Howth on a Budget: Prices and Free Days
Howth is the cheapest day trip Dublin has to offer, and it isn’t close. No tour bus, no advance booking, no attraction fee: a EUR 4 round-trip DART ticket and a free cliff walk are the entire cost of the day, versus EUR 65-89 for a Cliffs of Moher coach or EUR 14-23 for the Glendalough bus. This page covers Howth as the flagship of Dublin’s gateway day trips; the wider network, Glendalough, Newgrange, the Cliffs of Moher, and Belfast, gets its own Dublin day trips guide .
| Key facts | Howth |
|---|---|
| DART fare from Dublin | About EUR 2 one way with a Leap Card, roughly EUR 4 return |
| Travel time | 25-35 min from Connolly, Pearse, or Tara Street |
| Cliff walk | Free, the Howth Head loop via the H3 bus to the summit |
| Booking needed | None, trains run every 20-30 min, no ticket to reserve |
| Seafood at the harbour | Chowder or fish and chips roughly EUR 8-12 |
What’s actually at Howth
Howth is a working fishing village on a headland at the northern end of Dublin Bay, built around a harbour that still lands seafood daily. The main draw is the Howth Head cliff walk: take the H3 bus from the DART station up to Howth Summit, then walk the marked Cliff Path Loop back down into the village, roughly 1.5 to 2 hours at a normal pace with sea views the whole way. A shorter version skips the bus and starts straight from the harbour if you’d rather not climb first. Howth Castle’s grounds and the Deer Park nearby are free to wander, and a small seasonal market runs at the harbour most weekends.
Do you need to book anything for Howth? No. There’s no ticketed attraction gating the day, no timed entry, and no tour operator required. It’s the one trip in the entire Dublin gateway family you can decide to do the morning of.
Getting there without spending on a tour
The DART runs from Connolly, Pearse, or Tara Street to Howth in 25 to 35 minutes depending on which station you board at, every 20 to 30 minutes throughout the day. A standard Leap Card fare runs roughly EUR 2 each way, so a round trip costs about EUR 4 total before you spend a cent on food. Check current fares at transportforireland.ie or the DART timetable directly at irishrail.ie . If you’d rather have a guide walk you through the cliff path and harbour history instead of doing it solo, a few operators run half-day Howth tours: check current listings on GetYourGuide , though most visitors genuinely don’t need one here.
Eating at the harbour without overspending
Beshoff Bros, right on the harbour, does fish and chips or a bowl of seafood chowder for roughly EUR 8-12, the cheapest proper meal on this whole page. The Oarhouse a few doors down is the sit-down version of the same idea, pleasant but pricier if you’re watching the day’s total. Either way, eating at the harbour beats anything near the DART station for both price and freshness, since the fish came off a boat that morning.
Is Howth cheaper than the other Dublin day trips?
By a wide margin. A Howth day runs roughly EUR 15-25 total including food, against EUR 25-35 for Glendalough (bus fare plus lunch), and EUR 65-89 just for the transport on a Cliffs of Moher coach. Bray to Greystones, the other cheap DART day in this family, runs similarly low, roughly EUR 15-25, though its connecting cliff walk has had repeated landslide closures in recent years and is worth checking before you build a day around it. Howth doesn’t carry that uncertainty: the loop has stayed reliably open.
Howth is Day 1 on every version of our Dublin day trip itinerary , from the 2-day plan through the full 7-day plan that adds Glendalough, Newgrange, the Cliffs of Moher, and Belfast. For the city itself, not the day trips, see Dublin on a budget and Dublin on a budget: prices and free days . One concrete tip: buy nothing in advance, just show up at Connolly or Pearse and take the next DART; Howth is the rare Dublin day where planning ahead buys you nothing.