Sarebus in a nutshell
Imagine you want to take a bus from Bilbao to Vitoria
Today, to find out which buses run on a Tuesday morning, you would have to visit each operator's website separately — La Unión, Alsa, Pesa… — or hunt through PDFs and scattered timetables. Sarebus brings it all together in one place, like a "Google for regional buses" across the Basque Country, Navarre and nearby areas.
What can you do?
It's very simple
- Go to the website (sarebus.com).
- Enter where you're leaving from, where you're going, and which day you want to travel.
- You get a list of buses with departure time, journey duration, and which operator runs each service.
- If there is no direct bus, it also suggests routes with a transfer (changing buses at an intermediate stop).
- When you pick one, click "Book" and it takes you to that operator's website to buy your ticket there.
Sarebus does not sell tickets. It only helps you find the trip and sends you to the right place to buy it.
How much data do we handle?
Catalogue figures today
- Operators
- 33
- Trips
- 140,325
- Stops
- 7,264
We work with 33 operators, 140,325 scheduled trips and 7,264 stops. Thousands of updated timetables power the search.
Where do the timetables come from?
Public information, collected and organised
Nobody types the timetables by hand. Bus companies publish their data officially (schedules, stops, routes) in a standard format that Spain's Ministry of Transport also uses. It is public, open information.
- Collect that data from several operators (La Unión, Alsa, Pesa, Alavabus, Navarra…).
- Sort and clean it — sometimes the same stop appears under different names with each operator, and Sarebus tries to unify them so you are not confused.
- Update it regularly: the data is reloaded every day so timetables do not go stale.
Think of it like a librarian who collects timetables from every company, puts them in order on the same shelf, and checks each morning in case something has changed.
What is behind the website?
Several parts working together, like departments in an office
Together: the website asks → the brain searches the store → you get the results.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| The website | What you see: the search, results, route pages (Bilbao–Vitoria, etc.), the blog, this page… |
| The brain | When you search for a trip, the website asks a central program: "Which buses run from A to B on that day?" That program searches the database and returns the answer. |
| The database | A large, organised store of thousands of stops, routes and timetables. That is where all the information lives. |
| Data loading | A process that, every day, downloads new timetables from the operators and loads them into that store. |
| The admin panel | An internal tool (only for whoever maintains the project) to fix stop names, group cities, and so on. Regular users never see it. |
What it does NOT do (for now)
So you know what to expect
- It does not sell tickets — it only redirects you to each operator's website.
- It does not tell you if a bus is delayed — it uses planned timetables, not live information ("the bus is 10 minutes late").
- It is not a replacement for Google Maps for everything — it is mainly for regional intercity buses that often do not show up well on generic maps.
- The mobile app is not finished yet; for now the main product is the website.
- It does not guarantee a direct bus between any two points — sometimes only transfer options exist, or no published connection at all.
Two people behind the project
Who builds it?
We are two friends — a designer and a software architect — with more than 15 years in tech building projects on the internet.
Any questions?
Write to us
Questions, suggestions or complaints
If you want to tell us something about Sarebus, we would love to hear from you.
hola@sarebus.com