How Much Does A Ghost Tour Cost In New Orleans

How Much Does A Ghost Tour Cost In New Orleans?

A ghost tour in New Orleans costs between $18 and $55 per person, depending entirely on format. Walking ghost tours run $30 to $37, vampire-themed walks $21 to $22, cemetery tours $25 to $35, haunted pub crawls $18 to $37, and bus tours $36 to $55. Ghost tours in New Orleans typically run from about $18 to $55 per person, and every tour on the roster carries free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

The cheapest bookable product is the "Three Haunted Bars, Free Shot" run by Big Easy Walking Tours, from $18 for a two-hour, three-bar route. The most expensive is the "Bus Tour With Hotel Pickup" from New Orleans Native Tours, from $55 for 2 hours 15 minutes, and it is the only roster product that collects you at your hotel. Between those poles sit twelve walking products whose prices cluster tightly, which tells you something useful: in this city the ghost tour is a mature, competitive market, and nobody legitimate is charging $100 for a French Quarter walk.

Here is the complete price picture, format by format, with durations and the decision name that separates similarly titled listings.

Two patterns stand out. First, the vampire walks are the bargain of the roster: both cost less than any standard ghost walk despite covering overlapping French Quarter ground. Second, price tracks format more than quality. Every rating on the roster sits between 4.5 and 5.0, so a $21 ticket and a $37 ticket both buy a well-reviewed guide. What changes with price is what the tour physically does: whether you stand in a bar, walk a cemetery aisle, or ride in a bus.

What Sets The Price Of A New Orleans Ghost Tour?

Three things set the price: format, duration, and the city's mandatory guide license. A licensed New Orleans tour guide must be 18 or older, pass a written history and culture exam with a 70% minimum score, clear a federal background check, and pay $50 for a new permit, renewed every two years for $20. That licensing floor is why no legitimate tour in the city sells for pocket change.

The licensing requirement is real and verifiable, not marketing color. The City of New Orleans requires anyone conducting paid tours to hold a city-issued permit administered by the Ground Transportation Bureau, under City Code Chapter 30, Article XXI. Applicants take a written exam on New Orleans history, culture and points of interest, submit a notarized application with a federal background check, and wear their badge while guiding. The city even recommends a study text, Beautiful Crescent, a full history of the city. You can read the requirements directly on the city's tour guide permit page and the Ground Transportation Bureau's requirements page.

What that means for your wallet: a licensed guide has invested study hours, exam fees and a background check before ever collecting a dollar. When a two-hour walking tour charges $30, part of that price buys a guide the city has tested on the difference between documented history and the legend version of a story. That is also the honest reason to be wary of any deep-discount ghost tour in the Quarter: if the operator is not paying licensed guides, something in the product is being cut.

Beyond licensing, duration does the rest of the pricing work. The two sub-hour cemetery listings, at 45 and 55 minutes from $25, cost less than the two-hour cemetery walks from $28 and $35 for the same reason a shorter anything costs less. And the premium products earn their premium through physical extras: a bus, a hotel pickup, EMF detectors, a private guide option.

If you are weighing cost against experience quality rather than just price, the deeper comparison of formats lives in the best ghost tour in New Orleans guide, which ranks the roster on substance rather than sticker price.

Which Ghost Tours Cost The Least In New Orleans?

The cheapest tours are the "Three Haunted Bars, Free Shot" from $18, the "Ghost and Vampire Walk" from $21, and the "Nightly Ghosts & Vampires Walk" walk from $22. All three are two-hour products. The $18 pub crawl carries the roster's smallest review pool at 79 reviews with a 4.7 rating, so it is a strong price, not a proven heavyweight.

Start with the honest caveat on that $18 listing. Big Easy Walking Tours runs a 4.7 rating across 79 reviews, which is genuinely good feedback but a genuinely small sample, and the roster's own notes flag it as never to be called the most popular. What you get for the money is a two-hour, three-bar crawl from The Rambler in the French Quarter, a free shot included, other drinks at your own cost, and the standard 21+ rule with government photo ID required. There is no way to take this tour as a minor, and no way around the ID check.

