How Much Is a Museum Ticket? $2 to $25 by Country (2026)

A museum ticket is a $2 decision in Vietnam and a $25 decision in the Netherlands, and the index that holds both numbers puts the median between them at $15.

The finding

Across 664 museum stops in 238 AI-generated itineraries, the median paid museum ticket is $15, and by country it runs from $2 in Vietnam to $25 in the United States, the Netherlands and Sweden. 85 of the 664 stops, about 13%, cost nothing to enter. The figures are modeled entry costs from the Trip Cost Index, not box-office prices.

• $15 is the median paid ticket across the whole corpus.
• 12.5× separates the cheapest country median (Vietnam, $2) from the dearest ($25, three countries).
• Museum entry tracks the country's cost per day at the ends, not in the middle. Thailand and India sit in the cheapest five of both tables, the Netherlands and Switzerland in the dearest five of both; France, fifth dearest per day, sits at the $15 museum median.
• Europe is not one price. Portugal at $7 and the Netherlands at $25 are both in the table.
• One museum a day for a week costs a couple about $210 at the overall median, $28 in Vietnam, $350 in the United States.

Median museum ticket by country

Country	Museum stops	Median entry
Vietnam	20	$2
Thailand	12	$5
Bolivia	13	$5
India	18	$5
Portugal	11	$7
Malaysia	14	$7
Poland	16	$8
Croatia	9	$10
Egypt	17	$10
Romania	8	$12
Spain	24	$14
Greece	26	$14
France	14	$15
China	13	$15
Belgium	9	$15
United Kingdom	11	$15
Japan	12	$18
Italy	27	$18
Germany	14	$19
Switzerland	20	$20
Austria	16	$22
Netherlands	25	$25
United States	61	$25
Sweden	10	$25

Source: Trip Cost Index 2026, pulled August 7, 2026. Countries need at least eight museum stops; free stops are counted separately and excluded from the medians.

How much is a museum ticket?

The median paid ticket across the 664 stops is $15, and the overall median is the least useful number in the table, because the spread around it is the whole story. The United Kingdom sits exactly on it, which will surprise anyone who has walked into a London national collection for nothing: the median is computed on paid stops only, so the free institutions do not pull it down, and the 11 UK stops that carried a price set it.

The cheap end is Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Andes. Vietnam's 20 stops, spread across itineraries like the 10-day Vietnam route, median at $2; Thailand, Bolivia and India follow at $5. The expensive end is Northern and Central Europe and the United States, where $25 is the median and $20 to $22 the neighbors.

Where museums are free

85 of the 664 stops carried no entry cost, and the index does not say which countries they fall in; the country medians are computed on paid stops only, so a country with many free museums and a few pricey ones shows the pricey median. That is the honest reading of the United Kingdom's $15 and the United States' $25: both countries run large free institutions, and neither median reflects them.

The practical version: a free museum is a planning choice, not a country property. Check the museum's site, and check whether a paid museum keeps a free day or evening, before taking a country median as the price of a visit.

Museum entry against the cost of a day

Museum medians line up with the index's per-day medians at the ends of the tables and not in the middle. Thailand and India sit in the cheapest five of both; the Netherlands and Switzerland sit in the dearest five of both. Vietnam and Bolivia, two of the four cheapest museum rows, have no per-day row at all: the index needs three single-country itineraries for one, and they have fewer. In between, the tables disagree: France, fifth dearest per day at $340, sits at the $15 museum median; Malaysia, at $275 a day, has a $7 museum median; Egypt, at $136 a day, has a $10 museum median, double India's $5 at the same daily cost. The index records those gaps; it does not explain them.

For budgeting, use the museum table where the country is in it. The per-day table is not a stand-in for it outside the extremes.

What the number is not

These are modeled entry costs. Each figure is the price the planning model attached to a museum activity in a generated itinerary, anchored to destination cost data, then the median per country. They are not box-office prices, not surveyed spending, and not independently verified. They track posted prices closely enough to budget on and not closely enough to book on: a timed exhibition, an audio guide, a combination ticket or a Monday closure all sit outside the figure.

The museum's own site is the number to book on. A generated itinerary attaches a modeled cost to each stop and the opening hours the planner could find, which is the shape a day plan needs; this table is what to hold the total against.

Methodology

The corpus is the 238 AI-generated itineraries in the Trip Cost Index 2026 (of 240 generated by MonkeyEatingMango's planner; two lacked a budget range), covering 75 countries, pulled on August 7, 2026. Museum entry is every itinerary activity typed as a museum, 664 stops, using the activity's modeled entry cost in USD. Free stops (85) are counted separately and excluded from the medians. Countries need at least eight museum stops to appear; 24 do. Medians throughout, no averages. The full method, the cost-per-day table, street-food prices and budget splits are on the Trip Cost Index page.

Related reading

• Trip Cost Index 2026: the source table
• A 14-day trip costs $98 a day; a 3-day trip costs $333: cost per day by trip length from the same corpus
• 43% of AI-planned days carry a fault: where closed museums show up in generated plans
• How to plan the perfect trip: the planning sequence, with the budget step this table feeds

Last updated September 2026.