E-bike subscription Netherlands

What you actually get for the monthly fee

An e-bike subscription (an e-bike abonnement, if you’re searching in Dutch) is a rental with the servicing built in. Swapfiets, the company behind the bikes with the blue front tyre, owns the bike. You pay one fixed price a month and get the bike, two built-in locks, unlimited repairs and basic theft cover. If a problem can’t be fixed in about ten minutes, you ride off on a replacement, and inside a Swapfiets service area a mechanic can come to you.

You never own it, though. You can’t sell it at the end, you can’t take it out of the country, and when the payments stop the bike goes back. No purchase price and no haggling on Marktplaats when you leave, but nothing to show for the money either.

If you only need a bike for a long weekend, a subscription is overkill; our guide to e-bike rental in Amsterdam covers day rates and deposits.

Who rents e-bikes by the month in 2026, and what it costs

For a private rider in the Netherlands this is close to a one-company market. Swapfiets is owned by the Dutch group Pon Holdings, and in May 2026 it announced it was buying Berlin-based Dance, another e-bike subscription brand. Dance’s cities are places like Berlin, Hamburg and Paris, so the deal changes little on Dutch streets, but the combined business counts around 280,000 members in 45 cities. The other Dutch name that used to come up, e-bike to go, is now majority-owned by GreenMo Group, a company built around renting electric vehicles to delivery firms.

So the real choice is between Swapfiets’ three e-bikes. These are the prices it listed for Amsterdam on 25 October 2026 (the Power 7 cost the same in Enschede):

The Power 7 is the one I’d pick for most commutes: seven gears for headwinds and bridges, and the biggest battery of the three. The Power 1 is fine for short, flat city trips. All three fit riders between 1.60 and 2.00 metres.

The weight limits are the detail people miss. Swapfiets lists 95 kg for rider plus luggage on the Power 1 and 100 kg on the Power 7, so a heavier rider with a full laptop bag can be over before the first ride. The Power Plus takes riders up to 135 kg, which is the main reason to pay the extra €10 a month if you’re a heavier rider or you haul heavy shopping every day. Both the Power 1 and the Power 7 also stop with a coaster brake (you pedal backwards) as well as a hand brake. If you grew up outside the Netherlands, book one of Swapfiets’ free test rides before you commit.

Flexible or Regular: choose the plan before the bike

Each bike comes on two plans, and they differ on commitment and the joining fee.

Students get a monthly discount by ticking the student box at checkout and showing a valid student ID. If you change your mind straight after signing up, Dutch distance-selling rules give you 14 days to withdraw, although Swapfiets’ terms let it charge for the days you’ve had the bike plus the joining fee.

Theft and battery fees: where the real cost sits

Dutch police registered 86,950 bike thefts in 2025, according to provisional CBS figures, the fourth rise in a row. Amsterdam alone logged 10,810 in 2024, and per head of population the worst-hit places are student cities: Nijmegen, Delft, Amsterdam, Groningen and Eindhoven. (If you want the full picture, our e-bike theft numbers break it down by city.) A subscription doesn’t protect you from any of that. It turns a theft into a fixed bill, and the size of that bill depends almost entirely on how you parked.

Swapfiets charges its lower fee only when three things are true: both built-in locks were on (the ring lock on the frame and the chain), the battery was out of the bike and with you, and you can still produce both keys. Its terms also ask you to chain the bike to something fixed wherever you can, which is what any Dutch cyclist would tell you anyway.

Full Theft Coverage starts at €3.90 a month (the exact rate depends on the bike) and cuts the locked-theft fee to €0. It also covers up to half of a stolen battery, and if you can’t produce the keys or the battery, you pay half the usual surcharge instead of all of it. At the starting price, a year of cover costs €46.80, about a fifth of one stolen Power 7. In any of the cities above, I’d add it on day one.

