How we price and compare
A pass comparison is only as good as its prices and its assumptions. Here are both, in full, so you can judge the answers for yourself.
Where the prices come from
| What | Source | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Barcelona Card, Hola Barcelona, Aerobus, Bus Turístic and the other official products | Turisme de Barcelona's official shop, read automatically | Every night, and every time the site is updated |
| Museum admissions included in the Barcelona Card | The same official shop, where it sells the admission on its own | Every night |
| TMB tickets (T-casual, single tickets, airport metro ticket), taxi fares | The operators' published tariffs, checked by hand | When fares change, at least every January |
The official prices on the site were last refreshed on 22 October 2026; the hand-checked fares were last verified on 22 October 2026. If the official shop fails to answer properly one night, we keep the last good prices rather than publish gaps, and the date above tells you exactly how fresh they are.
Prices are what the official shop charges, including any online discount it applies at the time. The price you see at checkout is the one that counts.
How the calculator decides
You tell it four things: how many days, how many adults and children (4 to 12), whether you need the airport transfer, and which museums you actually want to visit. It then prices every sensible combination for your whole group:
- Hola Barcelona: unlimited public transport, including the metro to the airport. Museums paid separately.
- Barcelona Card: transport plus free entry to the included museums.
- Barcelona Card Essential + Hola Barcelona: the museums without the Card's transport, with transport bought separately.
- Aerobus only: for trips you will mostly do on foot. Museums paid separately.
Passes are sold from 48 hours, so trips of one or two days are priced with the 48-hour version; three days with 72 hours; four with 96; five or more with 120. If you add the Bus Turístic, its 24- or 48-hour ticket is added to every option. The cheapest total wins, and the answer shows how much you save against the next option.
Ordinary TMB tickets such as the T-casual are compared on their own page, Hola Barcelona vs T-casual, because whether they work depends on how many journeys you make, not just how many days you stay.
Two assumptions that work against us
We earn commission on passes, so we set up the maths to undersell them rather than oversell them:
- Museums without a verified price count as zero. Of the 23 museums the Barcelona Card includes, 11 cannot be bought on their own in the official shop, so we have no exact price and leave them out of the saving.
- Children's admissions are not counted. We do not have every museum's child fare, so buying separately looks a little cheaper than it really is.
Both choices make the Barcelona Card look worse than it deserves. When it still wins, the verdict is solid. More on why in how we make money.
How we write the guides
- Every guide answers a question people actually search for, in their own language. Each language version is researched and written separately, not translated.
- Stops, timetables and rules come from the operators (TMB, Aerobús, Barcelona Bus Turístic, Turisme de Barcelona), and each page lists its sources and the date they were checked.
- Where the cheaper option is one that pays us nothing, the page says so.
Corrections
If a price, stop or rule is wrong, email hola@magnify.ing. We fix it, re-check the rest of the page and update its date.