The two vampire walks are the smarter budget play for most travelers. The "Ghost and Vampire Walk" from French Quarter Phantoms is from $21, rated 4.7 across 2,541 reviews, making it both the second-cheapest tour on the roster and the highest-rated vampire-themed product, finishing at Jackson Square. Its stablemate, the "Nightly Ghosts & Vampires Walk" walk, is from $22 with a 4.5 across 472 reviews, departing nightly in the evening from the Voodoo Lounge at the corner of Orleans St and N Rampart St. For a $21 to $22 outlay you get the full two-hour French Quarter storytelling experience, the same duration as tours costing $15 more.

One more budget note that people miss: the cheapest cemetery access is also among the cheapest tours of any kind. Two separate St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 listings, the "Cemetery No. 1, 45 Minutes" walk and the "Cemetery No. 1, 55 Minutes" official tour, are each from $25, and both carry 4.6 and 4.5 ratings across 1,865 and 4,684 reviews respectively. If your goal is a famous cemetery rather than ghost storytelling, $25 buys the most-reviewed product on the entire roster.

What Do The $30 To $37 Walking Ghost Tours Include?

The four standard walking ghost tours cost $30, $33, $37 and $37, run 1.5 to 2 hours, and cover the French Quarter's documented hauntings with a licensed guide. At this tier you are paying for storytelling depth and, on two listings, entry inside a haunted location, which the cheaper vampire walks do not include.

The floor is the "Haunted History, Guided Walk" from Haunted History Tours, from $30 with a 4.5 across 2,293 reviews, meeting at the Vampire Apothecary Restaurant & Bar on St Peter St. The most-reviewed walking tour on the entire roster is the "Voodoo and Vampire Themes" walk from The Witches Brew Tour Company, from $33 with a 4.5 across 3,221 reviews, meeting at 311 Exchange Pl, though the meeting point may vary so confirm it on the live listing. It carries a "Likely to sell out" urgency flag, which at this price tier is worth taking seriously.

The two $37 listings justify their price with interior access. The "Interior Visit, 2 Hours" tour from Tour Orleans, 4.5 across 1,109 reviews, meets at 620 Decatur St and takes the group inside an actual haunted location rather than viewing exteriors all night. The "Ghost Adventures Interior Visit" from New Orleans Ghost Adventures, also from $37 with a 4.5 across 1,304 reviews, does the same from the same meeting point, capped at 28 travelers. That interior stop is the concrete difference between a $37 ticket and a $22 one: same streets, same legends, but one puts you inside a building with a story.

When Is Paying More For A Ghost Tour Worth It?

Paying more is worth it for three things: a bus, a private guide, or paranormal equipment. The $55 "Bus Tour With Hotel Pickup" is the roster's only product that collects you at your hotel, the $35 "Cemetery No. 3, Private Option" tour offers a private format led by an author-historian, and the $36 "Night Bus Tour, Exclusive Access" hands guests EMF detectors.

The bus tier is where the roster's price ceiling lives, and both products earn it differently. The "Bus Tour With Hotel Pickup" from New Orleans Native Tours, 4.5 across 463 reviews, costs from $55 for 2 hours 15 minutes and visits St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, the French Quarter and the Garden District, with pickup at most hotels in the French Quarter and Business District (see Haunted Hotels). Every other tour on the roster meets on foot, so if walking two hours in humid air is the obstacle between you and a ghost story, the $55 ticket solves a real problem.

The "Night Bus Tour, Exclusive Access" from Tour Orleans, from $36 with a 4.5 across 1,774 reviews, is the roster's only product using paranormal-investigation equipment: guests get EMF detectors on an after-dark cemetery visit. The operator states it is not suitable for children under 10, and no other roster product uses EMF equipment, so do not generalize that feature to cheaper walks.

The quiet value play at the premium end is the "Cemetery No. 3, Private Option" tour from Red Sash Tours, from $35 with a perfect 5.0 across 479 reviews, led by author and historian Sally Asher. It is the only 5.0 rating on the roster, it runs 1.5 hours at the gates of St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 on Esplanade Ave, and it offers a private option for groups who want a guide to themselves. Note that St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 is also free to enter unguided during open hours, so what the $35 buys is the historian, not the gate.

What Extra Costs Should You Budget For Beyond The Ticket?

Budget for drinks, tips and transport beyond the ticket. On pub crawls the included drink is limited, one complimentary drink at the last stop on the $37 crawl or one free shot on the $18 crawl, with all other drinks at your own cost. Guides work for tips as a norm, so plan roughly 15 to 20 percent of the ticket, and no roster tour includes hotel transport except the $55 bus.

