Is a tourist city card worth it?
The short answer depends. There is no blanket answer, but you can do a few things to help you decide. In this blog, I will share the pros and cons of these tourist cards and some tips to determine if a particular card is a good value for you. By the end, you can confidently make the call for each city you visit.
Pros and Cons of Buying a City Card
How do we decide whether we need a city card?
Questions to consider before buying a city card of any sort.
We Would love to hear from you.
City Card overview
One of the amazing Yoemen included when you visit the tower of London. Do the Tour, it is great.
Just like there is no simple answer to determine whether you should get a card, understanding city cards is not a blanket understanding. They are often very different; the inclusions make all the difference.
We have used a few cards over our visits to Europe, including the London card twice.
Most cards offer entry to some major attractions in a city or discounts for access. Some cards offer a travel component that can be very helpful and can be the deciding factor for value. Some attractions offer a skip-the-line feature, cutting down on wait times. You can even get cards that only visit museums. The card often comes with a handy guidebook covering included attractions and whether access is free or discounted with the card. A lot of them have an app or digital component as well.
In most cases, you have a choice regarding how long you want access to the card and its benefits. These can cover anything from 1 day- to as many as seven days. For us, it often comes down to the length of our stay as to the worth of the card. More coming on how I decide if it is worth it below. Some cities offer cards with limited attractions visited cards and a longer time to use them. With this card type, you may have up to 60 days after your first use to complete your visits. This card could help spread out your visits by not having the concentrated timeline to get value.
Pros and Cons of Buying a City Card
When looking online at reviews, you may see mixed reviews, and these can be used as part of research and decision-making, but often, as I will share later, it can be in how you research the cards before you purchase that could become a deciding factor in the success of your purchase and your perceived value.
Pros
Save on top attractions, tours and experiences included in the pass.
Entry fees are included in one price — no need to worry about individual payments.
Skip ticket lines on listed attractions.
The card may include Public transport and tourist buses/trams/ferries.
You could visit other attractions that were unplanned at no extra cost.
Have tips about requirements like bookings on you.
Cons
The upfront cost could eat into your overall sightseeing budget and become a greater risk of going over if you don’t visit the covered attractions.
You get to the end of your time and feel ripped because you did not get value.
Trying to get value can dominate your visit to a destination, and you may miss attractions not on the card.
Examples of Costs
I guess a big question is, what is the price for these Tourist cards?
Using the cities we have used cards for in the past, I will give you examples of what to expect to pay.
City Cards per Day
Go City Explorer Cards
*All prices are rounded up to the nearest dollar and correct at the time of conversation using XE.
** Please check individual cards for prices and inclusions.
How do we decide whether we need a city card?
Deciding whether a city card is worth it is as simple as saying I will give it ago or, like me, you can do a little research and make a calculated decision. There is no right or wrong way, but there could be a risk of not getting value for your money, and nobody wants that.
Making sure we get value for money is always high on our travel goals list, and buying a city card is no exception, so when I am looking at a card, I start with what is included and what we plan to visit. I have written out every attraction and price to see if I would get value in the time allotted for the card. My rule of thumb is as long as I am at most $10 under, I would consider the card. This amount means that we only had to squeeze in one other attraction to cover the value, and any transport or extra attractions then becomes gravy.
Over the years, we have used cards in 4 cities, *Paris, Budapest, Dublin, and two visits to London. Most of our experiences have been positive, and we felt we got value for money, but let me tell you about the time we wasted our money. There have been plenty of destinations we have visited and not used the card, some we have just done on our own and others the research was not getting us value.
The time we wasted money on a card and what we learnt.
The Fishermans Bastion Budapest
In 2019, we had a trip to Europe, and our last stop was Budapest. Our visit was a three-night stay with little planned. On our first day, as we wandered around the Fisherman’s Bastion, we saw an office selling city cards. We did not buy one then but left thinking about it. Later in the trip, we decided to buy one mainly for the transport element and perceived savings, but we needed a real plan for how or where to use our 72-hour card to get value.
The transport portion was great, and we saw more than we had planned, but we did not use entries as we hoped. Lots of where we would have used the card was a 20% savings of access. A few attractions were outside the city, and travelling there would have had less value to the overall experience.
Purchasing this card without any real idea how we would use it was full of problems. We felt like we wasted our money due to underutilising our purchase. Our biggest lesson was researching to ensure we could get value from a city card.
As stated above, these time cards have a concentrated time to use them, and if you are not prepared, it can become tricky to do what you would like to get your value.
If we had an extra day after the card, we might have had a more successful time with the card. Having this purchase hanging over our heads prevented us from exploring at our pace.
We will no doubt visit Budapest again as we enjoyed our time, but next time we will have more intention about spending time in this beautiful city.
Questions to consider before buying a city card of any sort.
I am a researcher and planner for trips, and if I can save money and time, then I will. When looking at a city card, I want to get value and make informed decisions.
Here are a few questions I use to help decide yes or no.
What attractions are we looking at for this destination?
Are these attractions included in the card?
What extra benefits does the card give me for attractions? ie, skip the line, discounts at gift shops or restaurants
How many attractions do I need to see in the allotted time to cover the cost?
What other extras are included, and can I use them to save money or time?
Are there any other card options available to suit us better?
Read the terms and conditions so you are aware of all the conditions connected with a particular card, as they can differ.
 I said it before: if I am around $10.00pp under the cost and there is enough included we could use, then we would go for it. But if it is too much over this amount, we would probably give it a miss unless Skip the line at major attractions is included.
As I said at the beginning, there is no right or wrong answer, but understanding how you travel as a couple is important. Ask yourself, will using the card add to your experience of a destination? Your decision will lie in your answer to this question, and this could be the simplest of all questions regarding tourist cards.
We Would love to hear from you.
Little Museum of Dublin, thanks to the Dublin Card, we included this museum and had a ball.
Have you ever used a city card?
Did you get value, and what was your biggest takeaway or lesson?
Would you use a city card if available?
 Here is our 3-day Dublin itinerary Blog post that was crafted around the *Dublin City Go Card.
* Paris, Budapest, Dublin, and London are affiliate links, and if you purchased through this link, we could make a small commission.
