Metropolitan Museum of Art Tours (2026): 8 Best Met Tours Compared

Our pick: Babylon Tours' semi-private Met tour, $132.50 per adult including admission, capped at eight people and rated 5.0 from 969 reviews, 98% of them five stars. Jump to the comparison table to see all eight tours side by side.

Quick answer: which Met tour suits you

Metropolitan Museum of Art tours solve the Met's main problem: it holds more than 5,000 years of art across a building on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, and most first-time visitors only have a morning or an afternoon. A guide takes you to the pieces most people come for, such as the Temple of Dendur, Washington Crossing the Delaware, Henry VIII's armor and the Van Goghs, and explains them on the way. What changes from tour to tour is the group size, how long you get, whether admission is included and how specialised the theme is.

This guide compares eight tours, every one with guest reviews posted in 2026, on price, admission, group size, length, start times and meeting point. It also covers the Met's free tours, private and Bible-themed tours, and the best way to take a Metropolitan Museum of Art virtual tour. The Met sits on the east side of Central Park, so it pairs well with a horse carriage ride or pedicab tour. If you are planning a second sightseeing day, our Statue of Liberty tours comparison covers the harbor in the same way; for more of the city, see our New York City travel guides.

Most tours meet in or near the Great Hall, while a few use an outside meeting point: Walks meets at 1000 Fifth Avenue, and New York Historical Tours at the top of the front steps. Check the operator's instructions carefully, particularly for private tours. All eight run every week and have guest reviews posted in 2026. Looking at how these tours are structured, the routes overlap (most highlights tours pass through the Egyptian galleries, European paintings and the American Wing), so the real differences are group size, length, price and the theme. Here is who we think each one suits.

The Met runs its own guided tours, and they are free with museum admission. According to the Met's tours page, highlights tours run several times a day at the Fifth Avenue building, collection tours focus on one area for about an hour, places are first come, first served, and the schedule changes, so check it on the day.

• Why pay for a tour then? A fixed start time and a reserved place, admission bought for you, a smaller group (eight on our pick, against first come, first served), and on the private tours, a route built around what you want to see.
• Why not? If you are happy to join whatever free tour is starting when you arrive, or you already have a ticket, the free tour costs nothing extra. Several low-rated paid tours were from guests who felt they could have done as well on their own.
• Our take: we'd lean toward the free tour if you already have a ticket and can be flexible on time; book a paid tour when the start time, admission or a small group matters.
• The expectation gap: the paid tours on this page are run by private companies, not the museum. An October 2026 guest who reached a paid tour from the Met's website expected an art historian from the museum and was disappointed.

Admission, according to the Met's visitor page, is $30 for adults, $22 for seniors 65 and over, $17 for students and free for children under 12; New York State residents and students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut can pay what they wish. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday to Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and closed on Wednesday.

Two tours here can be booked privately, and the cheaper one depends on your group size, because only Babylon Tours includes admission.

New York Historical Tours is the cheaper private tour at every size we checked, and its listing lets you shape the tour around your interests. Babylon Tours' private option is longer (2.5 hours against 2) and includes your tickets, so there is nothing to buy at the door. If you mainly want a small group rather than a private one, Babylon's semi-private tour at $132.50 each caps the group at eight.

The Bible tour at the Met we could verify is Cicerone Travel's Biblical Israel through the Exhibits at the Met Museum: two hours, $110 with admission, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, rated 4.9 from 23 reviews with none below four stars. It links the Met's ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Byzantine and Roman collections to the stories of Abraham, Moses, David, the Maccabees and Jesus, and suits both believers and visitors who simply want the Met's ancient collections explained in a single thread.

If you searched for Oasis tours at the Met, we found no bookable Met tour under the Oasis name with guest reviews when we checked in November 2026. A private Bible and ancient history tour at the Met is also listed by another company, but it had no reviews, so we left it out. If you have a specific operator in mind, ask them which galleries they visit and whether admission is included before you book.

