The Budapest Card is the city’s official visitor card, run by BKK, the public transport company. For a set number of hours it gives you unlimited public transport and one free visit to each of more than 30 museums and attractions, along with Lukács Thermal Bath, a Danube cruise, two guided walks in English and discounts of 10 to 25% at more than 30 other places.
It is a good card for the right trip and a poor one for the wrong trip, and the difference is what is on the free list. This page goes through every version, what is free and what is only discounted, the well-known places it leaves out, how collecting it works and how to tell whether it will pay for itself.
Budapest Card tickets
Budapest Card: Public Transport, 30+ Top Attractions & Tours
Every version: the 24, 48, 72 and 96-hour cards, the 72-Hour Plus and the 72-Hour FLEXI, with an English booklet. Bring a passport or ID card to collect it. Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead, and you can reserve now and pay later.
Budapest Card: 30+ Attractions with Szt. Lukacs Thermal Bath and Pool
The Classic card, collected from a hotel: the 24, 48, 72 or 96-hour card, picked up at Hotel Gozsdu Court on Király utca or at the Ibis Styles hotel at the airport, which is staffed round the clock. Cancellation is possible until 23:59 on the day before.
- Both sell the same official card. What differs is which versions are on offer, where you collect and the cancellation term
- Only GetYourGuide sells the Plus and the Flexi
- Landing late at night? The airport hotel desk used for Tiqets collections never closes
Every version
| Version | Length | What is different |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | 24, 48, 72 or 96 hours | The full free list below. The longer the card, the less each day costs: the 96-hour card works out at about half the 24-hour card’s price per day |
| 72 hours Plus | 72 hours | The full free list, plus the 100E airport bus once each way, a ride on the Buda Castle Funicular, a lángos and a chimney cake |
| 72 hours Flexi | 72 hours | Public transport and all the discounts, but only five free items, chosen from a list of seven. Costs less than the Classic 72-hour card |
Whether either upgrade is worth it: Budapest Card Plus and Flexi.
What is free
One visit to each place, and everything here comes with every Classic card and with the Plus.
Ride everything, without validating
Public transport is the part of the card everybody uses. It covers almost every metro, tram, trolleybus and bus line within the city boundary, the suburban railway as far as the boundary, second class on trains inside Budapest and the D14 boat. You never validate anything. You show the card, with the passport or ID whose number is written on it, when an inspector asks, and inspectors do ask.
The one gap is the 100E Airport Express, which the Classic cards do not cover. From the airport, the card is valid on the ordinary 200E bus to Kőbánya-Kispest and metro line M3 from there.
Also free on the transport side: the Official Budapest Castle Bus, an electric bus with four main stops round the Castle District, starting from Clark Ádám tér, the Zugliget Chairlift in the Buda Hills in both directions, and the heritage vehicles that run at weekends from May to October.
Pick your museums before you pick your card
This is the part that decides whether the card was worth buying. The four that matter to most visitors are the Museum of Fine Arts on Heroes’ Square, the Hungarian National Gallery and the Castle Museum inside Buda Castle, and the Hungarian National Museum. St Stephen’s Hall in the palace is on the list too, and so is Memento Park, the communist statue park on the edge of the city.
The rest of the list is for particular tastes: the Kunsthalle, the Ludwig Museum of contemporary art, the Vasarely Museum, the Capa Center and the Mai Manó House for photography, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts, the Aquincum Museum and its Roman ruins, the Kiscell Museum, the Budapest Gallery, the Medieval Jewish Prayer House, the Varga Imre Collection, the Museum of Trade and Tourism, the Underground Railway Museum, the Museum of Óbuda and the Goldberger Textile Collection.
At the Fine Arts, the National Gallery and the National Museum the card covers the permanent exhibitions, so a temporary show may need its own ticket. Many of these museums close on Mondays, which matters a great deal on a 24 or 48-hour card.
Use the free bath, and know which one it is
The card’s bath is Lukács, on the Buda side near Margaret Bridge, with thermal pools, swimming pools, saunas and an outdoor pool with a lazy river and massage jets. It is a locals’ bath, plainer than Széchenyi, and worth an afternoon in its own right.
What catches people out is expecting Széchenyi. Széchenyi and Rudas are 20% off with the card, not free, and the discount is only given at the ticket desk. Lukács admits nobody under 14.
Lupa Beach, a lake beach north of the city, is also free with the card in its season.
Choose one Danube cruise from four
Every card includes one cruise, and you choose between four boats. The Sightseeing Cruise leaves Vigadó tér every hour from 11:00 to 21:00 and takes an hour, with an English audio guide. The Duna Bella takes 90 minutes, includes two drinks and an audio guide in 30 languages, and stops at Margaret Island, where you can get off and catch a later boat back.
The Danube River Cruise is 90 minutes on the paddle steamer Gróf Széchenyi, with a bar and live music, from the Akadémia dock. BKV’s public riverboats run hourly in the afternoon between five piers and let you hop on and off for a day.
Our pick is the Duna Bella by day, or the paddle steamer’s evening sailing for the lights. Most need no booking. Arrive 20 minutes early and show the card at the boat’s ticket desk. The paddle steamer recommends reserving ahead, and sailings change with the water level, so have a second choice.
