Pyramids Cairo Tours

See it before you pay for it

Three kinds of day at the pyramids

The Giza plateau is in every ticket: the three pyramids, the Great Sphinx below them, and the panorama point out on the sand where all three line up. The full day adds the older pyramids south of the city, where the step pyramid at Saqqara and the bent pyramid at Dahshur show the shapes Egypt tried before Giza. The third kind of day pairs the plateau with a museum, and since the Grand Egyptian Museum opened beside it, that pairing takes about seven hours.

Side by side

Half a day at Giza, the full day south, or Giza with a museum

People book these interchangeably and then find out they bought different days. The half-day tours run four to five hours and give you the plateau and the Sphinx, which is what most photographs of Egypt are taken from. The eight-hour days keep Giza and add Saqqara, Memphis and Dahshur, so you see the pyramid shape being worked out a century before Khufu. The museum days trade those southern sites for the Grand Egyptian Museum, ten minutes from the plateau.

Two-minute check

Which pyramid day fits yours?

Three things decide it: how many hours you are willing to give Cairo traffic, whether you want the older pyramids at Saqqara and Dahshur in the same ticket, and whether you are travelling alone or want the vehicle and the guide to yourself. Answer three questions and find out before you pay rather than at the pickup.

Six ways to spend the day

35,128 reviews across eighteen pyramid tours

Ratings are the operators’ own numbers on GetYourGuide, shown as published. We do not write reviews and we do not average other people’s into a score of our own.

What it really costs

What a Giza pyramid tour costs, line by line

Prices are per person and cover the guide, the vehicle and the run out to the plateau and back. What moves the number is how long the day is, how many sites are in it, and whether the car is yours or shared. A private half day and a shared half day see the same three pyramids; the difference is who else is in the vehicle and how long the stops last.

The honest answer

Is a Pyramids Cairo tour worth it?

Thirty dollars buys the plateau, the Sphinx and someone who can tell you which pyramid is which, and the question is really about the other four hundred. The stones are the same on every ticket. Paying more buys time and company: your own vehicle instead of a shared one, the older pyramids at Saqqara and Dahshur in the same day, or the Grand Egyptian Museum next door with lunch between them. The museum day rated 4.7 across 4,604 reviews is the one most people pick once they have read both.

What it's like

One plateau, three ways to spend a day on it

If the plateau is not enough

The three days that reach the older pyramids

Most of this page stays on the Giza plateau. These three carry on south down the west bank to Saqqara, Memphis and Dahshur, where the step pyramid and the bent pyramid show the shapes Egypt worked through before Khufu. They are the long days here, and each of them keeps Giza and the Sphinx in the same ticket.

Practical

Plan the day

Five things decide how it goes: which of the eighteen tours you take, whether your hotel is on the Giza side or across the river, what you wear on a plateau with no shade, how early you start to stay ahead of both the heat and the coaches, and which month you come to Cairo. Arriving on an early flight is its own case: a Cairo airport to pyramids tour collects you at the terminal and skips the hotel step, and a mini van Cairo pyramids tour keeps a small group together in one vehicle instead of a full coach.

Best time

When to come

Tours run all year, because the plateau stays open and the drive is short. What changes month to month is the heat on open sand, how many coaches arrive at once, and how early the guides want to start.

Worth knowing

Six things that aren't in the listing

Common questions

Pyramid tours from Cairo, answered

Why trust this page

How we put this together