Edinburgh Open-Top Tour: Explore Iconic Sights
4.3
375 Ratings

Hop on and hop off the Edinburgh City Tour to explore iconic landmarks like Edinburgh Castle, The Royal Mile, and more. Enjoy 24 hours of unlimited sightseeing from the best seats in town!

Duration: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Cancellation: 24 hours
Highlights

Big Bus Edinburgh City Tour (Red Route) (Route)

Operating Schedule:

  • Summer (May–August): First bus departs at 09:00 from Stop 1 (Waterloo Place), with services every 10 minutes, and the final tour at 18:20.
  • Off-Peak (April, September, October): Buses leave from 09:00 every 15 minutes, with the last tour at 16:00.
  • **Winter…
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What's Included
  • Mobile ticket
  • Dog friendly
  • Multilingual audio commentary in 9 languages + free headphones
  • Cancel up to 24 hours in advance for a full refund
  • Valid for 24 or 48 hours with unlimited hop on- hop off
  • Your ticket, your schedule! Buy in advance and activate when you board
What's Not Included
  • Hotel Pick-up & Drop-off
Additional Information

Experience Edinburgh like never before with Scotland’s official open-top tour! Enjoy the best seats in town and the perfect way to discover the capital.
Feel free to hop on and off as often as you wish to fully appreciate the sights on our city tour, including Edinburgh Castle, the National Museum of Scotland, Dynamic Earth, Greyfriars Bobby,…

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Cancellation Policy

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.

