So if you have landed at the Brussels airport and are looking at the transport options that are available to you, you will see that you have the train station available in the basement level 1 and you also have the Brussels airport bus station that is available to you at the basement level 0. Brussels airport bus is situated right under the arrivals halls and you can get there just by using the lift or the escalator to the floor which is right under you.
There are different platforms in the bus station which are used for specific purposes. Like for example if you want to go to the hotels that are close by you can take the Brussels airport bus that shuttles people up and down every 10-15 minutes for free. All the Brussels airport buses come to the basement level 0 and there are a large number of public buses, private buses and express buses that come straight here regularly many times during the day.
The express Brussels airport bus is operated by 2 companies. The Express Brussels airport bus travels from the bus station to Antwerp and also runs in-between three other cities. The cities are Rotterdam, Netherlands Breda and Utrecht. The express Brussels airport bus travels to and fro from these cities to the airport. Theses buses are available every hour and they cost you around €10 one way. The time taken to travel is roughly around 45 minutes.
Le Lijn has regular services between the Brussels airport and Brussels. If you want to know the timings for the buses from De Lijn, you can always look them up on the website and they are available to you in Dutch. The bus 471 is the one that travels to the Brussels Nord station and back in 45 minutes. The other bus which is 759 takes you to the metro station at Roodebeek and back.
A Brussels airport bus seems to be one of the best options of transport that you can use. Instead of renting a car you can use the buses. If you need to go to the suburbs then you may need to think about renting a car, but as long as you are in the city you have a lot of other options starting from buses, trams, metro and trains. So you can pick the one that is most feasible for you.