Which Palace of Versailles Ticket You Need

Versailles sells four things and bundles them a dozen ways, and the wording on a booking page rarely tells you which one you are getting. This guide sorts the estate's own tickets first, then the sixteen guided departures, into one table you can decide from.

What is actually for sale

Four products, from the estate itself. Everything else — every guided tour, every combination on every booking platform — is one of these with a guide and sometimes a train wrapped around it.

The estate publishes no Palace-only ticket price, so none is quoted here.

Why the Passport is the answer for almost everybody

Because of the arithmetic and because of the geography. The Passport is €35 and it opens the Palace, the Trianon estate and the gardens. Buying the Trianon ticket alone at €15 saves you twenty euros and costs you the State Apartments, which is the thing you came for.

The only visitors for whom it is genuinely the wrong buy are people on a second visit who have already done the Palace, and people arriving after three in the afternoon who will not have time for both halves. Everybody else should stop reading here and buy the Passport.

When is the garden ticket needed?

Between 1 April and 1 November 2026, on Musical Gardens and Musical Fountains Show days only. Outside that season the gardens are free to everyone, every single day, and no ticket covers or needs to cover them.

This is the single most confusing part of Versailles pricing, and it surprises travellers in both directions — those who arrive in November expecting to pay, and those who arrive in June expecting not to. The events page has the season dates, and the gardens page explains what the shows actually are.

Can you get in free?

Yes, in three published cases, and they are worth checking before you spend anything.

• Under 18: free entry to the Palace and the Trianon estate, whatever your nationality.
• Under 26 and resident in the European Union: the same. Residency rather than nationality, and it is checked at the door.
• The first Sunday of the month, November to March: the whole estate, free to everyone.

Two things people get wrong about this. A free ticket still needs a booked time slot for the Palace, so book it alongside the paid ones in your party. And free entry applies to the estate's own admission, not to a guided departure — a tour fare is a tour fare whatever your age.

What a guided departure adds to the ticket

Three things, and the third is the one people underrate. It includes admission, so you are not buying two things. It holds a timed slot as a block, so you walk in with a group rather than joining a queue. And it takes the journey off you, on about half of them.

The fares here start at $75 with the return train and entry included, which is close to what a Passport plus an RER return costs on its own. That comparison is done properly in the doing-it-yourself guide.

Which departure covers what

The sixteen guided departures fall into four groups, and the difference between them is what they include beyond the Palace door.

Starting fares from the sixteen departures listed here.

Which one should you book?

First visit, one day in Paris: a guided departure from Paris with the train included. It is the cheapest, it removes the morning's decisions, and it gets you back with an afternoon left. The departures from Paris are here.

You want Marie-Antoinette's estate: a full day, and almost certainly by bike. Walking to the Queen's Hamlet and back costs an hour and a quarter of your day. The bike days cover it comfortably.

Confident traveller, second visit: buy a Passport, take the RER and go in on your own. Or take a departure that meets you at the gates for $82 and skip the transport premium.

Mixed walking speeds, or one fixed afternoon: a private car from your hotel. It is the most expensive option by a wide margin and for some parties it is the only one that works.

Travelling in low season: anything, and walk the gardens for free afterwards. A Versailles palace skip-the-line guided tour plus a free winter afternoon in the park is the best value Versailles offers.

How far ahead should you book?

A week is comfortable from November to March. Two to three weeks from April to October, and more around French public holidays. Tuesday is the hardest day of the week to get, because the Palace is closed on Mondays and Tuesday absorbs the overflow.

Booking early costs nothing here: every departure listed refunds in full up to 24 hours before it starts. The thing that does cost you is booking late in July, when the morning slots go first and what is left is the middle of a hot afternoon.

What none of these tickets buys

The private apartments, several smaller cabinets and often the Royal Opera are shown only on the estate's own guided tours, which cost €10 to €16 on top of admission and are booked separately. No fare on any platform includes them. If they matter to you, buy them from the estate directly, and read what is inside the Palace first so you know what you are choosing between.

What about the combination tickets on booking sites?

Every "Versailles skip-the-line ticket + audio guide" bundle you will see advertised is the estate's own Passport with something attached. That is not a criticism: the attachment is often worth having, and the reseller has already booked the slot. But it does mean the comparison is straightforward, because the underlying admission is identical whoever sells it.

What genuinely varies between resellers is three things. Whether a garden ticket is included during the show season. Whether the Trianon estate is included. And whether there is a human guide or a recorded one. Those three answers are in the inclusions list of every listing, and they are the only part worth reading closely.

Where a bundle earns its margin is transport. Adding a return train ticket and a guided walk from a Paris meeting point is real work that the estate does not do, and it is why the fares here start close to what the ticket alone would cost you.

Two ticket mistakes that cost real money

The first is buying a Trianon ticket thinking it is cheaper. It is €15 against €35, and it does not open the Palace. People arrive at the Cour d'Honneur with it and have to buy a second ticket, at which point the day has cost more than the Passport would.

The second is buying a garden ticket in December. Between November and late March the gardens are free to everyone, every day. There is nothing to buy, and any page selling you one for a January visit is selling you something the estate is giving away.

A third, smaller one: booking a free ticket without a slot. Under-18s and EU under-26s get in free, but the estate still asks every visitor to hold a timed entry for the Palace. Book it at the same time as the paid tickets in your party or you will be turned back at the door with a ticket that says free on it.

The five-second version

1. Buy the Passport unless you are skipping the Palace.
2. Gardens are free November to late March, ticketed on show days April to November.
3. Under 18, or under 26 in the EU, gets in free — still book a slot.
4. If you want Trianon, book a full day and start in the morning.
5. Take the first entry slot of the day, whatever else you decide.

Planning your visit has the hours, and the FAQs have everything this guide left out. Every departure is listed on Palace of Versailles Tours.

Frequently asked questions