Choosing a Montmartre Paris Tour: Walking, Food or Private

Three kinds of tour leave this hill and the price gap between them is six-fold. The route is not what separates them — almost all of them end up at Place du Tertre. What separates them is what the fare covers, and this guide sets that out on the captured data rather than the marketing.

What are the three kinds of Montmartre tour?

Everything that leaves this hill falls into one of three groups, and the groups are defined by what the fare covers rather than by where you walk. A walking tour buys you a guide and nothing else. A food tour buys a guide and what you eat. A private tour buys a guide who is talking only to your party. Almost every route overlaps — they all end up at Place du Tertre and the basilica sooner or later — so the route is not the decision. The fare is.

Which one should you book if this is your first visit?

A walking tour, and probably the shortest one. Montmartre is a village you can cross in twenty minutes, and what a first visit lacks is not time on the hill but an order to see it in. Ninety minutes gets you the wall, the studios, the windmill, the vineyard and the square with a story attached to each. It also leaves your afternoon intact, which on a short Paris trip matters more than any of the extra content a longer tour would add.

The exception is if you are arriving hungry at midday. In that case the food tour solves two problems at once and the price gap closes sharply.

How much does each type actually cost?

The lowest fare on the hill is $23 and the highest is $237, which sounds like a six-fold quality difference and is not. It is a difference in what is inside the fare. At $23 you are buying two hours of a guide. At $142 you are buying three hours of a guide plus lunch and wine. At $237 you are buying five and a half hours, museum entry, private transport and a guide who is yours alone. Per hour, and per thing included, the range is much narrower than the sticker prices suggest. The price guide breaks each band down.

Why does group size matter so much here?

More than on most attractions, because Montmartre is narrow. The lanes are three or four metres wide, the stops are outdoors on cobbles, and a group of twenty-five strung out along rue de l’Abreuvoir cannot all hear the same sentence. One operator solves it with a loudspeaker, which works and is not the same as being close enough to ask a question.

The caps split cleanly by type. Shared walks run fourteen to twenty-five. Food tours cap at ten or twelve, largely because a fromagerie will not take more. Private tours are your own party. If hearing everything matters to you, that ordering is your ranking.

Does it matter where the tour meets?

It matters more than anything else on the day. The tours listed here meet at nine different points across five metro stations, and standing at the wrong one is the classic Montmartre failure. Place Blanche and the Moulin Rouge ticket office are two hundred metres apart and used by different operators. Avenue Junot is a small square, not a landmark. And Place Saint-Pierre by the carousel is the easiest meeting point on the hill to find, which is a genuine argument for the tour that uses it.

The map page lists all nine with their nearest station.

Walking tours: what you get for $23 to $75

A licensed local guide, an edited route and the stories behind the doorways. Nothing is unlocked for you, because nothing on this hill is locked: the basilica is free, the streets are free, the view is free. Thirteen departures, from a ninety-minute loop out of Rue des Abbesses to a four-hour half-day that also covers the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. The sweet spot is the two-hour band, which is where most of them sit and why. Full list on the walking tours page.

Food tours: what you get for $68 to $154

Between seven and fifteen tastings, usually wine, and on two listings a full sit-down meal. The groups cap at ten or twelve, and the stops are named businesses rather than generic “local bakeries”. The important thing to read before booking is the dietary clause: one listing rules out vegan diets and severe allergies outright, another rules out lactose, gluten and nut allergies. Full list on the food tours page.

Private tours: what you get for $65 to $237

Three things a shared walk cannot give you: the pace, which matters on a hill with 222 steps in it; the language, because two listings run in six; and the route, which you can adjust. Three listings here are private products in their own right and five more sell a private upgrade on the same booking. Full list on the private tours page.

What is the honest case for booking nothing at all?

It is a real case and this guide would be dishonest without it. Montmartre charges no admission, the Sacré-Cœur is free from 6.30am to 10.30pm, and you can walk every street on the hill for the price of a metro ticket. If you have a map, two hours and no particular interest in who painted what, you do not need any of this. The channel guide makes that case properly, including where it falls down.

Which tour suits which traveller?

What about the tours that are not really about Montmartre?

Two of the twenty-one products on this hill spend less than half their time on it, and it is worth knowing which before you book. One is a four-to-five-hour half-day that gives Montmartre about an hour and twenty-five minutes and then covers the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Arc de Triomphe, the Trocédero, the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame. The other is a five-and-a-half-hour private day that spends two and a half hours in the Musée d’Orsay before coming up here.

Neither is a bad booking. Both are excellent at what they actually are, which is an orientation to Paris and an art day respectively. They are simply not Montmartre tours, and if the hill is what you came for, the two hours you would spend on it are available for a third of the money.

How do the two platforms differ?

The tours here are sold on two booking platforms, and for a traveller the practical differences are small: both refund in full up to 24 hours before the start, both confirm by email, and both hand you off to the same local operators. What does differ is the detail on the listing. One publishes a timed stop list for most products, which is where the itineraries on the cards here come from; the other publishes a star histogram you can check the total against. Where a figure exists on only one of them, this site says which.

Practically: book whichever listing has the departure time you want, and read its own inclusions rather than assuming they match a similar tour elsewhere.

What would we book?

For a first visit with a fixed afternoon: the ninety-minute walk. For a first visit with the day free: the two-hour-twenty walk from Place Saint-Pierre, because stopping beats passing and a cap of sixteen beats a cap of twenty-five. For a second visit: the food tour, because you have already seen the sights and the bakeries are the part you missed. And for anyone travelling with somebody who cannot manage the climb: the private walk, where the pace is yours.

Montmartre guided tours are listed with their group caps and meeting points on Montmartre Paris Tours, and the reviews page has what travellers said about each.

Frequently asked questions

One of each, to compare

Paris Montmartre Walking Tour Best Art Culture and Food

The walking option: ninety minutes, a cap of twenty-five, and the lowest per-minute price on the hill.

From $37 per person

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Montmartre Hill French Gourmet Food and Wine Tasting Walking Tour

The food option: three hours, twelve people, macarons, cheese and wine included, finishing below the basilica.

From $142 per person

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Montmartre District and Sacre Coeur - Exclusive Guided Walking Tour

The private option: two and a half hours with a guide who is yours alone, in any of six languages.

From $65 per person

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