Is the Budapest Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Worth It? Two Operators, No Forints

Two companies sell the same idea in Budapest, and they sell it at different prices, on different routes, and in a currency you did not bring. Whether the bus is worth it comes down to which operator you land on and how much of the bundle you will actually use, so here is what each of them puts on its own price page.

Photo: Windmemories, CC BY-SA 4.0

📋 At a Glance

Best For	First-time visitors, families, 1 to 3 day trips
Operators	Big Bus, City Sightseeing
Price, 24 hours	Big Bus from €39. City Sightseeing from $47.85 without the boat, from $51.04 with it
Big Bus route	1 route, 21 stops, a bus every 10 to 25 minutes
Big Bus hours	First bus 10:00, last full tour 16:00, last bus 17:00. Full circuit about 1 hour 50 minutes
Boat after 17:00	2,000 HUF ($6) extra, at both operators
Currency	Euros at Big Bus, dollars at City Sightseeing. Forint at neither
Skip If	You have been to Budapest before, or you would rather walk a district than tick off a loop

What each operator actually sells

Big Bus runs one route, with 21 stops on it, and the red line is the only one it operates. The first bus leaves at 10:00, the last full tour goes at 16:00, the last bus of the day at 17:00, and the full circuit takes about 1 hour 50 minutes with a bus along every 10 to 25 minutes. Its night tour is currently suspended, so if the after-dark ride is the reason you were reaching for a ticket, that reason is gone for now.

City Sightseeing sells the Red Line, and its main ticket is a bundle rather than a bus fare: the route, a Danube cruise and a walking tour in one price, with a cheaper no-boat ticket for each duration if you only want the bus. The Astoria stop, numbers 5 and 12 on its list, is closed for construction, and the company has put on a secondary Green line as the way around it. Worth knowing if Astoria is where you were planning to get on.

Both put the onboard commentary at 16 languages, and that part of the format is genuinely well done. Hungarian, English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, Korean, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Portuguese and Dutch.

The price, and the currency nobody warns you about

Start with the part that catches people out at the payment screen. You cannot pay in forint for either bus. Big Bus quotes euros and its currency switcher offers Australian dollars, pounds, euros and US dollars, with the local money simply not on the menu. City Sightseeing’s booking widget quotes US dollars, and it decides that for you: read the page in Hungarian and the words translate while the dollar signs stay exactly where they were.

Big Bus publishes a clean tier table:

Big Bus ticket	Adult, from	Child 6 to 18, from	Family, 2 adults 2 children, from
Discover, 24 hours	€39.00	€35.10	€134.00
Essential, 48 hours	€44.00	€39.60	€151.00
Explore, 72 hours	€49.00	€44.10	€167.00

Children aged 5 and under travel free.

City Sightseeing prices the same durations twice, once with the boat and once without:

City Sightseeing ticket	With boat, from	Without boat, from
24 hours	$51.04	$47.85
48 hours	$57.42	$54.23
72 hours	$63.80	$60.61

Every figure on both sites is a from price. Note also that the two operators are not one product with two logos: they quote different amounts in different currencies, so the only useful comparison is the one you do yourself, in your own money, on the day. Do that before you buy rather than taking whichever kiosk you walk past first.

The boat is where the fine print lives

Big Bus bundles a Danube cruise into every ticket, City Sightseeing into its with-boat tickets, and both include it only up to a point. The included boat runs up to the 17:00 departure. Join a later sailing and every hop-on hop-off ticketholder pays 2,000 HUF, or 5 EUR, on top of the ticket already bought. Big Bus puts that late window at 17:00 to 21:00. Both companies publish the surcharge separately and identically, for the same boat, operated by Budapest Sightseeing Ltd.

Prices are in HUF, which is what you pay at the counter. Converted at 1 USD = 313 HUF, the ECB rate on 4 September 2026. Rates move, so treat the converted figures as indicative.

So the sunset sailing, which is the one everybody actually wants, is the one your ticket does not cover. Two thousand forints is not a scandal, but it is the difference between the trip you thought you paid for and the trip you get, and it is worth building into the plan rather than discovering it at the dock. It is also, oddly, the only forint figure either company prints anywhere.