The drink economics deserve a close look because the two pub crawls bookend the entire roster. The "21+ Pub Crawl, LaLaurie" from New Orleans Ghost Adventures, from $37 with a 4.5 across 2,212 reviews, visits Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar, passes the LaLaurie Mansion exterior from the street only, and includes one complimentary drink at the last stop. The $18 Big Easy crawl includes a free shot at the start of the evening instead. Either way, a realistic night adds two to four bar drinks at your own cost, and French Quarter cocktail pricing is not shy. Planning $20 to $40 per person for drinks on top of the ticket is a reasonable allowance, check the room once you are there.

Both crawls are strictly adults-only: 21 minimum with valid government photo ID, matching Louisiana's legal drinking age of 21. If your group includes anyone under 21, the pub crawl tier is off the table entirely, and a walking ghost tour is the right format instead.

Here is how the realistic per-person budget stacks up across the three most common spending patterns on this roster. These are planning allowances, not operator promises, and the ticket column is the only firm figure in the table.

One genuinely New Orleans cost factor works in your favor on crawls: the go-cup. The city permits open plastic or foam containers in the defined French Quarter zone, bounded by Canal St, Rampart St, Esplanade Ave and the river, with glass banned outright under the city code's open-container provisions. Bars hand you a go-cup when you leave with a drink, which means a crawl does not force you to finish or abandon a $15 cocktail at every stop. That allowance is zone-bound to the Quarter, not a blanket citywide right, so finish drinks before leaving the zone.

When Is The Cheapest Time To Book A Ghost Tour?

The sticker price does not change by season, but availability does: October sells out first. New Orleans averages highs around 81 to 82 degrees in October with lows in the mid-60s, the most comfortable walking-tour weather of the year, and the Krewe of Boo parade on Saturday, October 24 packs the Quarter. Book one to two weeks ahead for October dates, and expect the loosest availability in summer, when highs sit near 90 and heat indexes climb higher.

The pricing on this roster is flat: a $33 walking tour lists at $33 whether you book it in February or late October. What the calendar changes is your margin for booking late. The Halloween season concentrates demand hard, the "Voodoo and Vampire Themes" walk already carries a "Likely to sell out" flag, and the official St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 tour logs 10+ bookings in a typical six-hour stretch. October in New Orleans is also, per NOAA climate normals, the sweet spot of the year for standing outside: highs in the low 80s, lows in the mid-60s, drier air than summer.

Summer inverts the equation. June through September brings highs near 90 with humidity that pushes the felt temperature well above the thermometer, and the Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 with its peak from mid-August to mid-October. Tours still run, the cemetery listings run rain or shine, and availability is at its loosest, but the value calculation changes: you are trading comfort for walk-up spontaneity. The full month-by-month breakdown, including the 2026 season outlook, is in the best time for a New Orleans ghost tour guide.

Are Ghost Tours Worth It At These Prices?

At $18 to $37 for a two-hour licensed walking tour, the value case is strong on the numbers alone: every walking product on the roster rates 4.5 or higher, review pools run from 79 to 3,221, and all fourteen tours cancel free up to 24 hours before. The cheapest tours are not lower rated than the expensive ones, so price buys format and extras, not quality.

The clearest way to see this is to sort the roster by rating rather than price. The 5.0 product costs $35, but the 4.7s cost $18 and $21, and the most-reviewed tour on the entire roster, 4.5 across 4,684 reviews, costs $25. Meanwhile the most expensive ticket, $55, carries a 4.5 across 463 reviews, a good rating on a modest pool. Price in this market correlates with what the tour physically includes, a bus, a hotel pickup, an interior stop, EMF detectors, and only weakly with how well guests rate the result.

For the specific question of whether the experience justifies the outlay, the deeper treatment, including what reviewers actually praise and complain about, is in the companion piece on whether a ghost tour is worth it in New Orleans. The short version for a budget page: the $21 to $33 band is where the value concentrates, and the free 24-hour cancellation on every product means the downside of booking early is close to zero.

A final framing for anyone comparing this city against others: New Orleans is the market where ghost touring is a licensed profession with an exam, a badge and a background check, and the roster reflects that maturity. The site's own New Orleans Haunted Tours listings exist precisely because the floor here is high enough that almost any ticket you buy from a licensed operator will deliver a tested guide. Spend based on format, not fear of a bad tour.

Common Questions About Ghost Tour Prices