None of the bookable tours we found is a live virtual tour. The best virtual tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the museum's own: The Met 360° Project, a set of six short 360-degree videos launched in 2016 that you can drag around or watch with a headset. They cover:

• The Great Hall
• The Temple of Dendur
• The Charles Engelhard Court in the American Wing
• The Arms and Armor galleries
• The Met Cloisters in northern Manhattan
• The Met Breuer, the Madison Avenue building the Met no longer uses

For individual works, the Met's online collection has images and descriptions you can browse by gallery, artist or period, which is the best way to plan which rooms to see in person. A virtual visit works well before a trip; on the day, the scale of the building is the main reason guests give for booking a guide.

• Weekday mornings are the quietest. A Met publicist told CNN that weekday mornings see the lowest foot traffic, and most tours here start between 10:00 and 11:00. Weekend afternoons are generally the busiest time to be in the galleries.
• Friday and Saturday evenings are the alternative. The Met stays open until 9 p.m. on those days, and the galleries thin out after the daytime crowds leave. Babylon Tours runs a 17:00 tour on both days, and Fable & Lark's Ghost Stories starts at 18:00 on Fridays.
• Never on a Wednesday. The Met is closed, even though two tours on this page show Wednesday dates.
• The rooftop is seasonal. The Cantor Roof Garden is closed from November to February, so the tours that include it in season (Walks, ExperienceFirst and City Wonders) skip it in winter.

Prices checked on November 9, 2026 start at $47.50, for Fable & Lark's themed Ghost Stories tour; standard highlights tours start at $52. A guided group highlights tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art costs $52 to $132.50 per adult, and seven of the eight tours here include the $30 admission. Themed tours cost $47.50 to $110, and a private tour costs $349 for one or two people plus admission, or from $326.07 per person for two with admission included. The Met's own guided tours are free with admission.

• Do not book a Wednesday. The Met is closed, even though two of these tours show Wednesday dates in their calendars.
• Arrive 15 to 20 minutes early. The guide holds the tickets, and late arrivals on several tours had to buy their own and tour alone.
• Save the operator's number and find the meeting point (usually the pharaoh statue in the Great Hall) before the start time.
• Travel light. Only small bags and thin backpacks go through security.
• Book a Friday or Saturday evening for a quieter museum: Babylon Tours runs at 17:00, and Fable & Lark's Ghost Stories at 18:00 on Fridays.
• Tell your guide what you want to see. Some guests felt the Egyptian galleries took too much of a 2-hour tour; the smaller and private tours adjust most easily.
• Do not expect the rooftop in winter. The Cantor Roof Garden is closed from November to February.
• Stay after the tour. Your ticket remains valid for the rest of the day, and the tour is the best map you will get of the building.
• Pair it with Central Park. The Met sits on the park's east side at 82nd Street; a carriage ride or pedicab tour starts about 25 blocks south.

We searched available New York City listings for guided tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about 25 in all, and kept those rated 4.5 or higher with at least 20 reviews and guest reviews in the past six months, taking no more than two tours from any one company. We checked each listing on November 9, 2026 for prices by date, age and group size, admission, length, group size, start times, meeting point and cancellation terms, and read 417 reviews, 66 of them rated three stars or lower: 110 for our top pick, 23 to 42 for each of the others, and samples from two near-duplicate listings by the same companies.

We have not taken these tours ourselves. The recommendations are based on that listing data, the review analysis and the Met's own published information, and where we describe what guests experienced, it reflects a pattern across reviews rather than our own visit. Our research and review methods page explains the process in full.

We left out a 4.0-rated tour, two tours with no reviews in the past six months (a literary tour and a Met and Central Park combination), a private Bible and ancient history tour with no reviews, a family tour priced in euros with 19 reviews, Spanish-language tours, and second listings for the same Babylon Tours and Walks tours.