Budapest Card 2026: Prices, What's Actually Free, and Which Tier Pays

A 72-hour Budapest Card costs 29,990 HUF (about $95). The public transport inside it, priced as BKK’s own 72-hour travelcard, is worth 5,750 HUF. So the card hands you a 24,240 HUF hole, roughly $77, that has to be filled with museum and bath admissions in three days before you have saved a single forint.

That is the whole decision, and most guides never print the number.

There is a second number worth having before you buy. BKK publishes what it reckons each card’s contents are worth at full price, and its own figures do not favour the tier most visitors reach for. The 72-hour FLEXI costs 2,000 HUF less than the standard 72-hour card, and BKK values its contents slightly higher. On the issuer’s own arithmetic, the standard 72-hour card is the weakest of the three 72-hour options.

Budapest Card prices, 2026/2027 season

Tier	Price (HUF)	Price (approx. USD)	Duration
24-hour	17,990	$57	24 hours
48-hour	23,990	$76	48 hours
72-hour	29,990	$95	72 hours
72-hour FLEXI	27,990	$89	72 hours
72-hour PLUS	39,990	$127	72 hours
96-hour	38,990	$123	96 hours

Ninety-six hours is the longest card sold. The 120-hour tier that appeared in earlier seasons is not in the current line-up.

What BKK says each tier is worth

BKK prices up the contents of every card and publishes the gap. These are the issuer’s figures, not ours, and they are the fairest starting point you will find because the operator has every incentive to make them look good.

Tier	Card price (HUF)	BKK’s valuation of contents (HUF)	BKK’s claimed saving (HUF)
24-hour	17,990	22,550	4,560 (~$14)
48-hour	23,990	30,200	6,210 (~$20)
72-hour	29,990	38,450	8,460 (~$27)
72-hour FLEXI	27,990	38,550	10,560 (~$33)
72-hour PLUS	39,990	49,850	9,860 (~$31)
96-hour	38,990	52,000	13,010 (~$41)

Read the two middle rows again. The FLEXI is the cheapest 72-hour card and carries the largest claimed saving of any tier except the 96-hour. Its free list is a different product, not the standard list with 2,000 HUF off: unlimited transport, then any five of seven programmes (the 100E round trip, Lukács, a guided walking tour in Pest or Buda, a folklore show with dinner, the Castle Bus, one sightseeing cruise, and one free admission from a list of four: the Castle Museum with St Stephen’s Hall, the National Gallery, the National Museum or the MOL Campus SkyDeck). The 30+ free museums are not on it; on the FLEXI you get one free museum, the one you pick as your seventh programme, and the rest are discounts, so check the seven against your own shortlist before you buy.

Want the maths for your specific trip? The Budapest Card savings calculator takes your trip length and how much you will really travel, then tells you how much admission each tier still has to earn back.

What every Budapest Card includes free

This list applies from the 24-hour card upward, with one exception: the 72-hour FLEXI replaces it with the pick-five-of-seven list above. BKK publishes it on each tier’s product page.

• Unlimited BKK public transport inside Budapest: metro, tram, bus, trolleybus, and the HÉV within the city boundary.
• One free entry to Szent Lukács Thermal Bath and Swimming Pool (72-hour cards and up).
• One free Danube cruise.
• One free ride on the Zugliget Chairlift.
• The official Budapest Castle Bus.
• Citadella, the Bastion of Liberty.
• Transport heritage trams, May to October only.
• 30+ free museums and attractions. BKK names the Museum of Fine Arts, the Hungarian National Gallery and the Hungarian National Museum on every tier page except the FLEXI’s.
• 10% to 25% off at more than 30 further attractions, restaurants, cafés and baths.

That last line matters more than it looks. The large partner network is a discount network, not a free one. Only the 30+ named attractions are free; everything else knocks a tenth to a quarter off a ticket you still pay for.

BKK’s published free list names examples rather than printing all 30+, and the composition varies by tier. If you are buying the card for one specific museum, check that museum against the operator’s current list at budapest-card.com before you pay.

From the 72-hour card up, Lukács is the one bath the card walks you into free rather than discounting, and it is the least tourist-heavy of the big Budapest houses. Our full Lukács guide covers hours, the locker system and which pools are worth your time.

Photo: Random photos 1989, CC BY-SA 4.0. The entrance to Lukács Bath, the one Budapest bath the card lets you walk into free rather than discounting.

What the 72-hour PLUS adds

The PLUS costs 10,000 HUF more than the standard 72-hour card. BKK lists three additions on top of everything above:

Addition	On the standard 72h card	On the 72h PLUS
100E Airport Express, one round trip	No	Yes
Buda Castle Funicular, one ride	No	Yes
One lángos and one kürtőskalács at Molnár’s	No	Yes

The 100E is the one that decides it. It is the direct airport bus, it is not covered by the standard card or by an ordinary BKK travelcard, and a round trip on it is the single largest item in that list, worth 5,000 HUF at the 2,500 HUF single fare. That is half of the PLUS’s extra 10,000 HUF; the funicular ride and the two snacks have to earn the rest. If you were going to take the 100E both ways anyway, the PLUS starts making sense. If you are arriving at an hour that suits the regular route into the centre, it does not.

