E-scooters in Osaka: renting LUUP, who may ride, where to ride and where to park

E-scooters in Osaka: LUUP on the map

The map shows one company’s e-scooters in Osaka, LUUP, counted at its ports: each port on the Osaka map shows how many scooters stand there, without their charge or range, and ports closed at the time are left off. At 10:50 on Thursday 29 October 2026, Osaka time, the map’s Osaka figure was about 3,200 LUUP scooters: a snapshot, not a fleet size.

That figure is the map’s count for LUUP’s Osaka service as a whole, not for the city alone: every port of the service counts as Osaka, including any beyond the city limits. A City of Osaka paper of July 2026 notes that LUUP spread into neighbouring cities, Sakai, Suita and Higashiosaka among them, from March 2026.

ScootRadar shows standing e-scooters only: not LUUP’s e-bikes or seated scooters, and not the bicycles of docomo bike share and Open Street, the other two main share operators the City names.

Beam, another e-scooter company, still lists Osaka City on its page for partner cities, but its page for riders no longer lists Japan (both read on 29 October 2026), and we couldn’t confirm that it rents scooters in Osaka now.

New to shared scooters? See how to rent an e-scooter.

Where LUUP runs in Osaka, and where to end a ride

A paper for the City of Osaka’s bicycle council of 29 July 2026 counts about 2,400 LUUP ports in the city, the most of any share operator, against about 750 for docomo bike share and about 400 for Open Street. LUUP’s ports are densest in the central wards of Kita, Chuo, Nishi and Naniwa, and in Yodogawa and Higashiyodogawa around Shin-Osaka. The City counts them as share-cycle ports and doesn’t say how many take scooters.

The same paper notes that LUUP and docomo bike share have teamed up with Osaka Metro to put ports around its stations.

Japan’s guideline for rental companies asks them to oblige riders, in their terms, to return the scooter to a rental point (貸出拠点). The app shows where a ride may end.

Don’t leave it on the pavement or on the right-hand side of the road: Osaka Prefectural Police list both as places where you may not park. If the rider can’t be held to account for a scooter left illegally, the rental company, as its user (使用者), can be ordered to pay Japan’s parking penalty (放置違反金).

Japanese law sets no night ban for e-scooters; the national guideline only suggests, as an example, that rental companies stop renting at night from ports in nightlife districts.

Can you ride one? Age, licence and what visitors need

Japan’s rules hang on a class the Road Traffic Act (道路交通法, Act No. 105 of 25 June 1960) has had since 1 July 2023: the specified small motorised bicycle, 特定原付 for short. To count, a scooter can’t go faster than 20 km/h, is no more than 190 cm long and 60 cm wide, has a motor of no more than 0.6 kW and carries a green lamp that shows its top speed. A scooter outside the class needs a driving licence and a helmet, Osaka Prefectural Police say.

• No driving licence is needed for the class.
• 16 or over. Riding under 16 is banned, and so is giving an e-scooter to someone under 16 who may ride it.
• Helmet. The law asks riders to try to wear one (an effort duty, 努力義務) and sets no penalty. The City of Osaka urges you to wear one.

The rest is up to the rental company. Japan’s March 2023 guideline for rental companies, published by the National Police Agency (NPA), asks them to check every user’s age, for example by an official ID or a credit card in the user’s own name, and to have every user, foreigners included, pass a traffic-rules test or watch a video before the first ride. The app shows what it asks of you.

Where can you ride in Osaka? The road, cycle lanes and the 6 km/h pavement mode

On the road. Ride at the left edge of the roadway, never on the right-hand side. Cycle tracks (自転車道) and lanes kept for bicycles (普通自転車専用通行帯) are open to you too, Osaka Prefectural Police say. Riding where you may not, the pavement included, costs ¥6,000 on the spot.

On the pavement, only where a sign allows bicycles (普通自転車等及び歩行者等専用, “bicycles and pedestrians only”) and only in the scooter’s pavement mode, in which the green top-speed lamp flashes and it can’t go faster than 6 km/h. Keep to the roadway side, or to the part marked for bicycles, let pedestrians go first and stop if they are in the way: not doing so costs ¥3,000. Unlike cyclists, you get no exception for age or for a road too dangerous to ride on. In that mode you may also use the roadside strip (路側帯) on the left, unless it is marked for pedestrians only, without getting in walkers’ way.

Signs. A small plate under a sign that names 軽車両 (light vehicles) or 自転車 (bicycles) covers e-scooters too, Osaka Prefectural Police note: a one-way street applies to you unless its plate says 自転車を除く (“except bicycles”). A pedestrian road (歩行者用道路) is open to you only where a plate exempts bicycles, and then slowly: ¥5,000 if you don’t slow down.

Right turns always take two stages. At lights, ride straight across on the green to the far corner, turn to face your new direction and go when the light ahead turns green. Turning any other way costs ¥3,000.

One rider, hands free, sober. Carrying a passenger costs ¥5,000, and using a phone for a call or watching its screen while moving ¥12,000; once you have stopped, it is fine. Riding after drinking is banned outright.

Japan’s e-scooter rules in 2026, as Osaka police list them

The Road Traffic Act sets the riding rules everywhere in Japan, so they are the same in Osaka as in Tokyo, and its Enforcement Order sets the on-the-spot penalties (反則金) below, as in force on 29 October 2026. Osaka Prefectural Police list them in their e-scooter handbook (as of 25 September 2025).

Repeat offenders go back to class. Anyone caught twice or more within three years for any of 17 kinds of dangerous riding, red lights and riding on the pavement among them, is ordered onto a three-hour course by the prefecture’s public safety commission, for a fee of ¥6,300, Osaka Prefectural Police say; skipping it can bring a fine of up to ¥50,000.

Taking your own e-scooter on Osaka Metro and JR West

Osaka Metro lets bicycles and kickboards, electric kickboards included, aboard only taken apart or folded and packed in a bag made for them, its carry-on rules say (read on 29 October 2026). Each passenger may bring up to two carry-on items free, each no more than 2.5 m in length, width and height added together, 2 m on any side and 30 kg, and only where they cause no trouble on the train.

JR West’s passenger rules, as in force on 1 October 2026, set the same limits and let bicycles aboard only taken apart or folded and bagged; they don’t name e-scooters (art. 308).

A shared scooter ends its ride at a port instead; to find one near your station, open the Osaka map.

Kyoto, Kobe and Tokyo

At 10:50 on 29 October the map also showed about 1,500 LUUP scooters in Kyoto and about 180 in Kobe. The rules are Japan’s everywhere: for the capital, see e-scooters in Tokyo.

Did you know?

• Electric kickboards. In Japanese these scooters are 電動キックボード (“electric kickboards”): to find them, search “電動キックボード 大阪”.
• Second for accidents. Osaka Prefecture had 55 (14.2%) of Japan’s 386 injury accidents involving the class in 2025, and Tokyo 278 (72.0%), NPA figures show.
• About 3,600 share ports. The City of Osaka counted that many for all share operators together in July 2026.