If it’s gone: what to do, in this order

1. Check it hasn’t been towed. Councils remove bikes parked in the wrong place, and the official advice is to check the depot first. If Swapfiets has to collect it for you, that’s €60 on any of its e-bikes.
2. Report it in the Swapfiets app within 24 hours: tap “I need help”, then “Lost bike”.
3. Report it to the police. For e-bikes, Swapfiets’ terms say you must help it report the theft, and you can file a police report online. The forms are in Dutch, and Swapfiets will help with the bike’s details.
4. Bring both keys, and the battery, to your replacement appointment. That’s your proof it was locked.

Notice periods, price rises and the rest of the small print

Swapfiets’ Dutch terms are readable, but few people get to the end of them. These are the clauses I’d want to know about before signing.

Getting the same bike through your employer

Before you pay for a subscription out of your net salary, ask HR whether there’s a bike scheme. Swapfiets has a business version, and it changes the tax maths completely. Your employer pays the subscription, and you’re taxed on a bijtelling of 7% of the bike’s recommended retail price per year, through your payslip. Swapfiets’ own example is a bike with a €1,500 list price: that adds €105 a year to your taxable pay, about €3.13 a month in tax at the 35.75% rate. Set up as gross salary exchange, Swapfiets reckons the bike costs you roughly 40% less, depending on your tax bracket.

There are two catches. On days you ride a company bike to work, you can’t also claim the tax-free travel allowance (€0.25 a kilometre in 2026) for that trip. And a work bike normally ends with the job. Our guides to the company e-bike scheme and to leasing an e-bike as an employee go through the routes and the numbers.

Subscribe or buy? The numbers over one, two and three years

This is the comparison I’d run before signing anything. On one side, a Power 7 on the Regular plan at €79.90 a month. On the other, buying a comparable new e-bike for €2,500, insuring and servicing it, then selling it when you leave. €2,500 is the Fietsersbond’s yardstick for a bike of the Power 7’s class; the average new e-bike sold in the Netherlands in 2025 cost €2,872, according to RAI Vereniging and BOVAG.

Both routes cost the same at about 19 months. Before that, the subscription is cheaper and far less hassle; after it, every extra month widens the gap in favour of owning. Even with the ANWB’s 25% resale value, buying still comes out about €194 ahead at three years.

What the table doesn’t capture cuts both ways: what a theft costs you (an insurer’s excess against Swapfiets’ fixed fee), and the hours it takes to buy a bike and sell it again. If you buy, you also need your own locks, and our e-bike lock guide covers what insurers accept. A used e-bike shrinks the buying column further; our second-hand buying guide shows what a fair price looks like, and the full cost of owning an e-bike is worth a read before you decide.

Private lease: the three-year middle road

If you’re staying put but don’t want repair bills, private lease sits between subscribing and buying. You sign for a set term, typically three years, and pay a fixed monthly fee with insurance and maintenance built in. ANWB Fiets Lease, for example, runs for 36 months and bundles insurance, maintenance and repairs with its Wegenwacht Fiets breakdown service. There’s no excess if the bike is stolen, a €25 charge per repair or damage claim, and at the end ANWB offers you the bike or a new one.

Look hard at the exit terms, because getting out early usually means buying yourself out. A private lease is also a form of credit. The retailer 12GO Biking, for one, says its private lease is registered with BKR, the Dutch credit register, and a mortgage lender will see that. You also tend to pay the full recommended price, so the shop’s discounts don’t apply.

Who a subscription suits, and who should buy

My checklist before you sign

1. Check your address is inside a Swapfiets service area, so doorstep repairs actually reach you.
2. Choose Regular if you’re sure about six months, and Flexible only if you might leave sooner.
3. Add your weight to your usual bag and compare it with the bike’s limit.
4. Decide on Full Theft Coverage before the bike spends its first night outside a station.
5. Never leave a key in either lock, and keep the battery with you. You’ll need both keys and the battery to prove the bike was locked.
6. Put your cancellation date in your diary: one month’s notice, in the app or by email.
7. Ask HR about a bike scheme first.

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