Six Red Fort listings, ranked — and the three tests I ranked them on
Six GetYourGuide listings sell you something at the Red Fort, and I have put them in the order I would book them myself. Three tests, in this order: how many people stand behind the rating, whether the entry ticket is actually inside the price, and what kind of day the listing is buying you. One sort before any of that. The Archaeological Survey of India, which runs the ticketing, charges an Indian citizen about ₹35 to walk in and a foreign tourist about ₹600, roughly seventeen times more. Those are two different shopping trips, and I sort you before I sell you anything — the two gate prices has the whole of it.
The six, in the order I would book them
Red Fort Skip-the-Line Entry Ticket & Guided Tour
The entry ticket, the queue skipped and a guide, on one price with nothing left to settle at the gate. The listing I hand to a foreign visitor who wants one answer rather than five options.
from $13Read the full review ›
Red Fort Guided Visit with Optional Entry & Add-Ons
The highest rating of the four day listings and the cheapest headline on the site, because the headline buys a guide and nothing else. Entry is an add-on you choose at booking.
from $5Read the full review ›
Red Fort Skip-the-Line E-Tickets & Guide with Delhi Transfers
E-tickets, a guide and a car both ways. Honest value on a first day in Delhi, and a lot of money for a ride you could take on the Violet Line in a few minutes.
from $34Read the full review ›
Old Delhi: Chandni Chowk Tuk-Tuk Tour with Street Food
The largest review pool on this page, and not a fort ticket at all. It buys the afternoon on the other side of the road, which is why it sits fourth rather than first.
from $12Read the full review ›
Skip-the-Line Guided Tour of Delhi’s Iconic Red Fort
A clean five stars from 27 reviews, on a small-group listing at several times the price of the straightforward one. Low on this list for want of evidence, not for want of quality.
from $31Read the full review ›
Red Fort Light & Sound Show with Private Guide
A different product from every other listing here: the fort after dark, with a private guide, a show ticket bought separately and nothing at all on a Monday. Fifteen reviews.
from $27Read the full review ›The first test: how many people stand behind the score
A rating is worth exactly as many people as produced it. Here are the six pools in full: 74, 54, 51, 50, 27 and 15. Every one of those is small. The Red Fort takes millions of visitors a year and none of these listings has been reviewed by more than a coachload of them, so nothing on this page should be read the way you would read a rating built on thousands. I would rather write that in the first section than bury it.
The second gap in the evidence has closed since I first put this page up. Written reviews are readable on all six listings now, and every write-up here quotes real ones, word for word and under the names their authors left. That changes what these pages can do. Instead of describing what a listing includes and stopping there, I can tell you that one traveller on the transfers listing walked straight in without queueing, that a guide on the evening show got his group into the hall after Delhi traffic ate their start time, and that the small-group tour turns up with a car and a driver as well as a guide. Ten reviews read on a listing is texture rather than a sample, though, so the counts above still decide the ranking.
The second test: whether the entry ticket is in the price
This is where the four day listings separate, and it has nothing to do with how good the guides are. The skip-the-line guided tour puts the entry ticket inside the price, so there is one payment and no queue. The transfers listing does the same with e-tickets and adds a car at each end. The $5 listing does not: that price is the guide on his own, and the entry ticket, the rickshaw, the Jama Masjid and Chandni Chowk extensions and the hotel pickup are add-ons you choose at booking. The small-group listing is sold as skip-the-line with a guide, and it is also the one I have the least evidence about, so read the option you are buying before you buy it.
The other two are not competing on this test at all. The evening show has its own ticket, bought at the fort, and the Old Delhi tuk-tuk tour does not go into the fort. Everything each listing does and does not cover sits side by side at all six compared.
The third test: what the day is for
Ranking a two-hour evening show against a full morning with a guide on price alone would be silly, so I have not. The classic Red Fort day is a morning at the fort and an afternoon across the road, which is why the Old Delhi day exists as a page and why the tuk-tuk tour is on this list at all. The show is a separate evening, on a separate ticket. And the one fact that outranks every listing here: the fort is closed every Monday, and so is the show. Check the hours and the Monday closure before you book anything, because no rating on this page survives arriving on the wrong day.
Why the largest review pool is fourth
The Chandni Chowk tuk-tuk tour holds 5.0 from 74 reviews, the best of both numbers on this page, and I have still put it below three listings with fewer reviews and lower scores. It is not a fort ticket. It does not take you through the Lahori Gate, it does not include entry and it is not sold as though it does. If you came here to sort out the fort, one of the top three settles it; if the fort is already settled, this is the best-reviewed thing on the site and it fills the afternoon.
The two thin pools sit last on evidence
The small-group tour holds 5.0 from 27 reviews and the evening show listing holds 4.9 from 15. A perfect score is easier to hold on twenty-seven reviews than on five hundred, and fifteen reviews describe what has happened rather than what usually happens. Neither of those is a warning. Nothing in either listing looks wrong to me and I flag the count every time either one appears on this site, because a number that small should travel with its own health warning attached.
What I am doing with the numbers
Ratings, counts and prices are GetYourGuide’s own figures at the time of writing, copied across unrounded, which is why a live widget sits beside every one of them. Prices are “from” figures that re-price by date, option and party size, so read them as the shape of the market rather than a quote. The gate rates are the ASI’s, they change, and I hedge them every time. The quotes on these pages are taken from the live listings, reproduced word for word or trimmed at a sentence boundary, under whatever name the reviewer left. I never name the operator behind a listing, and I name a guide only where a reviewer named him first.
Frequently asked questions
Which Red Fort tour should I book?
For a foreign visitor, the skip-the-line guided tour: the entry ticket is inside the price, the queue is dealt with and there is one payment rather than three. For an Indian visitor the honest answer is usually to buy the gate ticket yourself and add a guide, which is what the $5 guide-only listing is for. The two gate prices explains why those are different answers.
Why is the tour with 74 reviews not top of the list?
Because it is not a fort ticket. The Chandni Chowk tuk-tuk tour has the best rating and the biggest review pool on this page, and it takes you round Old Delhi rather than through the Lahori Gate. It is the afternoon half of the classic day, which is set out at the Old Delhi day.
Are the review counts on these tours reliable?
They are accurate and they are small. The six pools run from 74 down to 15, and every rating on this page rests on fewer people than a single morning at the Lahori Gate. Written reviews are readable on all six listings and each page quotes them, but a handful of quotes tells you what a good day looks like rather than how often it happens. Where a pool is thin, as it is on the small-group tour and the evening show, the page flags it.
Are these reviews independent?
Yes. I am not the Archaeological Survey of India, not the fort and not a tour operator, and I sell no tickets. Booking links go to GetYourGuide and earn me a small commission at no cost to you, which is set out at the affiliate disclosure. The clearest evidence it buys nothing is that I tell most Indian readers to buy the gate ticket themselves, which pays me precisely nothing.