Edinburgh Sightseeing: Free Sights and Prices
Edinburgh sightseeing splits cleanly into paid and free
Two paid sights carry most of the cost of an Edinburgh trip: Edinburgh Castle at £23.50 online and the Palace of Holyroodhouse at £22 online. Everything between them on the Royal Mile is free or donation-based, and so are the National Museum, all four National Galleries sites, Calton Hill and the Royal Botanic Garden’s grounds. A family of four doing three paid attractions in one day spends well over £200. Doing one paid attraction and five free ones gives a fuller day for a quarter of that.
What the two big tickets cost
| Sight | Adult online | Adult on the day |
|---|---|---|
| Edinburgh Castle | £23.50 | £26.00 |
| Edinburgh Castle, concession 65+ | £19.00 | £21.00 |
| Edinburgh Castle, child 7 to 15 | £14.00 | £15.50 |
| Palace of Holyroodhouse | £22.00 | £26.00 |
| St Giles' | donation, £10 suggested | donation, £10 suggested |
| National Museum, galleries, Calton Hill | free | free |
Edinburgh Castle runs on 30-minute timed windows, opens 9.30am, and takes last entry at 5pm from 1 April to 30 September and 4pm from 1 October to 31 March. Family rates are published: one adult and two children £48.50 online, two adults and two children £67.50, two adults and three children £80.00. The Flexi ticket at £38.00 lets you come any one day in a seven-day window and costs considerably more than the standard ticket, so only buy it if your dates genuinely are not fixed. Full bands are on the Castle’s ticket page . The One O’Clock Gun fires Monday to Saturday and never on a Sunday, which is worth knowing before you plan a Sunday around it.
The Palace of Holyroodhouse opens Thursday to Monday and is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, except between 21 May and 7 September 2026 when it opens daily. It also closed 14 to 18 May and 26 June to 3 July 2026 for royal functions. It is the King’s official residence in Scotland, and the gallery beside it is The King’s Gallery. Check the day before you walk down the Mile on the Royal Collection Trust’s page . You can also book Holyroodhouse entry in advance if a specific morning matters.
Free sights worth a slot of their own
- The National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street in the Old Town, five minutes south of the Royal Mile via George IV Bridge. Free, roughly 10am to 5pm daily, over 20,000 objects on display. The Grand Gallery holds more than 800 on its own, Dolly the sheep has been in the science galleries since 2003, and the roof terrace is free and has one of the best Castle views in the city.
- National Galleries Scotland, four sites and all free apart from special exhibitions. The National on the Mound for Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Monet and the Scottish collection; the Portrait on Queen Street, daily 10am to 5pm; Modern One and Modern Two facing each other on Belford Road, daily 10am to 5pm with the grounds open from 9.45am. Opening details are on the galleries’ visit page .
- Calton Hill, free, 10 to 15 minutes up from the east end of Princes Street. The National Monument, the Dugald Stewart Monument and the City Observatory are all outside and cost nothing; only the climb inside the Nelson Monument charges, and that opens seven days, 10am to 3.30pm.
- The Royal Mile closes, around 80 alleys and courts running off the main street. Lady Stair’s Close opens into Makars’ Court, where the flagstones are carved with quotations from Scottish writers and the free Writers’ Museum sits at the end of it.
- Princes Street Gardens, Dean Village and the Water of Leith Walkway, all free and all walkable from the centre.
St Giles’ and the Scott Monument
St Giles’ on the Royal Mile is the High Kirk of Edinburgh, a Church of Scotland parish church; “cathedral” is a courtesy title held over from before 1689. Entry is by donation with £10 suggested, and a 25-minute audio tour costs £5.50 in English, German or Ukrainian on your own phone. The Thistle Chapel is the set-piece. Current arrangements are listed on the church’s visitor page .
The Scott Monument in Princes Street Gardens is a 61m Gothic spire with a paid climb of 287 steps up a spiral stair that narrows sharply near the top, and a museum room on the first level. A combined ticket with the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill exists and is the cheaper way to do both.
The Botanics: go for the garden, not the glass
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is free and open daily, 10am to 5pm from February to October, 10am to 4pm in November and January, 10am to 3.30pm in December. The glasshouses are closed. The Grade A-listed Palm Houses reopen on Friday 2 October 2026 with advance booking only, after a five-year restoration; every other glasshouse stays shut. Buses 8, 9, 23 and 27 serve the East Gate, 24 and 29 the West Gate. Current access is posted on the garden’s own site .
When to come, if the price matters
Late May to June and September give long daylight, mild weather and prices well below August. October to March is genuinely cheap and genuinely quiet, with sunset before 4pm in December. August is the best month for programming and the worst for value: hotel rates commonly run 100% to 200% above baseline with three-to-seven-night minimum stays, and the Tattoo grandstand of 8,918 seats stands on the Castle Esplanade for roughly four months over the summer, so the Esplanade stroll is not available when most people are there.
For the ticketed and guided end of this, see the Edinburgh attraction tours guide . Rooms are the one cost no cap covers, so check rates on Booking.com as soon as your dates are fixed. One closing tip that saves real money: do the National Museum roof terrace on your first afternoon. If the Castle view from up there is what you were paying £23.50 for, you have just made the decision for free.