Tours & Attractions — Worldwide
These four cover most of the planet and compete on the same inventory, so the practical difference is price, cancellation terms and how the voucher works on the day. Two of them share a warehouse: TripAdvisor owns Viator, and the experiences you book on TripAdvisor are Viator's listings.
The largest tour and activity inventory anywhere, owned by TripAdvisor — day trips, skip-the-line entry, private guides, cooking classes, transfers. Breadth is the point: in a small or awkward destination it is often the only platform with anything listed at all. The flip side of breadth is variance, so the review count on an individual listing matters more here than on smaller sites.
Berlin-based and deepest across Europe, where it holds exclusive access deals that appear nowhere else — after-hours museum entry, restricted rooms, priority slots at monuments that sell out. Free cancellation up to 24 hours is offered on a large share of listings, and the app holds tickets offline. The curation is tighter than Viator's, which means fewer options and fewer duds.
Sells Viator's inventory inside TripAdvisor's review database, which is the reason to use it: you can read years of traveller reviews of the attraction itself, not just of the tour product, in the same place you book. Useful for deciding whether a sight is worth a half day before you decide who to book it with.
Activities run by individual hosts rather than tour companies — a home cook's kitchen, a photographer's walk, a craftsperson's workshop. Groups are small and the character is personal, which is the appeal; coverage is patchy and concentrated in large cities, and cancellation terms are the host's. Worth a look for the kind of afternoon the big platforms don't sell.
Attractions · Last-minute
Built mobile-first around same-day and next-day booking, with a curated shortlist per city rather than an exhaustive catalogue. Strongest across major European cities, New York, Las Vegas and Dubai. The one to open when you decide over breakfast that today is the museum day.
Largely the same inventory as the big marketplaces, with one reason to use it: activities booked alongside a flight or hotel earn and burn the same rewards currency, and appear in one itinerary. Worth checking if you already book travel there; rarely worth a separate account if you don't.
Attraction tickets and short activities sold inside the hotel booking flow, weighted towards entry tickets and airport transfers rather than guided tours. Convenient when the hotel is already booked there and the ticket lands in the same confirmation; thinner than the specialists on anything guided.
Private guides · Worldwide
Private guides only, vetted individually, in around 160 countries — you hire a named person and the itinerary is customised by message before the day. Costs several times a group tour, and earns it in two cases: limited mobility, and a specific interest no scheduled tour covers.
Private local hosts · Europe · Asia
Private-only walks and food tours with a local host, priced per group rather than per person, which makes it competitive for two to four people. Concentrated in European cities and parts of Southeast Asia. The standard product — a three-hour "highlights" walk on arrival day — is a good way to get oriented.
Scholar-led · Small group
Walking seminars led by academics, curators and architects, capped at six people. Expensive and deliberately narrow — one church, one excavation, one neighbourhood's politics — with none of the coach-and-headset format. For anyone who finds standard tours superficial, this is the opposite end of the market.
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Free walking tours · Worldwide
The largest directory of tip-based free walking tours, in hundreds of cities and many languages. Booking costs nothing and the guide is paid whatever you hand over at the end — the going rate is roughly what a paid group tour would have cost, and turning up without cash is the one thing to avoid.
A small, heavily curated set of trips and local experiences built around the obscure and the specific — a working archive, a disappearing craft, an abandoned structure. Coverage is nowhere near complete, so treat it as a source of ideas for a destination rather than a booking engine.
Meals cooked and hosted in someone's home, plus market walks and cooking classes, in around 130 countries. It solves the problem restaurants can't — eating the food people actually cook at home — and works best in cities where the home cooking and the restaurant scene diverge sharply.
Tours & Attractions — Regional Specialists
Outside Western Europe and North America, a regional platform usually has inventory the global ones simply do not carry — local operators list where their customers already are. These are also where you find the things that are not tours at all: transport passes, SIM cards, airport transfers and theme-park tickets bundled into the same checkout.
Hong Kong-based and the deepest inventory across Asia by a wide margin. It goes well beyond tours: metro and rail passes, airport express tickets, eSIMs, WiFi rental, theme-park entry and restaurant deals, usually with a QR code you scan at the gate. For Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand it frequently carries products no Western platform lists.
Taiwan-based and Klook's closest rival, with particular depth in Taiwan, Japan and Korea — day trips from Taipei, regional Japanese rail passes, small-town experiences that never reach the global platforms. Prices on identical Japanese products often differ from Klook's, so it is the natural second search for that region.
The international arm of Ctrip, China's largest travel company, and the practical way to book mainland Chinese attractions, high-speed rail and domestic transfers from outside the country. Many Chinese sites now require a timed reservation tied to a passport number; this is one of the few English-language places to make one.
