A lion with a pharaoh's face, cut from the Giza bedrock about 4,500 years ago to guard the pyramids.
Meet its gaze from Khafre's valley temple, watch the three pyramids line up at the Panorama, then climb the Grand Gallery into the Great Pyramid.
What the price coversTickets included or extra, tour by tour
Official 2026 ticket pricesIn Egyptian pounds, next to every tour price
Free cancellationUp to 24 hours before, on every tour here
Private guide and carHotel pickup in Cairo or Giza
Tours
Choose your Giza pyramids tour
In the centre, a private half day with the pyramids, the Panorama and the Sphinx. Either side, a full day
with Saqqara and Memphis that includes the tickets, and a private tour with eight options for going inside. Every card
opens a full tour page.
Giza and the Sphinx, then Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara and the fallen Ramesses II at Memphis. Entry tickets, lunch and a 30-minute camel ride are in the price.
What's included
Entry to the Giza plateau, Saqqara and Memphis
Egyptologist guide, private car, hotel pickup
Lunch and a 30-minute camel ride
Not included: Great Pyramid interior (1,500 EGP) and tips
A private Egyptologist and driver for the pyramids, the Panorama and the Sphinx, back by lunch. The from-price is car and guide only: the 700 EGP plateau ticket is on top.
What's included
Private Egyptologist guide and driver
Hotel pickup and drop-off in Cairo or Giza
Plateau ticket, camel and lunch only in the higher options
Great Pyramid interior: 1,500 EGP extra on every option
Eight options, from a guide and car up to tickets with the Great Pyramid, the GEM or Saqqara added. The from-price covers only the car and guide, so pick the option you need.
What's included
Egyptologist guide and air-conditioned car
Hotel pickup in Cairo or Giza
Tickets, camel and lunch only in the all-inclusive options
Third-pyramid option: Menkaure is closed since September 2026
Three questions sort it out. Does the price include the tickets? Do you want Saqqara or the Grand Egyptian
Museum in the same day? And do you want to go inside a pyramid?
Every tour here cancels free up to 24 hours before. Children under 6 enter the plateau free and
students with ID pay half (350 EGP). The Great Pyramid interior costs 1,500 EGP on top unless your option includes it.
Before you book
The price buys the car. The pyramids cost extra.
Search for a Giza tour and you will see prices from $7 to $15. Those are real, but they are the cheapest option on
each listing: a car, a driver and, usually, a guide. The plateau ticket is 700 Egyptian pounds (about $13) per adult,
paid by card at the gate or online, and going inside the Great Pyramid adds 1,500. Open the options before you book:
"car and guide only", "entry fees", "all inclusive". Two tours here include the entries at their from-price: the
full day with Saqqara and Memphis and the pyramids and GEM day.
You do not need a tour at all. An Uber from downtown Cairo costs a few dollars, and the ticket office takes cards.
What a guide adds is real, though: they handle the gate and the interior queue, keep the camel men and souvenir
sellers at arm's length, and turn piles of limestone into a story. What they sometimes add uninvited is a papyrus or
perfume shop. On a private tour you can say no.
700
Egyptian pounds, about $13, for the plateau ticket in 2026. It covers
the outside of the three pyramids, the Sphinx terrace and the shuttle buses. Every interior is a separate ticket.
Private guideCar-free plateauCard onlyKhafre open inside
The Sphinx faces due east, toward the sunrise and the Nile valley.
01
Do I need a tour?
No. Uber gets you there for about 150 to 300 EGP. A guide handles the card-only gate, the touts and the story.
02
Which pyramid can I enter?
The Great Pyramid, for 1,500 EGP, and Khafre, reopened in September 2026. Menkaure is closed for maintenance.
03
Can the car drive in?
No. Since 2025 cars stop at the visitor centre, and free electric shuttles run between the sights.
04
Who should skip the interior?
Anyone claustrophobic or with a bad back or knees: the passage is about 1.2 m high and steep.
Your day
How a Giza half day runs
Four to five hours from hotel to hotel. A full day adds Saqqara and Memphis after lunch, a GEM day the museum.
