Bike Sharing Market Size & Share Analysis - Trends, Drivers, Competitive Landscape, and Forecasts (2025 – 2029)

Bike Sharing Market Size

Bike Sharing Market Trends & Growth Drivers

Partnerships between MaaS and Bike Sharing Companies Are Trending

• Bike sharing companies are seeking growth in their daily ridership to increase their revenue.
• For this, many companies have taken strategic measures, and partnerships with giant mobility service providers is one of them.
• With this, commuters are allowed to access various efficient modes of transport in one trip.
• Daily users of public mobility services are now able to reduce their dependency on costlier modes of transport for first and last-mile traveling.
• This integration of conventional MaaS and bike sharing services allows customers to travel around the city via various modes of transport with just one app.
• They can easily book tickets and pay for all the mobility services at once.
• This approach has the potential to drive the adoption of micromobilty services by improving the commuting experience for customers.
• Ultimately, this integration could help cities achieve their sustainability and carbon reduction goals by promoting the usage of bikes over cars.

Cost-Effective Nature of Services Drives Their Usage

• The low commuting cost attached with bike sharing services is one of the major drivers for the growth of the market.
• The typical revenue structure of a bike sharing service includes an initial fixed fee for unlocking the bike and USD 0.15 per 30 minutes of travel on an average.
• This is much less than that of other public shared mobility options, such as taxi services, ride sharing services, and car rental services.
• Although e-bike sharing costs more than pedal bike sharing, shared e-bikes are economical than other modes of shared transport services, such as ride sharing and car rental.
• Many companies have started offering subscription-based bike sharing services on daily, weekly or monthly basis, which makes commuting more economical for regular users.
• For instance, the Velib bike sharing firm in Paris offers one and seven-day passes for occasional users.
• Similarly, Citi Bike offers a day pass, three-day pass, and annual membership to its users.
• Hence, these economical offerings by service providers are acting as a major growth driver for the bike sharing market, worldwide.
• Moreover, in 2024, Indianapolis launched free bike passes for residents, to make daily commuting more accessible, especially to low-income populations.
• Similarly, Boston, San Francisco, and many other U.S. cities offer subsidies and discounts to make bike sharing services affordable.
• Such programs not only make the bike sharing services themselves affordable but also give residents an alternative to buying and maintaining private vehicles, which are becoming more expensive by the year.
• This has been proved by reports from global cities, such as Paris and London, which suggest that if offered affordable shared bikes, residents are more likely to pick them over driving their cars.

Regulatory Hurdles Hamper Business Operations for Players

• Regulatory hurdles hamper the growth of the market as the regulations promoting or restricting shared bike usage vary across countries.
• This creates difficulties for players in forming strategies to increase the availability of their services, and many of them will likely pull out of places with stringent or unclear regulations.
• Certain cities strictly regulate fleet sizes, routes, parking, and fares. One of the cities where this observation is the most prevalent is San Francisco, where strict regulations have restricted the usage of these services by subjecting players to complex compliance procedures.
• Similarly, the high incidence of thefts and vandalism forced San Diego to impose stringent regulations, post which a lot of market players exited the city in 2023.
• Because the concerns flagged might be exaggerated in many cities, the regulations also discourage technological innovations.
• The only way for companies to survive is via strong lobbying to the local administration, adapting to the evolving laws, and charge higher fares.
• However, higher fares mean that low-income people will not be able to use these services and opt for conventional public transportation modes, including buses and mass rapid transit, instead.

Bike Sharing Market Analysis

Type Insights

The station-based category leads the market with 92.6% share in 2024. This is attributed to the earlier adoption of the station-based (docked) business model, its reliability in terms of the bikes being left in their correct place, and strong support at the city level for docked systems. Moreover, this model also integrates better with the existing modes of transportation and, is therefore, trusted more by both market players and commuters. As a result, many major players in the market, such as Citi Bike, BIXI Montreal, and Capital Bikeshare, operate station-based systems.

The dockless category is growing at the higher rate over this decade. This is ascribed to the increasing number of companies that are settling for the dockless bike sharing concept, as it necessitates lesser capital and involves lesser expenditure than a system based on station. Moreover, clients detect dockless sharing more attractive, owing to its cost-effectiveness and convenient features, such as parking flexibility over the systems-based stations. Also, the evolution of the dockless sharing system has been made feasible by comprising GPS technology, customer-ready mobile payments, and lower costs of investment for locking of bike and monitoring the systems.

In addition, dockless bike sharing delivers significant comfort to customers since they do not have to think of finished stations upon the advent and vacant stations at the initiation of the journey, i.e., it permits customers to vacate bicycles and put back them anywhere within a provided geographical area. With this system of dockless bike sharing, bikes can be left at a rack or on the pavement on the interior of a selected district area. The attribute to pick up and drop off the bike in any place, there is a public parking space that is legal, which makes the system of dockless bike sharing more appropriate and simplifies the access to the public on a regular basis.