Amsterdam-based and specialised in museums and monuments rather than guided tours — instant mobile tickets, often bookable minutes before you walk in. Strongest in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy and France. Use it when you know exactly which building you want to enter and just need a ticket that works at the door.
Milan-based and part of the TUI group, covering attractions, guided tours and day trips with the most depth in Italy, Spain and France. Its Italian coverage in particular reaches beyond the headline cities into places the global platforms treat as afterthoughts.
Madrid-based and the dominant platform for Spanish-speaking destinations — Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and the rest of Latin America, where its inventory of local operators far exceeds the global sites'. Many tours run in Spanish only, which is stated on the listing; the free walking tours it lists are genuinely free, with the guide paid in tips.
The local specialist for Australia and New Zealand — reef trips, wildlife parks, adventure activities and regional day tours, listed in Australian dollars by operators who often aren't on the global platforms at all. The natural check for anything outside Sydney and Melbourne.
Indonesia's largest travel app and the local default across Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. Attraction tickets, domestic transport and activities are listed in local currency by operators who often accept nothing else, and prices for the same product regularly undercut the international platforms.
India's largest activities marketplace — treks, multi-day trips, adventure sports and regional tours, with coverage across Indian states that the global platforms barely list. It also sells trips outward from India to nearby countries, which is a different catalogue from the inbound one.
United Arab Emirates · Middle East
The main ticketing platform for the Gulf — Dubai and Abu Dhabi attractions, desert experiences, concerts, club nights and sport, plus Saudi Arabia and Qatar. For events in the region it usually holds the primary allocation, so it is the first place to look rather than the second.
A Korea specialist aimed at foreign visitors — salon and clinic appointments, hanbok rental, restaurant reservations, studio photo shoots and discount coupons, all bookable in English when the Korean-language originals need a local phone number. Fills the gap that Klook and KKday leave in everyday, non-touristic bookings.
Multi-Day & Small-Group Tours
Different product, different companies. These sell an entire trip — transport, accommodation, guide, most meals — over days or weeks, and most of them operate what they sell rather than reselling it. The decision here is style, not price: group size, average age, how much of each day is scheduled, and whether accommodation is a hostel, a three-star or a converted monastery. Read the day-by-day itinerary and the single-supplement charge before comparing headline prices.
A marketplace rather than an operator, comparing thousands of multi-day tours from hundreds of companies side by side with filters for group size, age range and pace. The right starting point when you know the region and the length but not yet which company suits you.
Small-group trips, typically eight to sixteen people, with local guides and a deliberate bias towards locally owned accommodation and transport. Runs graded styles from basic to comfort, so the same route exists at very different price points — check which style a quoted price refers to.
The closest comparison to G Adventures, with small groups, local leaders and a large catalogue spanning basic to premium. Its trips lean towards public transport and local guesthouses over private coaches, which is the main thing separating it from the coach-tour companies.
Full guided coach touring — everything scheduled, luggage handled, hotels mid to upper range, groups of thirty or more. The trade is autonomy for effortlessness, which suits multi-country first trips and anyone who does not want to navigate a station. Sister brands Insight Vacations and Luxury Gold run the same model at higher tiers.
Group touring restricted by age to 18–35, with a social itinerary and shared rooms as standard. The age cap is enforced, and the pace and evenings are the product as much as the sightseeing — worth knowing before booking on route alone.
Europe only, groups capped in the twenties, no optional excursions and no shopping stops — the itinerary you booked is the itinerary you get. Heavy on walking and public transport, with central hotels rather than cheaper ones on the ring road. A distinctly American clientele and a fixed, unchanging format.
Operator · Active · Walking
A British operator built around walking, cycling and wildlife trips, with every itinerary graded for difficulty so you can tell a gentle valley week from a high-altitude trek. The grading is honest, which matters more than the brochure photographs when a trip involves eight hours a day on foot.
Operator · Active · Premium
Premium active travel — cycling, walking and multi-sport — with support vehicles, high-end bikes provided and hotels at the top of the local range. Expensive, and priced against the logistics: route options each day, luggage moved ahead, and no equipment to carry through an airport.
Attraction Passes
A pass is a bet: you pay once and it pays off only above a certain number of paid attractions per day. Two things decide whether it works — whether the sights you actually want are on the list, and whether the pass still requires a separate timed reservation at the busiest ones. Do the arithmetic against the individual ticket prices before buying; for a two-sight-a-day trip it usually loses.
