Athens City Pass

Athens City Pass: four Headout bundles, and the maths on when one beats single tickets

The Athens City Pass is not one thing, and that is the first fact to have straight before you spend €79 or more. Greece sells no official pass: when we checked the Ministry's own ticket shop on 11 September 2026 it listed the Acropolis and the Temple of Olympian Zeus only as single timed tickets, and no combined or multi-day product at all. Every pass you can buy is a reseller bundle. "Athens City Pass" is the product name of one of those resellers, Turbopass, whose card sells from €79, and around it sit three other bundles with different doors, different validity and different refund rules: the MegaPass at €99, the Multipass at €135 and the Multipass with the National Archaeological Museum added at €153.

The five tickets most visitors buy, the Acropolis at €39 plus the Acropolis Museum, the National Archaeological Museum, the Ancient Agora and the Olympieion from €26 each, come to €143 bought singly on Headout. The panel at the top of this page does the same arithmetic for your own list.

What is included

The lead product of the Athens City Pass family is the Turbopass Athens City Card, the one sold under that name, described on its product page as access to 12 or more attractions. Named in the page text and on the attraction sheet that goes with it:

• Acropolis timed entry, pre-booked for the first day of validity with an entry time between 16:00 and 19:00, subject to availability. More on that slot below, because it decides whether this pass suits you at all.
• The Acropolis Museum, the one most people add the same day as the rock.
• The smaller museums: the War Museum, the Museum of Illusions, the Herakleidon Museum and the Hellenic Motor Museum, each named in the page text.
• The main archaeological sites: the attraction sheet names the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, Hadrian's Library, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Kerameikos, the Lyceum and the Stoa of Attalos. That sheet is an older version than the page text, so treat the state sites as covered in general rather than as a fixed list, and confirm on the day you book.
• A 48-hour hop-on hop-off bus ticket with audio guide. The operator and the routes are not named.
• Public transport and a city audio guide app. The page says the metro, tram, suburban rail and buses are included. Airport transport is not.

The National Archaeological Museum is missing from that list. The page names the Acropolis, the Acropolis Museum, the War Museum, the Museum of Illusions and the Herakleidon and then says "and more", so if the biggest museum in the country is the reason you are buying a pass, do not assume it is in there. Treat it as a single ticket and count it separately, which is what the panel above does. Every attraction can be visited once, and the card is an adult product: under-18s and EU citizens up to 25 have their free Acropolis entry verified against ID on arrival, so a pass buys them less than it buys you.

The three rivals include less, or different things. The MegaPass Essential is a convenience bundle: the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum with audio guides, a 2-day bus, 24 hours of public transport and a 3 GB eSIM, and nothing else, not the Agora, not the Olympieion, no other museum. The Explorer tier at €122 adds the Cape Sounion sunset tour, without the temple ticket. The Multipass is the sites-only ticket: the Acropolis, the Ancient Agora and its museum, the Roman Agora, the Olympieion, Aristotle's Lyceum and the Panathenaic Stadium with audio tours in five languages, and no museum at all unless you take the combo that adds the National Archaeological Museum for €153.

No bundle includes the Goulandris Museum, the National Gallery, the Byzantine and Christian Museum, the Numismatic Museum, the National Historical Museum and the Jewish Museum. The Museum of Cycladic Art and the Benaki are not in these four either. If those are your Athens, buy single tickets and skip the pass entirely.

Itinerary and timing

A pass has no meeting point. It arrives by e-mail as a digital pass and activates the first time it is scanned at an attraction, and from then the clock runs in consecutive calendar days: on the product page's own example, a 3-day card first scanned on a Monday at 10:00 is valid until the Wednesday at 23:59. The Turbopass card is sold for 1 to 6 days. The Multipass runs 3 consecutive days from first entry, and the MegaPass can be used any time within 365 days of the date you choose, which makes it the only one of the four that survives a change of plan.