For instance, Uber has tied up with an electrical cycle-sharing app, Yulu, which provides bicycle rentals to its clients. Currently, the Uber app deflects its clients to register themselves on Yulu, an alternative that straightaway allows customers to reserve the service from the company’s app.

The following types have been covered:

• Station-Based (Larger Category)
• Dock-Less (Faster-Growing Category)

Regional Analysis

Globally, the Asia-Pacific region is the largest market for bike sharing services, with 86.5% share in 2024, and it is projected to witness the same trend during the expected duration as well. This is mainly ascribed to the growing number of bike sharing schemes in the area and the increasing investment in this field. For instance, Chinese engineers of bike sharing, such as Hellobike and Mobike, have obtained remarkable investments in the previous few years.

Also, the number of bike fleets, with the financed amount, and docking stations is rising. This is attributed to customers’ swift adoption of bike sharing services in different countries such as China, India, Vietnam, and Singapore, where the requirement for such services has been increasing rapidly. For instance, in December 2020, Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) initiated an experimental project with 225 cycles in at least 25 docking stations in India. In the next phase of the project, in May 2021, a complete total of 1,250 cycles was added, and the docking stations’ number increased from 25 to 155.

In China, based on the Ministry of Transport (MoT), the country has more than 70 bike sharing companies, with the contribution of 23 million bicycles and over 400 million clients. Also, companies, such as Ofo, have organized to diversify their services in countries of Asia, Europe, and North America.

Furthermore, the North American market holds a significant share. This is because many such providers of services are concentrating on increasing the fleet of electrical bicycles to obtain a competitive edge. For example, Jump Bike increased its electric bicycle fleet by nearly 250 units in 2018 in San Francisco.

LAMEA is expected to be the fastest-growing regional market. The major countries for bike sharing in the region are Mexico, Brazil, and the U.A.E. Various countries in the LAMEA region have been witnessing a growing ridership, mainly due to the fact that bike sharing schemes are rapidly increasing in the region, for both public and corporates’ use. Additionally, the government in countries such as Mexico and Brazil is encouraging people to use shared bikes as their mode of short-distance transport. Local governments in few countries also built dedicated lanes for bikes, recently.

Although both, the dock-less and station-based, systems are popular in the region, the station-based system possesses the major share of the LAMEA bike sharing market. One of the largest station-based bike sharing service provider, Tembici is currently present in over 18 cities in the region. It is set to provide its services in Buenos Aires and Santiago, in partnership with Stage Intelligence, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Furthermore, ECOBICI, another among the leading public bike sharing service providers in the LAMEA region, operating in Mexico, currently has a fleet of 6,800 bikes and around 485 docking stations. In the U.A.E., Cyacle had a fleet of nearly 325 bikes, user base of over 75,000, and 50 stations, before its acquisition by Careem. The company charges around USD 5.0 for a one-day pass.

Apart from these regional bike sharing operators, Chinese players, Ofo and Mobike, have also entered the region, but both the companies have been facing challenges, such as vandalism and theft, in Mexico, making it slightly difficult for them to continue providing their services in the country. However, Mexico has taken various measures to increase the shared bicycle usage in many cities. For instance, many dedicated lanes for bicycles have been introduced. Additionally, few roads have been reserved for only bicycles on specific days. These measures are expected to be the biggest growth drivers for the market in the region.

The market in following regions and countries have been analyzed:

• North America
  • U.S. (Larger Country Market)
  • Canada (Faster-Growing Country Market)
• Europe
  • Germany
  • U.K. (Fastest-Growing Country Market)
  • France (Largest Country Market)
  • Italy
  • Spain
  • Rest of Europe
• Asia-Pacific (APAC) (Largest Regional Market)
  • Japan
  • China (Largest Country Market)
  • India (Fastest-Growing Country Market)
  • South Korea
  • Australia
  • Rest of APAC
• Latin America, Middle East, and Africa (LAMEA) (Fastest-Growing Regional Market)
  • Brazil (Largest Country Market)
  • Mexico (Fastest-Growing Country Market)
  • U.A.E.
  • Rest of LAMEA

Bike Sharing Market Share

Being a service-based market, it is highly fragmented. A huge number of international and local players operate across countries, competing on price and innovative electronic features in their bicycles. E-bikes are easily available, and encouraged by the government efforts to achieve clean transportation, players are rapidly expanding their fleets in new places. Further, a lot of IT companies are creating applications for micromobility services, while numerous automotive hardware companies offer telematics modules for the vehicles.

Bike Sharing Market Company News

• In July 2024, OpenStreet & DOCOMO BIKE SHARE formed a partnership to jointly utilize bike-sharing ports across Japan, aiming to increase customer convenience by optimizing port usage and operations.
• In March 2024, TIER and Dott merged, creating one of Europe's largest micro-mobility providers. This merger combines bike and scooter-sharing services.
• In January 2024, Nextbike (Tier Mobility) expanded its e-bike services in Spain, with new launches in Arteixo, Santander, and Bizkaia.
• In December 2023, Tembici received an investment of USD 23 million from DFC and IDB Invest to expand bicycle-sharing services in Latin America, particularly focusing on e-bike services.