Join both guided walks
Two guided walks in English are included. They are good, and for some buyers they are the reason to get the card. The Pest walk leaves at 10:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from Váci utca 31, outside Molnár’s Kürtőskalács, and takes in the riverbank, St Stephen’s Basilica, Liberty Square and the Parliament building.
The Buda walk leaves at 14:00 on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from the Holy Trinity statue on Szentháromság tér and covers Fisherman’s Bastion, Matthias Church and the Royal Palace.
You do not register. Turn up at the meeting point and show your card. On a Friday, Saturday or Sunday you can do Pest in the morning and Buda in the afternoon.
Add a view or an evening
The smaller free entries are easy to miss. The MOL Campus SkyDeck is the viewing deck at the top of the MOL Campus tower. The Citadella on Gellért Hill, the Margaret Island Water Tower and the Pál-völgyi Cave in the Buda Hills are all on the list.
For an evening, the card gets you into the Folklore Show at GastroCellar on Király utca, an hour of Hungarian folk dance by the Rajkó Folk Ensemble in two halves, with a welcome drink and a bowl of goulash soup. It also gets you one free drink at Time Out Market on Blaha Lujza tér.
What is only discounted
The discounts run from 10 to 25%, are given in person at the ticket desk, and can be used as often as you like while the card is valid.
- 20% off: Széchenyi, Rudas, Palatinus and Római baths, St Stephen’s Basilica, the House of Music, Budapest Zoo, the House of Unicum, Madame Tussauds, the Ferris wheel, the City Park boating lake and a list of restaurants and cafés
- 10% off: the Dohány Street Synagogue, the Hungarian Jewish Museum, the Kazinczy utca synagogue, the Hospital in the Rock and the organ concerts in the Basilica
- 25% off: Legenda’s other river cruises
- 15% off: the Museum of Illusions and IKONO
- 20% off the miniBUD airport shuttle, which is the only help a Classic card gives you with the airport run besides the 200E bus
Collecting and activating it
Book, and keep the voucher
What you buy online is a voucher, sent by email. It cannot be used on a tram or at a museum. It has to be swapped for the card itself in Budapest, and it tells you where.
Swap it for the card
BKK’s own collection points are the Budapest Card Centre in Városháza Park, next to the 100E airport bus stop at Deák Ferenc tér, open daily from 09:00 to 19:00, and the BKK customer centres in Terminals 2A and 2B at the airport.
Cards booked through Tiqets are collected from a hotel desk: Hotel Gozsdu Court at Király utca 13, first floor, daily from 08:00 to 18:00, or the Ibis Styles hotel at the airport at any hour. Tiqets asks you to confirm which one after you book. Take your passport or ID card.
Fill it in, once and carefully
The card is not valid until it carries your passport or ID number and a start date and time, down to the minute. You choose that start, so collecting the card at the airport does not have to start the clock. Write carefully, because a card with corrections on it is void.
Show it, with your ID
On public transport there is nothing to validate. Show the card when an inspector asks. At a museum, a bath or a boat, show it at the ticket desk and you are given a ticket. Carry the document whose number is on the card.
Does it pay for itself
The card costs several times what a transport travelcard for the same hours does, so the question is whether the free entries you would really use are worth the difference.
BKK publishes its own sums. For the 24-hour card it counts a day’s transport, the National Gallery and the Castle Bus. For the 72-hour card it adds the Citadella and Lukács, and for the 96-hour card the Museum of Fine Arts and the Capa Center on top. Each basket comes to more than the card. Each also leans on the Castle Bus, which few people would buy a ticket for.
So do your own count, and be strict about it.
Count uses, not savings
write down the free things you would have paid for anyway. The Castle Bus and a free drink are pleasant, but they are not the reason to buy.
Longer cards are easier to justify
per day, the 96-hour card costs about half what the 24-hour card does. A 24-hour card needs a full day: a museum or two, the cruise and Lukács.
Transport is the floor
you would buy a travelcard anyway, so you only need the entries to cover the gap. A bath, a cruise, the two walks and two big museums over three days covers it.
If your count comes up short, that is a useful answer too: a travelcard and the tickets you want will cost less, and the hub page sets out that route.
Insider tips
Do not start a short card on a Monday
Many of the museums on the free list are closed on Mondays. On a 24-hour card that can wipe out most of what you bought it for, so start it on a Tuesday, or use Monday for Lukács, the cruise and the Pest walk.
Start the clock when you start sightseeing
The hours run from the time written on the card, not from when you collect it. If you land in the evening, buy ordinary tickets for the ride into town and set the card to start the next morning.
Plan the Buda day around 14:00
The Buda walk leaves Szentháromság tér at 14:00 and takes in the Royal Palace, where the National Gallery, the Castle Museum and St Stephen’s Hall are all free with the card. Do one of them in the morning, join the walk after lunch, and use the Castle Bus for the hill.
Want Széchenyi or the Dohány Synagogue as well?
Tiqets sells the card bundled with one other ticket at a small discount, among them Széchenyi, the Dohány Street Synagogue, St Stephen’s Basilica and several cruises. It is a tidy way to fill the card’s gaps in one booking, as long as a Classic card is what you want.