Where to live · UAB
Where to live for Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona students
Almost all of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona sits at Bellaterra, in Cerdanyola del Vallès, off the city's metro network entirely. That single fact reorganises the whole decision: distance to the FGC Vallès line matters more than distance to campus, and no neighbourhood in this dataset escapes a real journey.
- One campus
- Off the city network
The short answer
The two neighbourhoods the numbers put first.
Two picks per campus, on rules you can check against the tables further down: the shortest modelled journey by metro and bus, and the cheapest room within 10 minutes of it. Room prices are for one person in a shared flat.
UAB - Bellaterra
Cerdanyola del Vallès · Universitat Autònoma (FGC S2/S6)
- Shortest modelled commute
- Bellaterra (UAB)
8 min door to door, train included, rooms around €420.
- Cheapest room within 10 minutes of it
Also Bellaterra (UAB). Nothing within 10 minutes of this campus is cheaper, which is unusual and worth knowing.
ModelledcommuteEstimatedrent
The campuses
Where they actually are.
One campus carries almost every faculty, so unlike UB there is no faculty question to answer first. The commute question is the whole question.
UAB - Bellaterra
Plaça Cívica, 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès)
- Station
- Universitat Autònoma (FGC S2/S6)
- Taught here
- Main campus - almost all faculties.
- Modelled as
- Outside the city transport network. Your journey is three legs: get to a railhead, take the Universitat Autònoma train, walk 4 min at the far end.
Address and coordinates: ICGC named address point 'Plaça Cívica, Bellaterra'; station coords from FGC network data Checked 2026-08-07.
The commute
Every neighbourhood we profile, ranked, by mode.
Door to door, measured from the centre of each neighbourhood. Modelled from published average speeds, not routed: there is no timetable in this and no live disruption, so treat it as a way of comparing neighbourhoods rather than as a departure board.
To UAB - Bellaterra
ModelledThree legs: to the railhead, the published train time, then a 4 minute walk.
| Neighbourhood | Total | Via | To the train | On the train | Bike | Car | Room |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bellaterra (UAB) | 8 | n/a | n/a | n/a | 5 | 14 | €420 |
| Sant Cugat | 16 | Sarrià | 38 | 26 | 24 | 29 | €600 |
| Les Tres Torres | 35 | Sarrià | 11 | 26 | 37 | 67 | €700 |
| Sarrià | 37 | Sarrià | 9 | 26 | 33 | 66 | €650 |
| Sant Gervasi | 39 | Sarrià | 14 | 26 | 43 | 69 | €700 |
| La Sagrera | 45 | Sarrià | 31 | 26 | 68 | 65 | €500 |
| El Putxet i el Farró | 47 | Sarrià | 15 | 26 | 45 | 65 | €620 |
| Sant Andreu | 48 | Sarrià | 33 | 26 | 63 | 60 | €500 |
| Gràcia | 49 | Sarrià | 17 | 26 | 50 | 67 | €700 |
| Sant Gervasi - la Bonanova | 49 | Sarrià | 13 | 26 | 41 | 64 | €680 |
| El Clot | 50 | Sarrià | 29 | 26 | 62 | 71 | €520 |
| Navas | 50 | Sarrià | 30 | 26 | 67 | 67 | €520 |
| Eixample Esquerra | 51 | Sarrià | 17 | 26 | 49 | 74 | €620 |
| Sagrada Família | 54 | Sarrià | 26 | 26 | 57 | 70 | €580 |
| Les Corts | 54 | Sarrià | 13 | 26 | 42 | 73 | €650 |
| El Raval | 55 | Plaça Catalunya | 11 | 39 | 51 | 81 | €550 |
| The Gothic Quarter | 55 | Plaça Catalunya | 11 | 39 | 50 | 81 | €650 |
| Eixample Nova Esquerra | 55 | Sarrià | 16 | 26 | 48 | 77 | €600 |
| Sants | 56 | Sarrià | 17 | 26 | 50 | 79 | €520 |
| Pedralbes | 56 | Sarrià | 12 | 26 | 40 | 71 | €700 |
| Fort Pienc | 57 | Plaça Catalunya | 13 | 39 | 54 | 76 | €580 |
| Vallcarca | 57 | Sarrià | 16 | 26 | 48 | 61 | €480 |
| Hostafrancs | 57 | Sarrià | 18 | 26 | 52 | 80 | €500 |
| Eixample Dreta | 57 | Sarrià | 20 | 26 | 51 | 74 | €750 |
| Poble-sec | 58 | Sarrià | 26 | 26 | 56 | 83 | €550 |
| Sant Antoni | 59 | Sarrià | 20 | 26 | 53 | 80 | €620 |
| Camp de l'Arpa | 60 | Sarrià | 28 | 26 | 62 | 68 | €485 |
| La Salut | 60 | Sarrià | 18 | 26 | 51 | 64 | €550 |
| El Baix Guinardó | 61 | Sarrià | 27 | 26 | 59 | 65 | €600 |
| Camp d'en Grassot | 62 | Sarrià | 20 | 26 | 55 | 68 | €620 |
| El Born | 63 | Plaça Catalunya | 12 | 39 | 52 | 80 | €680 |
| Poblenou (Llacuna) | 65 | Plaça Catalunya | 16 | 39 | 60 | 76 | €700 |
| Barceloneta | 66 | Plaça Catalunya | 14 | 39 | 56 | 84 | €620 |
| El Guinardó | 67 | Sarrià | 27 | 26 | 59 | 63 | €520 |
| Santa Eulàlia (l'Hospitalet) | 67 | Sarrià | 19 | 26 | 54 | 83 | €480 |
| Horta | 69 | Sarrià | 27 | 26 | 56 | 55 | €480 |
| Vila Olímpica | 69 | Plaça Catalunya | 15 | 39 | 59 | 81 | €750 |
| Maternitat i Sant Ramon | 71 | Sarrià | 14 | 26 | 44 | 75 | €570 |
| Poblenou | 72 | Plaça Catalunya | 17 | 39 | 64 | 76 | €750 |
| Diagonal Mar | 76 | Sarrià | 36 | 26 | 71 | 77 | €800 |
| Provençals del Poblenou | 77 | Plaça Catalunya | 20 | 39 | 68 | 74 | €620 |
Scroll sideways for the other modes and the room price.