01
Pickup in Cairo or Giza
Guide and driver meet you at the hotel. From downtown it is 40 to 60 minutes; start early and you beat the traffic and the groups.
40 to 60 minutes
02
Gate and shuttle
The car parks at the visitor centre on the Fayoum road. Your guide pays the tickets by card, and you ride the electric shuttle onto the plateau.
15 to 30 minutes
03
Pyramids and Panorama
Walk round Khufu's pyramid, go inside if you bought the ticket, then see all three line up from the Panorama viewpoint.
About 2 hours
04
The Sphinx
Through the granite valley temple of Khafre to the terrace where the Sphinx looks east over Cairo.
Tickets, hours, getting there and what to carry: one tab each.
Plateau: 700 EGP adult, 350 EGP student (ID, 24 or under), free under 6.
Great Pyramid interior: 1,500 EGP on top. Numbers are limited, so buy early in the day.
Khafre interior: reopened on 11 September 2026, a few hundred pounds. Menkaure is closed for maintenance.
Tomb of Meresankh III: 200 EGP, painted and rarely crowded.
Cards only at the gate. Official online tickets: egymonuments.com.
Daily: opens 7 a.m., last entry 4 p.m.
Ramadan: 8 a.m. to a last entry at 3:30 p.m.
Be at the gate at 7: tour groups arrive around 9, the touts with them.
Avoid Friday and Saturday, the Egyptian weekend, when local families come in numbers.
Sunrise entry is not possible; for sunset light, come mid-afternoon and stay until closing.
Uber, Careem or inDrive from downtown: about 150 to 300 EGP, 40 to 60 minutes.
Ask for the visitor centre on the Fayoum road (the new main gate) or the Sphinx entrance in Nazlet el-Semman.
Private cars stop at the gate. Free electric shuttles loop between the Panorama, the pyramids and the Sphinx.
There is no metro to the pyramids yet; Line 4 is not due before 2028.
A Visa or Mastercard for tickets, and small notes for tips and toilets.
Your student card and passport if you claim the student price.
Hat, sunglasses, sunscreen and water: shade is scarce on the plateau.
Shoes with grip for sand and uneven stone. Leave the drone at home; tripods need a permit.
Plateau ticket700 EGPAbout $13 for a foreign adult, by card.
Great Pyramid1,500 EGPAbout $27 on top, for the interior only.
Gates open7 a.m.Last entry 4 p.m., all year outside Ramadan.
ShuttleIncludedElectric buses between the sights, in the ticket.
From downtown40 to 60 minBy car; much longer at rush hour.
Refund24 hoursFree cancellation up to a day before, on every tour here.
Where it happens
The gates and the plateau
Two gates, no cars inside
Main gate: visitor centre on the Cairo-Fayoum road. Second gate: the Sphinx entrance, Nazlet el-Semman.
The plateau sits on the desert edge of Giza, where the city stops. Since April 2025 the main entrance is a new visitor
centre on the south side, with parking for cars and coaches; from there, electric shuttles take you up. The old gate by
the Mena House hotel no longer sells tickets. Tours pick you up at your hotel and park at the visitor centre; an Uber
drops you at either gate.
4.9★★★★★ 2,641 reviews · Half-day private Giza tour Viator rating
★★★★★
Super informative and very convenient pick-up, drive to pyramids and return. Guide talked non stop and gave great background and history. Wouldn’t do this without a guide, you learn and see so much more!
★★★★★
[...] This place truly comes alive when you book a tour compared to visiting it on your own. Our guide, Mostafa, was very thorough and answered all of our questions with ease.
★★★★★
He was exceptionally knowledgeable, pleasant, and patient. He eliminated any concerns from people bothering you and let you take your time at each location.
★★★★★
Excellent tour. Our guide Hossam was excellent. Definite advantages to starting earlier - the queues got a lot longer to enter the pyramid after we left!
★★★★★
Perfect day exploring the great pyramids. Guide Aya was awesome, very knowledgeable. Love every minute of it. Going inside the was hot and cramp but worth it.