The Acropolis slot is the timing detail that catches people. With the Turbopass, the visit is fixed for the first day of validity between 16:00 and 19:00. That is a fine slot in October and a hot one in July, and it means your first day starts in the afternoon on the rock rather than at opening time, when the site is emptiest and coolest. With the MegaPass and the Multipass the Acropolis time is reserved after you book, in the Smartvisit app for the Multipass, and the pages warn that popular slots sell out. The slot applies only to the Acropolis; the other sites are booked afterwards in the same app. All of these are timed entries that let you walk past the ticket desk, not a separate fast lane: the Acropolis has no such lane, and the Ministry has said as much about "skip the line" advertising.

One practical note from the Multipass page: the Ancient Agora's main entrance is temporarily closed, and pass holders use the entrance on Apostolou Pavlou near Akamantos Street. Our Ancient Agora page has the current details, and the site is about 8 minutes on foot from the Acropolis Museum.

Prices and options

All prices are a snapshot from 11 September 2026, per adult, and can move; the partner shows the live figure. One warning before the table: the Turbopass day ladder is odd. On the day we checked, 1 day cost €79, 2 days €92, 3 days €89, 4 days €103, 5 days €109 and 6 days €106, so the 3-day option was cheaper than the 2-day one. Treat that as a quirk of the day, and read "€89 for three days" as the useful number.

The decision comes down to four questions. How many of the big five will you enter? How many consecutive days do you have? Do you want the bus? And can you live without the right to cancel?

Three or more big tickets in two to three days: the Turbopass card, the one the name Athens City Pass belongs to. Against the €143 single-ticket basket, the 3-day option from €89 comes out ahead once you enter the Acropolis, the Acropolis Museum and one more of the Agora, the Olympieion and Kerameikos, and everything after that, the 48-hour bus, the War Museum, the Museum of Illusions, is on top. The 1-day card from €79 is a different calculation: in one day you can realistically do the Acropolis in its late slot, the Acropolis Museum and one more site, which is €91 of tickets, a small saving that comes with an afternoon Acropolis slot and a bus you will barely use.

Two big tickets and a bus: compare, do not assume. The MegaPass Essential at €99 wraps €50 of verified tickets, the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, with a 2-day bus that retails for €12 to €25 on its own, 24 hours of transport and an eSIM. It is a convenience bundle rather than a saving, and it cannot be cancelled, whereas the Turbopass 1-day from €79 includes both tickets, the same length of bus and a refund right. What the MegaPass does buy is time: a year to use it, against three consecutive days.

Sites, not museums: the Multipass at €135 covers the Acropolis, the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, the Olympieion, the Lyceum and the Panathenaic Stadium across three consecutive days, with audio tours. Three of the six are sites we sell tickets for, and those three come to €91 booked separately on Headout, so the rest of the money buys the audio guides, the two sites we cannot price and one checkout instead of six. It carries the best rating on this page, 4.7 from more than 8,000 reviews, and no refund. Add the National Archaeological Museum for €153 and the comparison becomes €91 of priced tickets plus the museum from €26, so €117 against €153.

Is it worth it?

For the visitor with three consecutive days, a list that starts with the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum and continues through the Agora and the Olympieion, and no objection to a late-afternoon Acropolis, the Athens City Pass earns its price: €89 for three days against €143 of single tickets, a bus thrown in, a handful of small museums on top, and free cancellation up to 24 hours before if the plan changes. The rating on the card is 2.8 from 13 reviews, which is too thin a sample to mean much either way, so read the recent ones before you book.

For a good share of the readers of this site, no. If your Athens is the Goulandris, the National Gallery, the Byzantine and Christian Museum or the Numismatic Museum, no pass helps; those need single tickets, and our best museums in Athens guide sorts them by how much time they deserve. If the National Archaeological Museum is the centrepiece of your trip, it is not named on the card's own page, so buy that ticket separately, from €26 on Headout, and judge the pass on what is left. If you are here for one day, the €79 card covers €91 of tickets you can use but pushes the Acropolis into the afternoon. If you want the rock at opening time, when it is coolest and emptiest, a single timed ticket from €39 does that and no Turbopass does.

