Is the Paris Museum Pass Worth It? The Four-Site Test

For most visitors, the official Paris Museum Pass is the pass to buy, and only if you'll fit about four paid sites into 48 hours. At €85 for two days (October 2026), it pays off fastest for non-EU visitors, who now pay €32 at the Louvre. A €49 annual card can do better on monument-heavy trips, Go City's €199 bundle suits tour lovers, and under-18s need no pass at all.

The four-site test for the Paris Museum Pass

The 2-day pass pays off at around four big-ticket sites in 48 hours, and the longer passes need one or two more.

The prices. The official pass costs €85 for 2 days, €105 for 4 and €125 for 6, the same for every nationality, though some sales networks add fees. It covers more than 50 museums and monuments in and around Paris, one entry at each, and its site says savings start, on average, from the 4th, 5th and 6th visit respectively.

Why non-EU visitors gain most. Since January 2026, visitors from outside the European Economic Area pay €32 at the Louvre (€22 for EEA citizens and residents), €22 at the Sainte-Chapelle (€16), and €35 for a Versailles Passport from April to October (€32), or €25 from November to March (€22). The pass price doesn't change, so the same days are worth more to an American than to a German.

The big three fall short. The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay (€16) and Versailles come to €83 for a non-EU adult in summer and €73 in winter, less than the 2-day pass. A fourth paid site is what tips it.

A 48-hour plan worth €110. Start with a booked 2pm slot at the Sainte-Chapelle on a Wednesday, cross to the Conciergerie next door, then take the Louvre's late opening (until 9pm). On Thursday, climb the Notre-Dame towers at 9am, see the Panthéon, and end at the Orsay's late opening (until 9:45pm). On Friday before 2pm, do the Arc de Triomphe (from 10am) and Napoleon's tomb at the Musée de l'Armée. At winter prices, the six priced stops cost a non-EU adult €110, even with the €30 joint Sainte-Chapelle and Conciergerie ticket, and an EU resident €93.

Slower trips suit the 4-day pass. It costs only €20 more. Spread the same list over four days, add Versailles, and a non-EU adult would pay €135 in winter against €105 for the pass.

Who shouldn't buy one. Under-18s and EU residents under 26 get into most pass sites free, so the pass FAQ calls it useful only from 26 for EU residents and from 18 for everyone else.

How to get the most from the clock

The validity runs in hours from your first scan, so when you start and which days you pick matter as much as the price.

Start mid-afternoon. In the official example, a 2-day pass first used at 3pm on a Wednesday runs until 3pm on Friday: three part-days.

Use the late nights, dodge the closing days. The Louvre stays open until 9pm on Wednesdays and Fridays, the Orsay until 9:45pm on Thursdays, and the Arc de Triomphe until 10:30pm through March (11pm from April). The Louvre and the Orangerie close on Tuesdays, and the Orsay, Versailles and the Musée Rodin on Mondays, so a pass spanning Monday and Tuesday loses a big museum each day.

Book the eight compulsory slots. Pass holders need a free time slot at the Louvre, the Orsay (from March 2026 to summer 2028, during building work), the palace at Versailles (not the Trianon), the Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie, the Notre-Dame towers, the Orangerie and the Hôtel de la Marine; the rest are walk-in. The reservation page links to each booking system, and Rick Steves forum regulars note you can book before buying the pass, as long as you buy it before the visit. Book the Louvre first: once the day's slots are gone, entry with the pass isn't guaranteed, and a forum regular wrote in April 2026 that the Louvre "limits museum pass tickets".

It skips the ticket desk, not security. The pass's Versailles page says there's no skip-the-line access at security, and its Sainte-Chapelle page warns of waits of up to 30 minutes on busy days. Rick Steves forum posters said the same in June 2025.

Strike days come out of your hours. The terms of sale rule out any refund or extension for exceptional closures, and any refund for a missed slot. For 24 October 2026, the pass site announced that demonstrations would close the Louvre, the Orsay, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Arc de Triomphe and seven other pass sites, so check its home-page banner before your first scan. By contrast, e-tickets from the national monuments' own ticketing site, which sells the Arc and the towers, are refunded automatically after an exceptional closure.

Know what isn't covered. The Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs and the Opéra Garnier aren't on the list, and the Centre Pompidou is still listed but closed until 2030. The Panthéon's panorama costs €3.50 extra, and from April to October the pass doesn't cover the Versailles gardens on Musical Fountains and Musical Gardens days (€15, or €12 for EEA residents).

Go City's Paris Pass: for tours, not museums

Go City's All-Inclusive Pass only makes sense if you want its tours, bus and cruise, because its museum half is the same Paris Museum Pass.

What it costs. It's €199 for two days for adults and €89 for children aged 2 to 17 (October 2026). Alongside a 2-day Museum Pass, it bundles the Eiffel Tower stairs to the second floor, a Big Bus day, a Bateaux Parisiens cruise and food and wine tastings, for €114 more than the Museum Pass alone.

How Go City's own math works. Its October 2026 savings example fills two days with six activities, from a bike tour to an aperitif cruise, and no museums. On a Louvre-and-Orsay trip, there's little time left for the extras that make it pay.

The fine print. The days are calendar days from first use, not 48 hours, so an afternoon start costs you half a day, and the validity can't be suspended, split or extended. Families pay most: children are free at most Museum Pass sites, but a Go City child pass is €89.

For monuments, a €49 annual card

If your list is mostly chapels, towers and palaces rather than paintings, the Centre des monuments nationaux (CMN) sells a year of entry for €49.

What it covers. The Passion monuments card includes the Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie, the Notre-Dame towers, the Arc de Triomphe, the Panthéon, the Hôtel de la Marine and the Chapelle expiatoire in Paris, plus Saint-Denis Basilica, the Château de Vincennes, Villa Savoye and Mont-Saint-Michel abbey among more than 80 sites in France. It doesn't cover the Louvre, the Orsay or Versailles.

The math. For a non-EU adult, the joint Sainte-Chapelle and Conciergerie ticket (€30), the towers (€16) and the Arc (€16) already cost €62. The DUO card, €78 for the holder plus any one guest, saves €46 on two sets of those tickets, and both versions give unlimited visits for 365 days from purchase.

The catches. It starts the day you buy it, it's only for over-26s, it doesn't skip queues, and the Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie, the towers and the Hôtel de la Marine still need free slots. Rick Steves forum regulars have recommended it since 2025, with one reminder from April 2026: "The Passion Monuments pass doesn't include Versailles; the PMP does."

When no pass is the right pass

For a slower trip, single tickets plus the free collections usually cost less, and forum regulars say so bluntly.

The regulars' view. "For many visitors the right museum pass is no museum pass at all," one wrote on the Rick Steves forum in September 2025. In April 2026, another called the pass "rarely a value anymore", now that it allows only one visit per site.

Free every day. The City of Paris museums' permanent collections are free, though temporary exhibitions often charge: the Petit Palais, the Musée Carnavalet, the Musée d'Art Moderne and the Musée de la Vie Romantique among them. Our Paris travel guide suggests the Petit Palais as a free swap for an impulse Louvre day and lists the Vie Romantique among its hidden gems.

Free or cheaper on set days. The Orsay is free on the first Sunday of every month (book a slot), and the Arc de Triomphe, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Notre-Dame towers on first Sundays from November to March. The Louvre is free after 6pm on the first Friday of the month except in July and August, and the Orsay's Thursday late opening is €12 after 6pm.

For how these sights fit into a three-day trip, see the sample itineraries in our Paris guide.