Are Moroccan taxis metered or fixed-price?

This trips up nearly every visitor, so let me untangle it clearly: the answer depends entirely on which kind of taxi you're in, and Morocco has two very different ones. Petit taxis are the small, colour-coded city cabs (the colour varies by city) that carry up to three passengers on short hops within a town — and these legally have meters and are supposed to run on them. Grand taxis are the big, usually elderly Mercedes that run fixed routes between towns and out to villages, carry up to six, and have no meters at all, working instead on a set per-seat fare.

With petit taxis, the meter is the law but not always the practice. On the meter, a short city ride is genuinely cheap, with a small surcharge in the evenings and at night, which is all legitimate. The catch is that with an obvious tourist, plenty of drivers will 'forget' the meter and quote a flat, inflated price instead. My standard move is to get in and politely say 'compteur, s'il vous plaît' (meter, please) at the start; if the driver refuses or claims it's broken, either agree a fair fixed fare before moving or wave the next cab over — there's always another. Knowing the rough local rate for your trip gives you the confidence to hold the line.

Grand taxis are the other system and there's no meter to ask for — it's fixed-price by design. You're buying one seat on a set route at a price locals know well, and you confirm that per-seat fare before you climb in ('combien par place?'). They leave when full, meaning six paying passengers, so it's a shared squeeze; if you'd rather not wait or share, you can charter the whole car by paying for all six seats. The key with grand taxis is simply to agree the number out loud first, because as a visitor you may be quoted above the going rate.

So the rule that covers every case is the same: settle the price before the wheels move. For petit taxis, push for the meter and treat a flat quote as negotiable; for grand taxis, confirm the fixed per-seat fare up front. Carry small notes because change is often scarce, and don't be shy — agreeing the fare first is completely normal here and the drivers expect it. Once you internalise the two-types distinction, taxis are quick, cheap and genuinely useful; it's only the traveller who assumes a meter everywhere who ends up overpaying.