★★★★★
[...] He was professional, took amazing pictures, and explained everything very well. He also made sure to shield us from all the hagglers.
★★★★★
Pick-up punctual. The guide was knowledgeable, friendly and flexible. The driver took us painlessly around all the sights. Lunch was very tasty. We didn't have to wait or queue anywhere.
★★★★★
We had a wonderful day on this tour. It was a great mix for children, they loved it! We were glad to have such an expert guide with us, we would never have seen so much on our own.
★★★★★
[...] There is so much to see you can truly spend a full day there but for our first time and will small children it was super convient to have a guide with transportation to and from.
After dark
The Sound and Light show
The Sphinx tells the story of the pyramids while floodlights play over the stone. It is dated, the schedule
is shaky during a redevelopment, and the night views are still lovely.
Hotel pickup, the show ticket and a seat facing the Sphinx and the lit pyramids. The show is being redeveloped and has run on a changing schedule since 2025, so check it is on before you book.
Three kings, one lion and a plateau that has drawn visitors for 4,500 years. Here is what you are looking
at, and how to see it well.
Who built what
The three big pyramids belong to three generations of one family in Egypt's Fourth Dynasty. Khufu, also called Cheops,
built the Great Pyramid around 2560 BC; for about 3,800 years nothing on earth stood taller. His son Khafre built the
second, which looks taller because it sits on higher rock and still wears a cap of its original smooth casing. Khafre's
grandson Menkaure built the third and smallest, with three little queens' pyramids beside it. Each pyramid was only the
centre of a complex: a valley temple by the old floodplain, a causeway, a funerary temple, boat pits and the tombs of
officials laid out in streets.
The Sphinx belongs to Khafre's complex. Most Egyptologists think his workers carved it from a knoll of limestone left
over in their quarry, around 2550 BC, giving it a lion's body and, probably, Khafre's face. It is about 73 metres long
and 20 high, and it faces due east.
The viewing terrace beside Khafre's valley temple is as close as visitors get.
The Sphinx, up close but not too close
You reach the Sphinx by walking through Khafre's valley temple, a hall of red granite pillars so plain and massive it
looks modern. A ramp leads to a terrace a few metres above the Sphinx's enclosure, with the head straight in front of you
and the Great Pyramid over its shoulder. You cannot go down between the paws: the enclosure floor has been closed to
visitors for years. Come early or late, when the sun is low and the face has some shadow; at noon it looks flat.
Our Sphinx guide has the details.
Inside: which pyramid, which ticket
Two pyramids are open inside right now. The Great Pyramid costs 1,500 Egyptian pounds on top of the plateau ticket:
a bent-over climb up a passage about 1.2 metres high, the soaring Grand Gallery, and the King's Chamber, a granite room
with an empty, lidless sarcophagus. Khafre, reopened on 11 September 2026, costs a fraction and takes you down into the
bedrock to a plain chamber where the explorer Giovanni Belzoni painted his name in 1818. Menkaure closed for maintenance
the same day, under the antiquities authority's rotation. If a tour option promises "inside the third pyramid", ask what
it means now.
The Grand Gallery inside the Great Pyramid: the reason to pay for the interior ticket.
The honest small print: most tour prices you see for Giza are the "car and guide only" option. Add
700 EGP per adult for the plateau, and 1,500 more for the Great Pyramid, unless your option says entry fees are included.
Each of our tour pages says what its from-price covers.
Guide or no guide
Giza is one of the easiest big sites in the world to do alone. Uber is cheap, the gate takes cards, and since 2025
electric shuttles link the visitor centre, the Panorama, the pyramids and the Sphinx. The plateau is also where touts
work hardest: men who say the site is closed, "guards" who walk you to a camel stable, a free headscarf that is not free.
A good guide makes that noise go away, buys your tickets, times the interior queue and tells you why the stones are
where they are. A bad one hurries you to a perfume shop. Read the reviews of the operator, not just the stars.
