Which Berlin Pass Is Worth It? WelcomeCard vs CityTourCard vs Museum Pass

Every first-time visitor hits the same small wall at BER Airport or the first U-Bahn station: there is a rack of Berlin passes, each promising to save you money, and no obvious way to know which one is actually for you. WelcomeCard, CityTourCard, Museum Pass Berlin, plus the plain single ticket sitting quietly next to them. They are not the same product, and buying the wrong one is one of the easier ways to waste 30 euros on your first morning.

My advice is to stop asking which pass is "best" and start asking which one fits the trip you are actually going to have. A three-day museum marathon and a two-day walking-and-eating weekend want completely different tickets. Once you know the shape of your days, the right card is usually obvious.

Which Berlin pass is worth it: the honest short answer

There is no single winner, and any guide that gives you one is selling something. The Berlin passes split cleanly by what they cover:

• Transport cards (WelcomeCard, CityTourCard): unlimited public transport for a set number of days, plus partner discounts. They do not give free museum entry on their own.

• Museum Pass Berlin: free entry to 30+ museums over three days. It gives you no transport at all.

• Single and day tickets: the plain BVG fare. No discounts, no frills, but often the cheapest option for a short, central, walkable trip.

So the real question is a two-part one: how much will you ride, and how many paid museums will you actually enter? Answer those honestly and the decision makes itself. The tool below does the arithmetic for your specific trip.

Museum Island is where the pass question gets real: it holds five state museums, and how many you enter decides which card wins.

First, the option most guides skip: no pass at all

Before you buy anything, look at the plain fares, because Berlin is more walkable than most visitors expect and my own free walking tour route stays inside the normal AB city zone the whole way.

In 2026 the current BVG fares are:

• Single ticket AB: €4.00 (a short hop of up to three stops is €2.80).

• 24-hour day ticket AB: €11.20, with unlimited travel for one person for a full day.

• 4-trip ticket AB: €12.40 (€3.10 a trip) if you ride only now and then.

That day-ticket number is the one to remember, because it is the benchmark every transport card is measured against. A 72-hour CityTourCard costs €35.60, which is €11.87 a day, almost exactly the price of buying a day ticket each morning. In other words, the transport cards are not magically cheaper than paying as you go. What you are really buying with them is the bundle of partner discounts and the convenience of not thinking about tickets. If you are staying central and walking most of the time, three separate day tickets, or even a handful of single fares, can come out cheaper than any card. For how the zones work and when you need the ABC ticket for the airport or Potsdam, see my guide to Berlin's AB and ABC ticket zones.

The plain day ticket is the honest benchmark: at €11.20 for zone AB, it is what every tourist card is quietly competing against.

The transport cards: WelcomeCard vs CityTourCard

These two are close cousins. Both give unlimited AB (or ABC) transport for your chosen number of days and a folder of discounts. The differences are small but real.

Berlin WelcomeCard costs €28.50 for 48 hours or €39.50 for 72 hours in zone AB in 2026. Its selling point is the discount network: up to 50% off at 170-plus partners, which is the widest of the transport cards compared here. If you are the kind of traveller who will actually use discounts on a river cruise, the TV Tower, or a museum or two, the WelcomeCard can earn its keep. I broke the maths down in detail in Is the Berlin WelcomeCard worth it?.

Berlin CityTourCard costs €35.60 for 72 hours in zone AB. It advertises discounts of up to 40% at 30-plus partners, so its network is smaller than the WelcomeCard's even though individual deals can still be useful. At 72 hours it costs €3.90 less than the WelcomeCard. If the wider WelcomeCard partner list does not match your plans, price the CityTourCard for your exact number of days.

My honest read: for a normal two-to-three-day Berlin trip, the transport card only wins clearly if you are riding a lot and will use the discounts. If you are walking a compact central route and riding a few times a day, a day ticket when you need one is simpler and often cheaper. If you are unsure how much you will really ride, read is Berlin walkable? first. The answer changes a lot of pass decisions.

A transport card only beats a day ticket when you ride hard and use the discounts. For a walkable central trip, it rarely does.

