Ruse is a major centre for transport. Two of the Pan European routes have their crossing point here: Corridor 7 and Corridor 9. The Danube waterway was connected in 1992 to the Main River and the Rhine River via the Europe Canal. Thus, Corridor 7 from Rotterdam to Thessalonica is the key axis of European inland waterways. Corridor 9 links North, Middle and East Europe to the Aegean Sea via Danube Bridge at Ruse and Giurgiu. To finalize that corridor, the railway line from Ruse to Podkova needs to be extended via the border with Greece to Komotini, and the motorway needs to be extended to Porto Lago likewise. The project for a tunnel under the Shipka Pass is on that corridor.

Ruse is a strategic northern gate to Bulgaria as via the Danube River the country is open to Central and West Europe. Hence it is the biggest Bulgarian river port. In terms of cargo turnover, in better times it ranked from the sixth to the third busiest port among the principal ports of the other countries on the Danube alongside with Reni, Galati, Izmail, Budapest and Linz. Ruse Port Complex embraces port Ruse-West; port Ruse-East and the ports of Svishtov, Somovit, Tutrakan and Silistra.

The headquarters of the Bulgarian River Shipping Company are in Ruse. It was established in 1935 when the first passenger line Ruse-Vidin-Ruse was launched, with the reconstructed steamers the Iskar, the Vit and the Osam. Originally, river passenger transport was a division within the National Bulgarian Railway Company. It was only on 30 May 1940 when it became an independent shipping company. It received four cargo ships with refrigerator units built in Regensburg – the Ruse, the Vidin, the Lom and the Svishtov, plus a ferryboat, the Sofia, built in Walsum am Rhine for a railway connection between Bulgaria and Romania, and three passenger ships built in Budapest that were very sophisticated for that time: the Tsar Boris III, the Tsaritsa Yoana and the Prints Simeon.

A substantial number of pushers, tugboats and barges were procured after the end of World War Two. However, it turned out that those manned and unmanned barges, tankers, ferryboats, hydro buses, high speed hydro gliders were not cost-effective on the Danube River. While over 1 million passengers were transported on the river in 1956, the local passenger shipping was getting inefficient and it was finally stopped in 1992. Unlike the rest of the countries on the Danube, which procure new modern ships and Danube River shipping makes rapid progress there, Bulgaria experiences just the opposite processes. The country used to have 19 river ports, most of them on the routes of Ruse-Vidin-Ruse, Ruse-Svishtov-Ruse and Ruse-Silistra-Ruse.

Compared to the post-World War One period when Bulgaria had the smallest fleet on the Danube River, after World War Two it organised a big fleet that provides cargo traffic to any port on the Danube, from Germany to the Ukraine. Any of the four catamarans named after Bulgarian khans transported 49 lorries per run from Vidin to Linz and Passau (Germany).

The Interlighter International Shipping Company with headquarters in Budapest used to provide river-sea-river liner services from ports on the Danube River to Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore and the Mekong River in Vietnam. It is a joint venture of the shipping companies of Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. A ferryboat operates between Ruse and port Reni in the Ukraine.