Language: three different answers, not one

This is the detail most write-ups flatten, and flattening it is how people end up on a tour they cannot follow.

• The bus commentary: 16 languages, and both operators list the same count.
• The cruise: an audio guide in 8 languages.
• The walking tour: English only, led by English-speaking guides.

If your group’s English is thin, the bus still works and the boat still works. The walking leg is the one that will not.

Where the bus earns its price

The value sits in three places.

Orientation. For a first day in a city you do not know, seeing Parliament from the Buda side and the Castle District from below, with commentary telling you what you are looking at, builds a mental map faster than the same day spent squinting at a transit app.

The river. Parliament, the Castle and the bridges from the water are a different city than the same buildings from the pavement, and the cruise is the part of the bundle people remember. Just remember the 17:00 line.

Mobility. If walking distance is a genuine constraint, the bus covers a lot of ground while you stay seated, and the stops are placed where the sights are.

Where it falls short

It is a tourist bubble, and it is not pretending otherwise. You will see the headline sights efficiently and miss nearly everything else unless you deliberately get off and walk a few streets past the stop. At the Great Market Hall, most visitors go straight upstairs to the souvenir and snack level; the ground floor, with the produce and the butchers, is where the city shops.

One route is one route. Big Bus’s 21 stops go where you would expect them to go. A ticket buys you that loop for a day. A transport ticket buys you the whole network, on your own timing, including all the parts of Budapest no sightseeing route has ever had a reason to visit. Our BKK and metro guide covers ticket types, validation and routes in full.

The bundle only pays if you use the bundle. Big Bus prices the cruise into every ticket, City Sightseeing into its with-boat tier. If you will skip the boat and the walk, take City Sightseeing’s no-boat ticket, because on the bundled ticket you have paid for a bus.

The verdict, by traveller type

Take it if you have one to three days, this is a first visit, you are travelling with children who will sit on a bus more willingly than they will change metro lines, or you specifically want the cruise and will make a daytime departure.

Skip it if you have been here before, you are counting what you spend, or your idea of a good day is an unplanned wander through District VII rather than a fixed circuit of landmarks. Budapest’s public transport reaches everywhere the bus does and a great deal it does not.

Either way, treat it as a first-day orientation tool and not as an itinerary. Ride it to get your bearings, take the boat while it is still included, then spend the rest of the trip on foot and on the tram, which is where the city actually happens.

Before you book

• Set the currency yourself where you can. Big Bus lets you choose between Australian dollars, pounds, euros and US dollars before you pay. City Sightseeing does not offer the choice, so budget in dollars for that one.
• Check which duration you are really buying. Both sell 24, 48 and 72 hours. At Big Bus that is €39 against €49, at City Sightseeing $47.85 against $60.61 without the boat. If day two is already spoken for, the longer pass is decoration.
• Take the boat before 17:00 unless you are happy to add 2,000 HUF a head.
• If a child is coming, Big Bus is the one publishing what a child pays: free under 6, a child rate from 6 to 18, and a family price for two adults and two children.
• Do not count on the night tour. Big Bus’s is suspended.

If you would rather skip guided formats entirely and put the savings into ticketed attractions instead, our Budapest Card guide works out whether that pass beats paying per attraction for your particular itinerary.

Sources: Big Bus Tours’ own Budapest site and City Sightseeing Budapest’s own site, both read 9 September 2026, for everything priced, timed, routed or counted on this page: Big Bus’s ticket tiers, child and family rates and currency options, its single route and its 21 stops, its timetable, circuit time and frequency, and its notice that the night tour is suspended; City Sightseeing’s booking widget prices with and without the boat, its Red Line, the Astoria stop closure and the secondary Green line, the 16-language onboard commentary, the cruise audio guide and the English-language walking tour; and the 2,000 HUF ($6) charge for boat departures after 17:00, which both operators publish for the same boat, operated by Budapest Sightseeing Ltd., with the 17:00 to 21:00 late window as Big Bus states it.