Marrakech to Casablanca: every way to make the journey

Why travellers choose a private transfer

This is the one route on our list where we will usually tell you not to book us.

Marrakech to Casablanca is about 240 km, roughly three hours by road. It is also the busiest rail corridor in the country. ONCF runs a train every hour or two, the train does it in around two hours forty minutes, and it costs a fraction of what a car costs. On this route the train is not the budget compromise. It is faster than we are.

So the honest question is not “coach or car”. It is “is there a specific reason the train does not work for you?” There are four good ones.

An early flight from Mohammed V. The airport is well outside Casablanca and the margin for error on a 6am departure is thin. A car that leaves your riad at the hour you choose and stops at the terminal removes two changes and a lot of anxiety.

Luggage and children. The train is comfortable, but it involves getting to a station in Marrakech, managing bags on and off, and getting from Casa Voyageurs to wherever you are actually going. With a pushchair and two cases that is a different proposition than it is with a backpack.

You are not going to the city centre. The train serves stations. If your destination is a suburb, the port, the airport or somewhere on the way, the car goes to the address and the train does not.

You want to stop, or to continue. Casablanca is often not the end of the journey — plenty of people carry on to Rabat the same day. A car makes that one booking instead of three.

If none of those apply, take the train. We would rather you came back to us for a route where we are genuinely the better choice.

The train, in enough detail to actually use it

ONCF’s Marrakech to Casablanca service runs direct, roughly every one to two hours from about 06:00 to about 21:00, and the journey is about two hours forty. Trains arrive at Casa Voyageurs, which is central and walkable to a good deal of the city, and which connects onward to Rabat, Tangier and the airport line.

Book ahead in summer and around public holidays. Outside those, turning up and buying a ticket is usually fine. First class costs more and gets you a reserved seat in a quieter carriage, which on a three-hour journey is often worth the difference. As a guide, second class was about 85-130 MAD and first class about 145-190 MAD in 2026. Those figures come from third-party sites, not from ONCF, and ONCF fares rise the nearer you book to departure, so check the price and timetable for your date on oncf-voyages.ma before relying on them.

Coaches run the route too. CTM has many departures a day, taking about 2 h 35 to 3 h 45 for about 90-160 MAD (2026, third-party figures), and Supratours also serves it. Times and fares change: check them on ctm.ma or supratours.ma.

One thing worth knowing if you are travelling further: Supratours, the coach operator, is owned by ONCF and sells combined rail-and-coach tickets. That is how you reach places the railway does not go, like Essaouira or Agadir, on a single booking.

What the drive is actually like

If you do take a car, it is an easy drive and an unremarkable one.

You leave Marrakech north-west and join the A3 motorway (formerly the A7), a modern toll motorway that runs most of the way. The landscape is open agricultural plain — flat, dry, farmed, and honestly not much to look at after the first half hour. This is not a scenic route, and nobody should book it as one. Settat is the main town on the corridor and functions as a break point rather than a destination.

The interest is at the ends, not in the middle. That is part of why the train wins here: there is very little you gain by watching this particular stretch of road go by.

What Casablanca actually is, before you commit

Casablanca is Morocco’s commercial capital, not its tourist one, and the gap between what visitors expect and what they find is wider here than anywhere else in the country.

There is no sprawling historic medina of the kind Marrakech and Fes have. What there is: a large modern port city, French colonial and art deco architecture in the centre, a serious restaurant scene, a long corniche, and the Hassan II Mosque, which is one of the few mosques in Morocco non-Muslims can go inside and is genuinely worth the trip on its own.

Most itineraries give Casablanca more time than it needs. A day is usually enough unless you are here for business or for the food. Travellers who arrive expecting old Morocco and give it three days generally wish they had spent two of them in Essaouira or Fes.

Where it is unambiguously useful is as a gateway. Mohammed V is the country’s main international airport, and a great many trips begin or end here whether or not the city itself was the point.

Practical things worth knowing

If you are catching a flight, give us the flight number. We track it and time the pickup to it, and Mohammed V is far enough out of the city that the timing genuinely matters.

Our price is for the vehicle, not the seat: driver, fuel, tolls and waiting time included. Four people pay what one pays, which is the point at which a car starts to compete with four train tickets.

Compare the fleet on our vehicles page, or see every route we price on the price list. For journeys where a car is more clearly the right answer, Marrakech to Agadir has no train at all, and Marrakech to Essaouira has neither train nor motorway.