Porto card: which pass to buy

Which Porto card to buy

Pick by the kind of days you want, because each pass is built around a different one:

Each pass is for a date you pick at checkout, with the tickets sent to your phone, and there are no refunds.

Porto Highlights Pass

The Highlights Pass is the simplest of the four: three of the city’s best-known sights, all within walking distance in the old centre and on the river below it.

Clérigos Tower

From the balcony at the top of the Clérigos Tower, 225 steps up, the old town and the Douro spread out below you. On the way up you cross the church and the museum of the brotherhood of priests that built it.

A tower ticket costs €10 if you buy it separately, with entry in half-hour slots.

Porto Cathedral

From the tower it’s a short walk to the Cathedral, which stands like a fortress on the hilltop above the Ribeira. The ticket opens the church, the Gothic cloister with its blue-and-white tiles and the museum, and you can climb the tower too.

It’s in all four passes, and a single entry is €4.

Six Bridges river cruise

Down at the Ribeira quay, a restored rabelo, the old boat that once carried the port wine, takes you out for 50 minutes under all six of Porto’s bridges. Boats leave every hour, from 10:30 to 18:00 between April and September and from 11:00 to 16:00 from October to March.

The ticket works on the boats of both companies at the quay, Douro Acima and Tomaz do Douro. Without a pass, the cruise is €20.

Porto Explorer Pass

The Explorer is built on a 48-hour hop-on hop-off bus, so you see the city sitting down. It adds the Cathedral and an evening of fado.

The 48-hour bus, a river cruise and a port cellar

The bus runs a blue line round Porto, out to Serralves and the seafront, and an orange one across the river in Gaia. The same ticket adds a one-hour cruise on a rabelo and a 50-minute visit to the Burmester port lodge in Gaia.

You book your cellar time with Burmester, by phone or at the lodge’s reception. The bus, cruise and cellar also sell as one ticket, at €46.

Fado at Fado Maior

The evening part is an hour of live fado, Portugal’s song of longing, in a tavern in Miragaia, about ten minutes’ walk from the Ribeira. The room has about 40 seats and no microphones.

There are shows at 18:00 and 19:30, with a later one on some nights, and you need to be 12 or older. Fado Maior seats start at €14.90.

Porto Culture Pass

The Culture Pass puts Serralves, the city’s big art museum and park, together with the Cathedral and the same Fado Maior show.

Serralves

Out in the west of the city, Serralves is Porto’s museum of contemporary art, in a park with a pink Art Déco villa. The ticket also covers the Treetop Walk and the Casa do Cinema, devoted to Manoel de Oliveira, the Porto film director.

It opens at 10:00 every day and closes at 18:00 on weekdays from October to March, at 19:00 at weekends; from April to September, each closing time moves an hour later. At the museum desk your voucher becomes a paper ticket. The all-access ticket is €24.

Historic Porto Pass

The Historic Pass pairs the Clérigos Tower and the Cathedral with a museum and a walk: the World of Discoveries and an audio guide app for the old town.

World of Discoveries

In Miragaia, this interactive museum tells the story of Portugal’s sea voyages, with a boat ride through sets of the places the sailors reached. It closes on Mondays.

A museum ticket on its own is €18.

Porto audio guide app

The pass also adds an audio guide app for a walk of two to two and a half hours from São Bento down to Gaia. The route passes the Cathedral, the Clérigos, the old city walls and the Dom Luís I bridge.

The app works offline with GPS, and your access lasts a year.

For an adult, the Historic Pass costs more than its four tickets bought separately. The youth price, for ages 14 to 18, comes in under them.

What no Porto pass includes

A few big names aren’t in any pass. The Bolsa Palace is seen only on its 30-minute guided tour, and the Church of São Francisco has its own ticket.

Livraria Lello isn’t in a pass either, but you can see it on a walking tour with fast-track entry. And of the port wine cellars, only Burmester comes with a pass, the Explorer: Cálem’s tour and tasting is bought separately.

Porto card vs Andante Tour: getting around

None of the passes includes the metro or the buses. For those there’s the Andante Tour, a 24-hour or 72-hour ticket that also covers the airport metro. So the choice isn’t really Porto card or Andante card: the pass gets you into the sights, the Andante gets you between them.

The Tour doesn’t cover the historic trams, which have their own fares, or the Guindais funicular, closed for maintenance since July 2026.