real collection with Picasso and O’Keeffe plus tours of a Frank Lloyd Wright house it owns nearby, and the Red Arrow Diner has been serving mill-town breakfast since 1922.
Portsmouth, NH
From about an hour by bus
- Boston to Portsmouth busesfrom $14
Portsmouth repays the trip: Strawbery Banke’s ten acres of preserved waterfront neighborhood, Prescott Park on the river, and a downtown built for wandering between bookstores and chowder. Getting there is the easy part, since four bus companies make more than 70 departures a day, so somebody is always leaving; the typical ticket ran about $25 last year. One honest note: the Downeaster doesn’t stop here. Durham and Dover are the train’s nearest doors, and the bus is the straight shot.
Cape Ann and Newburyport
About an hour on the commuter rail
- MBTA Zone 7 to Gloucester$11.00
- MBTA Zone 8 to Rockport or Newburyport$12.25
You won’t find these on Wanderu; the MBTA is simply the ride, from North Station, about hourly. Gloucester is a working fishing port with America’s oldest art colony attached, Rockport is the postcard at the end of the line, where the red fishing shack known as Motif No. 1 has been painted more times than any building in America, and Newburyport pairs a brick-federalist downtown with Plum Island’s beaches. Newburyport lost its intercity bus back in 2021; the train never blinked.
Fall River and New Bedford, MA
About 90 minutes by train or bus
- Boston to Fall River busesfrom $9
- Boston to New Bedford busesfrom $9
- MBTA South Coast Rail$12.25, $10 weekends
The newest day trip in Massachusetts: South Coast Rail opened in March 2025, the first passenger trains to Fall River and New Bedford in more than 65 years. It’s $12.25 from South Station, $10 on weekends, about 90 minutes. Peter Pan runs the bus from $10 if the schedule fits better.
New Bedford is the one to start with. Moby-Dick opens here, the Whaling Museum anchors a national historical park, and Boston-area visits jumped more than 40 percent in the train’s first year, so the secret is already out. Fall River answers with Battleship Cove, the largest collection of preserved US Navy ships anywhere.
Cape Cod: Hyannis, MA
From about 1 hour 15 minutes by bus
- Boston to Hyannis busesfrom $29
- Boston to Bourne busesfrom $26
Peter Pan runs Boston to Hyannis all year, with last year’s typical ticket around $35, and sells Bourne, at the canal end of the Cape, on the same corridor. From the Hyannis docks the ferries fan out to Nantucket, which makes this the cheapest car-free doorway to the islands. In summer the CapeFLYER train joins in Friday through Sunday, Memorial Day through Labor Day. Our full guide to getting to Cape Cod from Boston covers the whole peninsula.
Concord, NH
From about 1 hour 25 minutes by bus
- Boston to Concord busesfrom $16
The calmer capital day trip: 28 departures a day, a gold-domed State House you can tour for free, and the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center for the planetarium crowd. Typical fare last year was about $26.
Two to three hours
Portland, ME
From just under 2 hours by bus, 2 and a half on the train
- Boston to Portland busesfrom $16
- Boston to Portland trainsfrom $26
The classic. The Old Port’s cobblestones hold more good restaurants per block than anywhere in New England, the lobster roll debate has no wrong answers, and the breweries alone justify the trip. Typical ticket last year: about $33.
One data quirk worth knowing: Portland fares barely move whether you book two months out or two days out, so this is the trip to take when everything else sold out of cheap seats. The Downeaster leaves from North Station, not South, and the bus from South Station is usually the faster and cheaper of the two.
Springfield, MA
From about 1 and a half hours by bus
- Boston to Springfield busesfrom $12
- Boston to Springfield trainsfrom $16
Springfield’s cheap secret is the train: Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited crosses the state once a day each way, and its typical Springfield fare last year was $18, cheaper than most of the buses. The Basketball Hall of Fame is here because basketball was invented here, and the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden sits in a quadrangle of five museums covered by one ticket. Springfield also rewards planning more than any route we measured: booking two months out ran about a third cheaper than last-minute.
Hartford, CT
From about 2 hours by bus
- Boston to Hartford busesfrom $12
Boston’s second-busiest corridor last year, 5,250 tickets, and the bus is the way: there’s no direct train, and the rail routing via New Haven takes twice as long. Fares start low but the typical ticket ran about $35, so book ahead. Go for the Mark Twain House, the funniest house tour in New England, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, the country’s oldest continuously operating public art museum, which quietly owns a Caravaggio.
New Haven, CT
From just under 2 hours by train
- Boston to New Haven trainsfrom $17
- Boston to New Haven busesfrom $20
This is a pizza pilgrimage, and it’s not close: Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern have been arguing about crust since before your grandparents met, and the only correct methodology is all three. Between slices, Yale’s museums are free, including a university art gallery that would headline most cities. The Northeast Regional beats the bus here on both time and price, and this corridor rewards booking ahead about as much as any we measured.
Make it a weekend
Portland and Cape Cod both upgrade nicely into overnights. This one demands it.
New York, NY
From about 3 and a half hours, bus or train
- Boston to New York busesfrom $12
- Boston to New York trainsfrom $22
Our single biggest route from Boston: 61,000 tickets last year, across six bus companies and Amtrak, with more than a hundred bus departures a day. The 2018 version of this page bragged about a $16.91 average. Let’s bury that number: the typical fare is now about $42, though a quarter of last year’s tickets still went for under $33.
