Ergot alkaloids (pKa 4.8–6.2) are positively charged at N-6 in acidic solutions and neutral at higher pH. They can therefore be extracted either with non-polar organic solvents under alkaline conditions or with polar solvents under acidic conditions. In this work, different alkaline extraction solvents namely an acetonitrile/ammonium carbonate buffer mixture and an ethyl acetate/methanol/ammonium bicarbonate buffer mixture, as well as an acidic solvent i.e. a methanol/0.25% H3PO4 mixture were evaluated. Blank rye samples spiked with ergot alkaloids at a concentration of 250 μg/kg were used. To adequately compare the different extraction solvents, no clean-up was performed prior to LC–MS/MS analysis; the extracts were simply diluted (1:10) and filter-centrifuged in an Ultrafree®-MC centrifugal device. The highest SRM responses of the ergot alkaloids were obtained after extraction with acetonitrile/3 mM ammonium carbonate (84/16, v/v) or ethyl acetate/methanol/0.2 M ammonium bicarbonate pH 8.5 (62.5/25/12.5, v/v/v).