Then there is the refund question, which is where three of these four fall down. The MegaPass, the Multipass and the Multipass combo cannot be cancelled or rescheduled. Weigh that against a city where a strike, a heatwave closure or a delayed flight can move your day: a €39 single ticket that you lose hurts less than a €153 one. The middle case is the hop-on hop-off question. If you were going to buy the bus anyway, the 48-hour ticket inside the card is worth €12 to €25 and tips the sum in the pass's favour. If you were going to walk, which in central Athens most people can, it is worth nothing to you and the pass has to earn its keep on tickets alone.

Tips

• Count doors before you buy. Write down which of the five big tickets you will enter. Fewer than three inside consecutive days, and single tickets almost always win. The panel at the top of this page counts them for you.
• Do not count on the National Archaeological Museum. It is not named on the Turbopass page, which lists five attractions and then says "and more". Budget €26 for it separately.
• Accept the late Acropolis slot, or do not buy the Athens City Pass. The 16:00 to 19:00 window on day one is fixed at booking, subject to availability. Anyone who wants a morning slot should take the Multipass or a single timed ticket and reserve early.
• Do not stack a bus on a pass. The Turbopass card and both MegaPass tiers already carry one. A separate Athens hop-on hop-off bus ticket would be paying twice.
• Read the refund line. Only the Turbopass card cancels free, up to 24 hours before. The MegaPass, the Multipass and the Multipass combo do not.
• Carry ID for the free tickets. Under-18s and EU citizens up to 25 have their free Acropolis entry verified against ID on arrival. The pass does not carry it.
• Simple plan. Turbopass, 3 days. Day 1: Ancient Agora in the morning, Acropolis Museum after lunch, the Acropolis in its 16:00 to 19:00 slot. Day 2: bus loop to the museums you added, the War Museum on the way back. Day 3: the Olympieion, the Roman Agora and Hadrian's Library on foot, and the bus for the ride home.

How to book, in four steps

1. Pick the pass by tickets, days and refund. Three big tickets in three days: the Athens City Pass from €79, around €89 for 3 days, free cancellation. Acropolis plus museum plus bus in one tidy bundle with a year to use it: MegaPass at €99, non-refundable. Sites and no museum: Multipass at €135, or €153 with the National Archaeological Museum, both non-refundable.
2. Price your own list first. The panel at the top of this page adds up the tickets for the places you want and puts each bundle against that total. If it tells you single tickets win, believe it: the sum is the same one the partner is doing, only in your favour.
3. Set the days and take the Acropolis slot seriously. Choose consecutive days you will use. A Monday morning activation runs to Wednesday night on a 3-day card. The Turbopass books the Acropolis for day one, late afternoon. For the other bundles reserve your slot in the app as soon as the confirmation lands, because the popular times often sell out.
4. Book early with free cancellation and keep the pass on your phone. The card can be cancelled up to 24 hours before, so book it as soon as your dates are firm and change your mind for free if Athens changes them for you. There is nothing to print.

Combine it with

Every bundle on this page starts with the rock, so read our Acropolis tickets guide first for the timed ticket from €39, the timed-entry rules and the queue reality by season. If the afternoon slot does not suit you, that page is where the alternative lives. The museum that every serious bundle adds next is the Acropolis Museum, a short walk from the Acropolis, and a pass that includes both is covering the two tickets almost everybody buys. The Athens City Pass sum only gets interesting from the third door onwards.

For the museums no pass covers, the Numismatic Museum is the nearest example: a single ticket and a quiet hour. Our best museums guide lists the rest of that group, the Goulandris, the National Gallery, the Byzantine and Christian and the National Historical, alongside the ones a bundle does include, so you can build a day that mixes both without paying for a door twice.