The 72-hour FLEXI can include the 100E Airport Express as one of its five picks, at 12,000 HUF less than the PLUS. If the airport bus is the reason you were considering the PLUS, price the FLEXI first.

The kürtőskalács is a nice touch rather than a reason to upgrade. If chimney cake is what you came for, our guide to the best kürtőskalács in Budapest ranks the places worth the queue.

The break-even, tier by tier

Strip out the transport and you can see exactly what each card is asking you to spend on admissions. BKK sells a 24-hour Budapest travelcard for 2,750 HUF and a 72-hour one for 5,750 HUF, so those are the real values of the transport component. On the PLUS, and on a FLEXI where the 100E is one of your five picks, the 5,000 HUF airport round trip is transport too, and the table counts it.

Tier	Card price (HUF)	Equivalent travelcard (HUF)	Admissions needed to break even
24-hour	17,990	2,750	15,240 HUF (~$48)
72-hour FLEXI	27,990	5,750, or 10,750 with the 100E as one of your five picks	22,240 HUF ($70), or 17,240 HUF ($55) with the 100E
72-hour	29,990	5,750	24,240 HUF (~$77)
72-hour PLUS	39,990	10,750, the travelcard plus the 100E round trip	29,240 HUF (~$93)

BKK does not publish a 48-hour or 96-hour travelcard at a comparable shape, so those two tiers are left out rather than estimated.

The 24-hour row is the one that should give you pause. Filling 15,240 HUF of museum admissions inside a single day means three or four paid sights plus a bath, on your first day in a city you do not know yet. Most people do not manage it.

Who the card actually pays for

It pays if you are museum-hopping hard. Three or four included attractions a day for three days clears the break-even comfortably, and the Aquincum Museum out in Óbuda plus a House of Music slot is exactly the kind of spread-out day where the free transport stops being decorative.

It pays if you are staying outside the centre. The transport component is worth its face value only if you actually ride. Staying in District VII and walking everywhere turns 5,750 HUF of the card into nothing.

It does not pay for a slow trip. One neighbourhood a day, long lunches, architecture from the outside: that itinerary loses money on every tier.

It does not pay if your list is short. Two paid attractions across a long weekend will not clear 24,240 HUF. Buy the tickets and a travelcard instead.

It does not pay if your list is mostly not on it. If the trip is built around a Parliament tour, the Basilica dome and a Danube dinner cruise, check each one against the operator’s current list before assuming the card carries them.

What the card does not cover

• The 100E Airport Express, on the standard card. BKK lists the 100E under the PLUS and FLEXI tiers only. The regular airport bus route into the city is covered like any other BKK line.
• Gellért Bath, at any price. It closed on 1 October 2025 for a full renovation with reopening planned for 2028, so it is off the board this season regardless of what card you hold. Our guide to the Gellért closure covers where to soak instead, and the Széchenyi guide is the obvious substitute.
• The rest of the partner network, in the sense most people mean. More than 30 partners give 10% to 25% off. That is a discount, not entry.

Buying it and starting the clock

Since 16 September 2025 the card has been sold from more than 300 BKK ticket machines across the city, which removes the old chore of finding a tourist office first. There are more than 300 sales locations in all, including BKK’s customer centres at the airport and Deák Ferenc tér.

Two things worth knowing before you buy:

• Do not start the clock on arrival evening. A card activated at 9pm on the day you land burns most of its first block on a hotel check-in. Start it on your first full sightseeing morning.
• Physical cards are activated by hand. You write the start month, day and hour on the back. No corrections are permitted, so write it once and write it clearly.

🔗 The card on the official BKK site

The verdict

The Budapest Card is not a trap and it is not a golden ticket. It is a bulk-buy on admissions with a travelcard bundled in, and it rewards exactly one travel style: several paid sights a day, spread across the city, for three days or more.

If that is your trip, the 72-hour FLEXI is the tier to price first, with its pick-five list checked against your shortlist, and the PLUS only earns its extra 10,000 HUF if the 100E round trip, the funicular ride and the two snacks are all things you would have paid for anyway. If your trip is slower than that, buy a travelcard, buy the two or three tickets you actually want, and spend the difference on dinner.

Run your own numbers through the savings calculator before you commit. It takes a minute and it settles the question properly.

Source: BKK, the card’s issuer, on its own tier product pages and its published savings comparison; prices and inclusions checked 2 September 2026, valid 1 May 2026 to 30 April 2027. Single ticket 500 HUF, 24-hour travelcard 2,750 HUF and 72-hour travelcard 5,750 HUF from BKK’s fare table, same date. Gellért Bath closed to visitors on 1 October 2025 for a renovation with reopening planned for 2028, per the closure reporting and the bath’s own site, checked 2 September 2026. Prices are in HUF, which is what you pay at the counter. Converted at 1 USD = 316 HUF, the ECB rate on 1 September 2026. Rates move, so treat the converted figures as indicative.