Customer Ratings
4.3
(375 Ratings)
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Emzh2025
Jun 12, 2025
Highly recommended - We were in Edinburgh for the day. Had seen the big bus buses around so we decided to give them a try we manage to work out where closest stop is. When bus arrived was a young looking lad (only downside is only part of his uniform that had big bus was his cap) he was so professional and friendly explained the 2 tours in as much detail as he could. Such a comfortable trip bus was clean commentary could do with being a bit louder as when going up hill engine got louder making hard to hear commentary
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Angelorivasmx
Jun 10, 2025
Good - Good service, easy to book from internet, although we didn't use it the whole day. It got us to some places which were far away
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Blackbelt2
Jun 4, 2025
Excellent Introduction to any City - We are regular user of the Big Bus whenever we visit a new city and this was the case with Edinburgh. A choice of two routes was available, an inner city one of one hour duration hitting most of the popular tourist spots and an outer city loop which included a tour out to Leith, a stop near HMS Britannia his Majesty’s Royal Yacht and seeing the area outside of Edinburgh which also took about an hour. We chose tickets that covered both routes and the tickets were valid for 48 hours. If you want a good introduction to any city then the Big Bus hop on hop off service is the way to go. We thoroughly enjoyed our tour through and around Edinburgh.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Richard_s
May 25, 2025
Great Event - Great way to get the feel for the city and also learn about the history. I would highly recommend this tour.
Review provided by Viator
Larklabel
May 18, 2025
Inexpensive way to see the city and surroundings and a great value too. - Obviously the cheapest way to see Edinburgh is to walk everywhere but my wife’s bum knee ruled that out. The trams are a good value but they only go where the tracks are. Plus we found that in most cases their stops left you with a good walk anyway. The metro buses are everywhere but I didn’t think I had enough time to figure them out. So we signed up for the 48 hour Royal hop on hop off tour. It is their most expensive option but it gets you into the Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Royal Yacht Britannia for free. Do the research and see how good of a value this is. There are three routes ( red, green and blue) and with this ticket, you can take all of them. All three take you to Palace of Holyroodhouse (where the Royal family stays when in Scotland) but if you want to see the royal yacht and the botanical gardens, you have to use the blue route. It doesn’t take you by the castle though. I would recommend just jumping on on a ride around to get your bearings and if you see something interesting, jump off. They come by every 10-15 minutes so you can easily continue the ride. Pro tip, after an over night flight from the US, sitting up top in the open air (especially if it’s a sunny day) is a quick way to reset your internal clock and get some solar vitamin D. Probably my biggest complaint is on Princess street (one of the main visitor and shopping areas) there are few drop off zones.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Sverkern2018
May 21, 2025
Good luck. - Good tour with close between buses so you can take advantage of the opportunity to get off for a while. The buses were comfortable and the sound in the headphones quite ok
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Camille_p
May 14, 2025
You get what you pay for. - This company's pick up location was hard to locate compared to their competitors. It was a decent enough tour, but could have a few more places that were easier to find to get onto the bus. Additionally, there seemed to be a problem with the viator tickets the day we were in Edinburgh. Where viator kept telling me to get the voucher from my email, but when I clicked to get the voucher from my email, it took me back to the viator app. The people at the bus stop gave us tickets and let us on the bus as the viator app wasn't working.
Review provided by Viator
Dawn
May 7, 2025
An ok drive around Edinburgh. - Friendly driver saw us onto the bus, but didn't really work as a tour. No audio, so had no idea where we were or what we were looking at. Enjoyable as a journey, we were so lucky with the weather, but that's it.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
H7236uwlilyc
May 26, 2025
Terrible experience, do not recommend this tour bus - Absolutely would not recommend. If you do take this bus tour make sure you look up the pricing beforehand and know how much it should cost. We got on at the airport and asked for 2 adult tickets 2 concession priced tickets to the city and then a one day pass for us all b/c we were leaving the next day. The guy said he would give us a deal and charge us all concession price but actually charged is for a 7 day pass not a 1 day. When we saw the actual pricing we saw that we were overcharged by about 20 pounds. This wasnt just trying to make a bigger sale, we told him exactly what tickets we wanted and he decided nope I’m not going to give you that I am going to charge you way more for tickets you did not ask for or want and hope you don't notice. Another ticket seller told is when we got to the city if we went to stop 1 a supervisor could help us fix this-we planned to do this but we did not have time as detailed below. The guy at the airport also did not tell us that the company is in the process of switching the busses and so despite the fact that the bus from the airport to the city is bright orange, the busses in the city would not be that color they would be white in top and dark maroon on the bottom. Also did not tell us that the pickup spots were on the opposite side of the road as all the other busses and not clearly marked like the other bus tour lines. The day we went there were some traffic diversions. Once we realized the bus we should be getting on was not orange (this was begrudging to us by a driver who was a few feet past a stop but refused to let us on) we waited another 45+minutes for another bus to come. By this time it was almost 4pm (we got the initial tickets around 1pm so we knew we would have a short amount of time on the tour but from 1-4 we got off the airport shuttle, saw one sightseeing option and then wasted the rest of the time waiting for a bus to come to the stop while dozens of busses from every other tour line passed us.) the driver told us he would be bringing us back to stop 1 and at that point the last tour bus would have left. He thankfully after hearing what was going on called ahead to his supervisors and was told he needed to work past tge end of his shift and drive us through all the stops which was incredibly nice of him to agree to do. Many more people got on at stops after stop 1 so we clearly were not the only people waiting forever for another bus to come. Was happy we were able to see all the stops and hear the guided tour but the point of a hop on/off bus is to get off at the stops and see the sights/go inside them and we were not able to do that because the company does not run enough busses (once we realized what the busses looked like we waited minimum another 45m for another bus to come by) and they do not mark where the bus pickup spots were. Every other bus tour line has a bus that passed us as we waited at least every 5/10 minutes. Truly any other bus tour would be better.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Kelly_c
May 18, 2025
Do not book the ORANGE bus! - The hours for on-season which includes May… stayed the bus ran until 7:55pm… and after waiting for 30 minutes (and seeing 3 Red tour buses stop) I called customer service and was told the bus stopped at 4pm on Sunday…. I told them what was on the web site regarding on-season and was told it was only 4pm…. The bus driver didn’t bother to “remind us” of this 4pm last pick up when we got off of the bus at 3pm….. thank goodness it was NOT raining but it was very cold and we didn’t see any of the main stops we wanted too… a total waste of money
Review provided by Viator
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Edinburgh Open-Top Tour: Iconic Sights