The museum question: where Museum Pass Berlin wins

If your Berlin is built around exhibitions, the picture flips completely. The Museum Pass Berlin costs €32 and gives free entry to more than 30 museums over three consecutive days, including the Museum Island museums that are open, the German Museum of Technology, and the Natural History Museum. The Pergamonmuseum is currently closed, so do not count it in a 2026 itinerary.

To see why that is strong, do the single-ticket maths. A Museum Island house is roughly €12 to €19 on its own. Enter three museums and the €32 pass has already paid for itself; a serious museum trip visiting five or six easily doubles its value. That is a better museum deal than either transport card offers, and I compared it directly against buying tickets one by one in Museum Pass vs single tickets.

The Neues Museum is one of the open Museum Island museums covered by the Museum Pass. Three paid museum visits can already recover the €32 price.

The catch is right there in the fine print: the Museum Pass includes no transport whatsoever. You will still need day tickets, single fares, or your own two feet to get between the museums. That is fine because Museum Island is a short walk from Alexanderplatz and Hackescher Markt, but it means the Museum Pass is a companion to a transport plan, not a replacement for one.

There is also a hybrid worth knowing about: the WelcomeCard Museum Island version costs €62 for 72 hours in zone AB and bundles transport with one free daily entry to the Museum Island museums that are open. If your trip is Museum Island plus a lot of riding, price that single card against the alternative of a Museum Pass (€32) plus day tickets and decide which suits your days.

Match the pass to your trip

Here is how I actually steer visitors, once I know what their days look like:

• Short, central, walking trip, one or two museums. Skip the passes. Buy single tickets when you ride and a €11.20 day ticket on any heavy-transport day. Berlin rewards walking, and you will likely spend less than any card.

• Transport-heavy, few museums (day trips inside the city, lots of hopping between districts). A transport card can pay off, mainly for the discounts. Take the WelcomeCard if you will use its wider partner network; take the CityTourCard if it is cheaper for your exact number of days and you do not care about deals.

• Museum-heavy, light transport. The Museum Pass Berlin at €32 is the clear value pick. Pair it with a day ticket or two, or just walk between the central museums.

• Both museum-heavy and transport-heavy. Compare the WelcomeCard Museum Island (€62) against a Museum Pass (€32) plus the day tickets you would buy anyway. For three focused days this is usually the closest call. Remember that the Pergamonmuseum is closed when you count Museum Island stops.

One more thing that is not a tourist pass at all: the Deutschlandticket at €63 a month. It is a subscription, not a holiday ticket, and it only makes sense for long or very transport-heavy stays. I explain exactly when it is and is not worth it in the Deutschlandticket guide for tourists.

Most first-time trips start and end around Alexanderplatz and Hackescher Markt, so much of central Berlin is walkable between the sights that matter.

A quick worked example

Say you are here for three days, staying near Hackescher Markt, and you plan to visit three museums and ride the U-Bahn a few times a day. Pay-as-you-go with a day ticket each day is about €33.60 in transport, plus roughly €40 in museum entries if you buy them singly, so call it €73. Swap the single museum tickets for a €32 Museum Pass and you are at about €65.60, and you have unlocked 30-plus museums instead of three. A WelcomeCard Museum Island at €62 covers transport and daily entry to the open Museum Island museums, but not the wider 30-plus. For that specific trip, Museum Pass plus day tickets and the WelcomeCard Museum Island land within a few euros of each other, and the deciding factor is simply which museums you want. That is the whole point: the "best" Berlin pass is the one that matches the museums and rides you were going to do anyway.

If you would rather spend your first hours walking the historic centre than decoding fare tables, that is exactly what my free walking tour is for. It starts at Alexanderplatz, stays inside the normal AB zone, and connects the places most of these passes are trying to get you to.

Image credits

Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.

Visitors in front of the Berliner Dom on Museum Island: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A BVG ticket machine on board a Berlin tram: Nicbou, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Berlin S-Bahn train at Berlin Hauptbahnhof: JoachimKohler-HB, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A tram passing the TV Tower and World Clock at Alexanderplatz: Penguin9, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The grand staircase inside the Neues Museum in Berlin: Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.