The move is simple: book the bus ahead for the price, or the Northeast Regional when you’d rather trade money for legroom and a shoreline view. Our Boston to New York guide compares every option on the corridor.
The Downeaster’s smaller stops
Amtrak’s Maine train also calls at five smaller stops worth knowing: Haverhill in the Merrimack Valley, Exeter for one of New England’s prettiest prep-school downtowns, Durham for UNH, and Wells and Saco for the southern Maine beaches.
- Haverhill, MAfrom $14
- Exeter, NHfrom $14
- Durham, NHfrom $17
- Wells, MEfrom $18
- Saco, MEfrom $21
What’s still under $20 (the honest list)
The 2018 version of this page promised 26 destinations under $20. Here is what that list looks like in 2026, by the share of last year’s tickets that actually came in under $20: Salem, NH (94 percent), Nashua (82 percent), Londonderry (80 percent), Worcester (61 percent) and Providence (55 percent). That’s the intercity list. The MBTA commuter rail is the loophole that keeps Boston cheap: every one-way fare on the network is $13.25 or less, and the $10 weekend pass buys unlimited commuter rail travel for a flat $10 a day, Salem to Worcester to New Bedford and back if you can stand the pace. The under-$20 idea lives on in our under-$20 guides for other cities.
What the 2018 list lost
Seven of the 26 routes no longer sell at all. Secaucus was the biggest casualty, a commuter favorite that ended in March 2020 and never came back. The Foxwoods run to Ledyard went quiet in 2021, and the small-town Massachusetts stops (Wareham, Somerset, Acton and Concord) faded out one by one. Newburyport lost its intercity bus in 2021, but the commuter rail kept rolling, so the town stays on this page under Cape Ann. The lesson of the last eight years is simple: the buses came and went, and the trains mostly stayed.
How to pay less (what 95,000 tickets say)
We looked at every Boston departure booked on Wanderu between September 2025 and September 2026. Four things held up:
- Under $20 is a neighborhood, not the norm. About 3 percent of all tickets came in under $20, and nearly all of them were going to New Hampshire or Providence. Budget $25 to $45 for most of this page.
- Book ahead where it counts. Springfield and New Haven ran about a third cheaper booked two months out than last-minute, and New York’s typical $42 fare drops toward $39 with two weeks’ notice. Portland is the exception: its fares barely move, so book it whenever.
- January is the cheap month. On the two biggest corridors, fares peak in October and November and bottom out after New Year’s, with the same companies running all year. That’s demand, not supply, so the winter traveler wins.
- Stop chasing the almost-free seat. The loss-leader fares the 2018 page was built around now make up the bottom one percent of what actually gets booked to New York. When one appears, someone who booked weeks ahead gets it. Be that person or let it go.
For the version of this advice that works from any city, read our guide to finding the cheapest tickets.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best day trips from Boston by train?
Providence is the standout: Amtrak does it in about 35 minutes and more than half of last year’s tickets cost under $20. The MBTA commuter rail covers Salem, Rockport, Gloucester, Newburyport, Worcester and the new Fall River and New Bedford line for at most $13.25 one way. The Amtrak Downeaster runs from North Station to Haverhill, Exeter, Durham, Wells, Saco and Portland, Maine.
Can you do day trips from Boston without a car?
Yes, easily. Every destination on this page has a train or a bus from downtown Boston, and the stations sit on the T: South Station for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and the intercity bus terminal, North Station for the Downeaster and the Salem and Cape Ann trains. The real gaps are rural spots like mountain trailheads and beach towns beyond the last stop.
What day trips from Boston are under $20?
Five intercity routes still book under $20 most of the time: Salem, NH (94 percent of last year’s tickets), Nashua (82 percent), Londonderry (80 percent), Worcester (61 percent) and Providence (55 percent). On top of that, every MBTA commuter rail fare is $13.25 or less one way, and the $10 weekend pass covers the whole network for a flat $10 a day.
Is the train or the bus cheaper from Boston?
It depends on the corridor. To Providence and New Haven the train is the bargain. To New York, Portland and New Hampshire the bus usually wins. To Springfield the cheap seat is Amtrak’s once-a-day Lake Shore Limited. Where the MBTA commuter rail goes, it beats everything.
How do you get to Salem from Boston without a car?
Take the Newburyport/Rockport commuter rail line from North Station: about 30 minutes, $8 each way in Zone 3. October is Salem’s busiest month by far, so ride early in the day. A seasonal ferry from Long Wharf is the scenic alternative.
What are good weekend trips from Boston by bus or train?
New York is the big one, from about 3 and a half hours by bus or train, and it books cheapest about two weeks out. Portland, Maine and Cape Cod both work as long day trips that improve into overnights, and Providence during a WaterFire lighting is worth the late train home.
The “from” prices on this page refresh from Wanderu’s route data: each is the cheapest fare recently available on that route, the same figure its route page shows. “Typical” fares are Wanderu bookings from Boston, September 2025 to September 2026, per ticket, the full price paid. MBTA fares are the T’s published zone fares as of September 2026.
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