Dublin Attraction Tours: Prices and Cheap Slots
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Dublin’s cheapest guided hour is also its hardest to get hold of, and its most expensive one is available every single day if you are willing to pay the peak rate. Price and availability run in opposite directions here, which is not how most cities work.
Kilmainham Gaol, at €8
Kilmainham Gaol Museum is a former prison and a site of political imprisonment and execution. The leaders of the 1916 Rising were held here and fourteen were executed. Charles Stewart Parnell was held here in 1881 and 1882. Éamon de Valera was held in 1916 and again in 1923, and was the last prisoner released when the gaol closed in 1924. The guided tour is how the Irish state explains its own founding, and it is the reason to come.
Tickets are €8 adult, €6 senior, €4 student and €20 family for two adults and two or three children under 18; under 12s are free but still need a ticket. Access is guided-only and every ticket must be pre-booked online, so walk-ups do not work at all.
- Tickets release 28 days ahead at midnight Irish time and go within minutes.
- Same-day cancellations are released online between 09:15 and 09:30. A genuine second chance, not a plan.
- Only kilmainhamgaolmuseum.ie and heritageireland.ie are valid channels. The museum states plainly that tickets bought from third parties or other websites are not valid, so anything sold as a skip-the-line Kilmainham ticket is not one.
- Courthouse Visitor Centre 09:30 to 17:15, Museum 10:30 to 17:15. Budget 90 minutes in total, of which the guided tour is one hour. Arrive 15 minutes early, or 30 to 40 minutes early for the last two tours of the day.
- Not recommended for children under 6, and strollers are not permitted on the tour.
It is 3.5 km west of the centre: Dublin Bus 60, G1 or G2, or the Luas Red Line to Suir Road, all €2 on a Leap Card. There is no parking.
The Guinness ladder, and where the cheap slot is
The Storehouse is not one price. It is six products, each quoted as a floor, with dynamic pricing on top.
| Product | From | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Guinness Storehouse Experience | €24 | 90 min |
| Stoutie | €32 | 2 hrs |
| Guinness Academy | €36 | 2 hrs |
| Storehouse plus Open Gate Brewery Paddle | €41 | 2.5 hrs, 18+ |
| Home of Guinness Experience | €48 | weekdays 11:00 to 15:00, 18+ |
| Storehouse plus Cocktail Workshop | €49 | 3 hrs |
Dynamic pricing lifts the base experience to roughly €30 to €36 on peak weekends and summer slots, and booking online is both cheaper and faster than the gate, with reported savings running to about 30%. The cheap slot is the earliest one on a weekday, which is also the quietest. The full ladder is at guinness-storehouse.com .
Three guided tours that cost less than the famous ones
- The Abbey Theatre backstage tour. Ireland’s National Theatre, founded 1904. National Theatre Tours run through 2026, about an hour, €16 to €18, covering the 1960s auditorium, the portrait gallery and the costume department. Groups of ten or more and private tours by arrangement. See abbeytheatre.ie .
- Croke Park. The GAA Museum, the stadium tour and the Kellogg’s Skyline, a walkway 17 storeys above the pitch, roughly 90 minutes at around €22 to €28. Details on crokepark.ie .
- Experience Glasnevin, run by the Dublin Cemeteries Trust. Ireland’s largest cemetery, holding Daniel O’Connell, Parnell, Michael Collins, Countess Markievicz and de Valera. Main gates 09:00 to 17:00 and the Visitor Centre and Tower Café 10:00 to 17:00; the Irish History Tour and the exhibitions are booked online at dctrust.ie . Genealogy research runs Wednesday to Friday. There is no evening visit, so plan it for the middle of the day.
St Michan’s crypts, with one caveat
The mummified remains in the vaults under St Michan’s on Church Street are genuine, and tours run Monday to Thursday only, drop-in, roughly 10:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 16:00. Several of the remains have been damaged, most recently in a fire in 2024, and the site has closed at short notice more than once, so confirm the tours are running that week before you walk over. No photography in the vaults.
What a pass will and will not do here
The OPW Heritage Card at €40 adult, €30 student and senior, free child and €90 family covers Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin Castle and Newgrange for twelve months from first use, and none of the Storehouse, the Book of Kells, EPIC or the distilleries. The commercial passes are the mirror image: the Go City Dublin Pass at roughly €79 to €169 and the DoDublin Card at about €69 buy the commercial attractions and exclude both the Book of Kells and Kilmainham.
If you want a fixed-price guided option in one place, compare Dublin attraction tours on GetYourGuide or browse Viator listings . For a base within the €2 fare zone of all of the above, check Dublin rates on Booking.com .
Set a midnight alarm 28 days before you fly and spend €8. That single act does more for a Dublin trip than any pass, and everything else here can be sorted the week you arrive. Then fill the rest out with the free and cheap sights or a day out of town .