Runs the branded city passes in around thirty cities, including the London Pass and the New York and Paris equivalents. Two formats: All-Inclusive, unlimited entries for a fixed number of consecutive days, which rewards a hard sightseeing pace; and Explorer, a set number of attractions used over a longer window, which suits a slower trip. Both need the maths done against individual ticket prices first.
Official city cards
Tourist board · Per city
Most European cities run their own card through the tourist board — the Paris Museum Pass, Roma Pass, I amsterdam City Card, Vienna City Card, Lisboa Card and dozens more. They are usually cheaper than the commercial passes and frequently bundle unlimited public transport, which is where the real saving sits. Buy from the official tourism website; resellers charge more for the same card.
Pass · United States · Canada
A short, fixed bundle of a city's main attractions — usually four or five — at a set discount, in about a dozen North American cities. The narrow list is the strength: because it contains only the headline sights, the saving is easy to verify against individual prices in a couple of minutes, with no guessing about how much you will use it.
Day-based and attraction-count passes for New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington and several other United States cities, with hop-on-hop-off bus access usually bundled. Competes directly with Go City in the same cities, and the attraction lists differ — compare the lists, not the headline prices.
All-inclusive city passes for German and other European cities — Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna, Prague and more — bundling attractions with public transport on a single card. Useful in cities where the official tourist-board card is limited to discounts rather than free entry.
Theme parks · United States
An authorised reseller of Disney, Universal and other United States theme-park tickets at a modest discount on gate prices — small percentages, but on a family's multi-day tickets the absolute number is meaningful. It also publishes crowd-level forecasts by date, which is the more useful half of the site.
Shows, Concerts & Sport — Primary Tickets
Primary means the ticket is issued by the event, at face value plus fees, and which company holds a given event is decided by the venue's contract — not by you. So the practical approach is the reverse of shopping around: find the event, see which platform the venue uses, and create the account before tickets go on sale. Popular events sell out in minutes and a queue is no place to be typing card details for the first time.
Part of Live Nation and the primary seller for the largest share of arena and stadium events across North America, the UK, Europe and Australia, with a separate site per country. Tickets are increasingly mobile-only and non-transferable outside its own resale system. Register and verify payment details in advance of any on-sale.
Primary · United States · United Kingdom
The ticketing arm of AEG, which owns and operates a large set of venues — so for those buildings AXS is the only primary seller and Ticketmaster has nothing. In the United Kingdom that includes the O2 in London; in the United States, a broad set of arenas and theatres. Worth an account purely so an on-sale doesn't catch you without one.
Primary + resale · United States
United States-focused, and unusual in mixing primary tickets for the teams it partners with alongside resale listings from other marketplaces in one search. Its Deal Score rates each seat against historical prices for the same section, which is the clearest read available on whether a resale price is reasonable.
Primary · Germany · Europe
Europe's largest ticketing company outside Ticketmaster, headquartered in Germany and running the primary sale for most major German, Austrian and Swiss events, with subsidiaries across Italy, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. If a concert in the German-speaking countries appears sold out everywhere else, this is where it was actually sold.
Primary · Australia · New Zealand
The main primary seller for Australian and New Zealand stadiums, arenas and sport, splitting the market with Ticketmaster's local arm. Between the two of them they hold nearly everything in the region, so the first step for any event there is finding out which of the pair has it.
Live music · United Kingdom · Europe · United States
London-based, mobile-only, and built around smaller live music — club shows, independent venues, festivals. Its distinctive feature is that tickets cannot be resold at a markup: a sold-out show has a waiting list, and returned tickets go out at face value to the next person in the queue. That makes it the one place where a sold-out gig is still worth watching.
Theatre specialist covering Broadway, the West End and a growing list of other cities. The reason to use it is the discount mechanics rather than the catalogue: digital lotteries for a handful of seats at a fraction of face value, and rush tickets released each morning for the same day. Enter the lottery daily on a long trip and the odds add up.
Madrid-based, and the seller behind most of the immersive and pop-up event circuit — candlelight concerts in churches and historic rooms, projection exhibitions, seasonal installations. These events rarely appear on the conventional ticketing sites, so it is the only practical way to find them in a city you are visiting.
Ticket Pia · Lawson · e+
Primary · Japan
Japan's domestic ticketing runs almost entirely through these three, and it works differently: high-demand events are allocated by advance lottery rather than first-come sale, and registration often expects a Japanese phone number, address or convenience-store payment. Plan for it early, or book Japanese events through Klook or KKday, which resell a subset in English.
South Korea's main ticketing platform for concerts, musicals and sport, with a separate global site that accepts foreign cards and sells a portion of each event to overseas buyers. The Korean-language site carries far more inventory, so a Korean-speaking friend materially widens what you can get.