Timing it
Be at the gate when it opens at 7. The light is soft, the air is cool and the coaches are still in Cairo traffic. Avoid
Friday, the start of the Egyptian weekend. October to April is the season; in summer the average high is about 35°C
and there is almost no shade. Give the plateau three or four hours, or a full day if you add Saqqara, where Djoser's Step
Pyramid, the first big stone building in history, shows where all of this began.
From the Panorama viewpoint the three pyramids line up with Menkaure's queens' pyramids in front.
Straight answers to what people ask most about the Sphinx and the Giza pyramids.
How much are tickets to the Giza pyramids in 2026?
The plateau ticket costs 700 EGP (about $13) for a foreign adult and 350 EGP for a student with ID; children under 6 enter free. Going inside is extra: 1,500 EGP for the Great Pyramid, a few hundred pounds for Khafre, 200 EGP for the tomb of Meresankh III. The gate takes cards only. The full list is in the ticket guide.
Do Giza pyramid tours include the entry tickets?
Usually not at the advertised price. Most from-prices of $7 to $40 are the "car and guide only" option, and the 700 EGP plateau ticket is paid on top. Two tours here include entry at their from-price: the full day with Saqqara and Memphis and the pyramids and GEM day. The comparison table shows what each price covers.
Can you go inside the pyramids at Giza?
Yes, two of them. The Great Pyramid of Khufu costs 1,500 EGP on top of the plateau ticket, and Khafre reopened on 11 September 2026. Menkaure, the third pyramid, closed for maintenance the same day. More in going inside the Great Pyramid.
Is it worth going inside the Great Pyramid?
If you are fine with a low, steep passage and stale, warm air, yes: the Grand Gallery, a corbelled stone hall about 8.6 m high, is worth the climb on its own. The King's Chamber itself is a bare granite box with an empty sarcophagus. Claustrophobic, or watching the budget? Khafre costs a fraction and has a similar descent.
How close can you get to the Sphinx?
Close, but not to its paws. You walk up through the granite valley temple of Khafre to a terrace that looks straight at the Sphinx; the enclosure floor around its body is closed to visitors. Details in visiting the Sphinx.
Can I visit the Giza pyramids without a tour?
Easily. An Uber, Careem or inDrive from downtown Cairo costs roughly 150 to 300 EGP and takes 40 to 60 minutes; buy the ticket by card at the gate or online. A guide earns their fee at the gate, against the touts and with the history. See Giza without a tour.
Can cars drive onto the Giza plateau?
Not any more. Since April 2025 private cars and tour buses stop at the new visitor centre on the Fayoum road, and electric shuttle buses, included in the ticket, run between the Panorama, the pyramids and the Sphinx. More in the new entrance post.
How much is a camel ride at the pyramids?
There is no reliable fixed price. Expect 500 to 1,000 EGP for 30 minutes to an hour, agreed before you get on, in writing, with the route and the ride back included. On a tour, the camel option is prepaid, but handlers still ask for tips. See camel rides at Giza.
What is the best time to visit the Giza pyramids?
October to April, at 7 a.m. when the gates open, on a weekday. Tour groups arrive around 9, and Friday and Saturday, the Egyptian weekend, bring local crowds. From June to August the average high is about 35°C, with little shade.
How long do you need at the Giza pyramids?
Three to four hours covers the outside of the pyramids, the Panorama and the Sphinx; add an hour for an interior. A half-day tour runs four to five hours from your hotel. With Saqqara and Memphis it becomes an 8 to 10 hour day.
Is the Sound and Light show at the pyramids running?
Not reliably. The show is being redeveloped, has run on a reduced and changing schedule since 2025, and was reported suspended again in October 2026. Check soundandlight.show before you book, and read our status post.
Can I combine the pyramids and the Grand Egyptian Museum?
Yes, the GEM is about 2 km from the plateau. Its ticket rises from 1,570 to 1,830 EGP on 1 November 2026, and foreigners book a timed slot online. One tour here includes both entries; another leaves every fee to you. See GEM prices.
Ready to book
Pick your guide, then your gate.
A private guide and car from Cairo or Giza, and free cancellation up to 24 hours before on every tour.
Tickets included
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