Train time is FGC’s own published figure, not ours. Walking does not appear because there is no walking route to this campus, and the model says so rather than printing a number.
The honest part
What the numbers say not to do.
The instinct is to start in the old city, because that is what Barcelona looks like in photographs. For Bellaterra the reason it fails is unusual: the old city is not badly connected, it is badly connected to this one railway line.
The default shortlist
The names on every student housing list cost 47 to 58 extra minutes to UAB - Bellaterra.
These six have the highest share of international residents of the 41 we profile, which is why they dominate every list of where to live in Barcelona. Measured against Bellaterra (UAB), the fastest neighbourhood to UAB - Bellaterra at 8 minutes:
- El Raval55 min (+47)€550 a room
- The Gothic Quarter55 min (+47)€650 a room
- Fort Pienc57 min (+49)€580 a room
- Poble-sec58 min (+50)€550 a room
- El Born63 min (+55)€680 a room
- Barceloneta66 min (+58)€620 a room
At the far end of that list it is 58 minutes each way, which is 580 minutes a week if you go in five days. That is the real price of the postcard, and it is worth paying only if you know you are paying it.
The cheap end
The cheapest rooms we hold are also the shortest commute to UAB - Bellaterra.
The three cheapest neighbourhoods in the dataset, measured against Bellaterra (UAB) at 8 minutes and €420:
- Bellaterra (UAB)8 min€420 a room, -30% against that median
- Vallcarca57 min€480 a room, -20% against that median
- Santa Eulàlia (l'Hospitalet)67 min€480 a room, -20% against that median
That is the rarest result on this site: the saving and the commute point the same way. What you trade instead is distance from the centre, which the neighbourhood pages describe in full.
The train to Bellaterra
From Sarrià it is 26 minutes on the train. Everything else is how you reach Sarrià.
There is another way in, 39 min from Plaça Catalunya. Every neighbourhood pays the train, and then a 4 minute walk from Universitat Autònoma. What varies is the first leg, which is why the totals in the table above run from 8 minutes in Bellaterra (UAB) to 77 in Provençals del Poblenou: a spread of 69 minutes created almost entirely by how long it takes to reach the railhead.
It also means the usual instinct is wrong here. Moving further out to save rent only helps if the further-out neighbourhood is closer to the line, and mostly it is not.
The rent
What the recommended neighbourhoods cost.
Room prices are in the picks above. A whole flat goes for €906 in Bellaterra (UAB). The median room across the 41 places we profile is €600.
Estimatedrent
Whole-flat rent and average surface: INCASÒL fiança registry, 2026-Q1, published quarterly as "Lloguers Barcelona per districtes i barris" on habitatge.gencat.cat and re-keyed per barri. Room prices are triangulated from district medians, platform snapshots and press (no public series exists below district level), and are indicative, not measured. Whole-flat rent: the municipal figure from the INCASÒL fiança registry via habitatge.gencat.cat and the Dades Obertes Catalunya municipal series, 2026-Q1. There is no barri-level row outside Barcelona, so no €/m² or average surface is published and none is estimated here. Room prices are triangulated from operator and platform listings, and are indicative, not measured. Figures are for 2026-Q1. Every competitor page we checked states neighbourhood rents without a source or a date; this is ours, and the label above says how far to trust it.
What this page does not know
- These minutes are modelled, not routed. They come from published average speeds: metro at about 27 km/h commercial speed including station dwell, buses at 11.8 km/h across the lines analysed in 2024. No timetable, no service frequency, no live disruption, no interchange modelled inside a rail leg.
- They start from the centre of a neighbourhood. A flat at the far edge is worth about five minutes either way, in both directions.
- Neighbourhood rent is indicative. City-level rent comes from the deposit registry. The neighbourhood figures do not: they are re-keyed by hand from a quarterly publication, which is why they carry an estimated label wherever they appear.
- We profile 41 neighbourhoods, not all of Barcelona. A place that is not in the table is not being judged. It is not in the dataset yet.
- Campus coordinates carry the date we checked them. Every campus here was verified on 2026-08-07. Each campus card above names the source. Universities move buildings, and a stale coordinate is a wrong commute.
That is the commute answered. If you want it narrowed by budget, by how quiet you need it and by what you cannot live without, the quiz does that in 6 questions and shows its working.