Primary · United Kingdom · Europe · United States
A large independent primary seller covering United Kingdom festivals, theatre and music, with operations in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. Holds the allocation for a significant share of British festivals, which is exactly the category Ticketmaster does not universally cover.
United Kingdom clubs, festivals and independent live events, with strong coverage of the smaller promoters that never reach the national platforms. Its what's-on listings by city and date make it useful for finding an event in the first place, not just buying for one.
France's main ticketing network, covering concerts, theatre, museums and sport, with physical counters inside Fnac stores as well as the site. For French events it usually holds the primary allocation; the checkout is French-language, so a translation extension helps.
Italy's dominant primary seller — concerts, opera, theatre and football — and part of the Eventim group. Italian law restricts above-face resale of event tickets more tightly than most of Europe, so for an Italian event the primary site is realistically the only route.
Independent events · Worldwide
Where independent organisers sell everything the big platforms never touch — supper clubs, workshops, food festivals, running events, neighbourhood markets, one-off talks. Search a city and a date range and it surfaces the layer of local life that no tour marketplace lists.
Electronic music · Clubs · Worldwide
The reference for electronic music worldwide — club nights, warehouse events and festivals, listed by city with tickets sold directly. In cities where nightlife is a reason to visit, its calendar is more complete than anything else, and it is often the only place a specific party is advertised at all.
Resale
Resale is where sold-out events go, and where the money is lost. Prices float with demand and can sit far above or below face value — the same seat is often cheaper an hour before doors than it was a week earlier. Check the resale rules where you are going before paying a markup: several countries cap resale prices or ban above-face resale outright, and in the United Kingdom and much of the European Union a capped, face-value platform usually has the same ticket for less.
The largest resale marketplace, with concert, sport and theatre listings worldwide and a guarantee that a valid ticket arrives or you are refunded. It shares ownership with viagogo, so the same listing frequently appears on both. Fees are added at checkout rather than shown in the search results, which is what makes the listed price misleading — compare on the final total.
StubHub's international sibling, carrying much the same inventory under a different brand and reaching markets where StubHub is not the local name. Same caution applies and then some: read the final price including fees, and confirm the ticket format before paying, since some events refuse tickets transferred outside the official system.
A United States resale marketplace covering concerts, theatre and the major sports leagues, with a loyalty scheme that returns credit toward future orders. Pricing on the same seat routinely differs from StubHub's, so on an expensive ticket it is worth the second search.
Face-value resale · United Kingdom
A United Kingdom resale platform that caps listings at face value plus the original booking fee, so nothing on it is marked up. Many artists now direct their official returns here. Inventory appears and disappears quickly, so set an alert for the event rather than checking manually.
Amsterdam-based and capped at a small percentage above face value, with tickets verified and reissued in the buyer's name where the organiser supports it. Strongest in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the European festival circuit — the sensible first look for a sold-out European event before touching an uncapped marketplace.
A United States resale marketplace that shows the all-in price from the first screen instead of adding fees at checkout, which makes comparison against the other marketplaces straightforward rather than arithmetic. Inventory is smaller than StubHub's; on the events it does carry, the honest pricing usually wins.
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Last-minute resale · United States
Built for buying after the event has already started or shortly before doors — United States sport, concerts and comedy, priced all-in, often at the day's lowest point as sellers dump unsold seats. The trade-off is that some listings don't reveal the exact seat until purchase.
Football and major sport — a warning
Read before buying
European football is the category where travellers most often lose money. Most big clubs sell to members first and forbid resale, so tickets on third-party sites can be cancelled at the turnstile and the "guarantee" only refunds the price, not the trip. The safe routes are the club's own website, an official hospitality package, or a membership bought in advance. Treat any site promising sold-out derby tickets at a premium as the risk it is.
Finding Out What's On
Half the problem is not buying a ticket but knowing an event exists. These are the tools for pointing at a city and a set of dates and seeing what is actually happening while you are there — often the difference between a good trip and a memorable one, and they cost nothing to check.
Concert alerts · Worldwide
Tracks the artists you already listen to, syncs from a streaming account, and alerts you when one plays near a location you set — including a city you are only visiting. Setting your destination and travel dates before a trip is the quickest way to find out that a favourite band is playing while you are there.
Concert listings · Worldwide
The same idea as Bandsintown with a stronger city-calendar view: pick a city, scroll a date range, and see every listed gig regardless of who is playing. Better for browsing a destination cold; Bandsintown is better at following specific artists.
City listings · Editorial
Locally edited what's-on coverage for around forty cities — exhibitions, openings, food events, seasonal happenings — written for residents rather than visitors, which is what makes it useful. The "this month in {city}" pages are the fastest read of what is worth building a day around.