Lisbon City Tour Bus: Yellow Bus vs City Sightseeing Hop-On Hop-Off, Honestly Compared (2026)

Lisbon city tour bus tickets cost €22 to €57 for a hop-on hop-off pass, but the two operators are not equally useful. We compared Yellow Bus and City Sightseeing on routes, real-world waiting times, ticket bundles, reviews and price to see which passes actually make sense.

Among the six listings we compared, ratings run from 2.9 to 3.7 stars across more than 2,200 reviews, substantially lower than many of the city's other popular sightseeing tours, where walking tours and boat trips commonly score 4.8 or higher. That does not make the buses useless. It means the ticket you choose, and the part of the route you skip, matter more than they do in most cities.

Which Lisbon bus ticket fits you?

If the buses are not for you, the same city is covered by Lisbon's historic trams in our Lisbon tram tour guide, and by tuk tuk in our Lisbon tuk tuk tour comparison.

Five of these six tickets come from the same operator, so we have matched each one to the kind of visit it suits rather than ranking the buses against each other.

This is where Lisbon's buses differ most from their reputation. In the reviews we examined, each operator has one route that draws most of the praise and one that draws most of the complaints, and the ticket price does not tell you which is which.

Our take (half the network is the problem): Read enough of the one-star reviews and a pattern appears: many of them come from the eastern loops, not from Belém. Both operators send a two-hour route out to Parque das Nações through areas few visitors would choose to see, and both run it less often than the Belém route. If the Oceanário is on your list, the Metro gets you there faster; otherwise the Belém half of the ticket is where the value is.

A Lisbon hop-on hop-off bus ticket costs €22 to €57 per adult. A 24-hour ticket for Yellow Bus's Belém route is €22, a 48-hour two-route ticket €28, a bus and tram or bus and boat combo €38, and the All-in-One passes €47 for 72 hours and €57 for 96. City Sightseeing's 24-hour ticket is €33, or €35 with the night tour. Children pay half.

Sometimes. The bus is worth it if you want Belém, the riverfront and the historic tram without walking Lisbon's hills, particularly in the heat or with limited mobility. It is poor value as a way to hop between many sights in one day, because the waits between buses eat the time you saved.

• Worth it for three-day visits. The 72-hour pass bundles the tram, the boat and the public trams for less than the tram and boat alone, and three days absorbs the waits.
• Worth it for Belém on a hot day. The Belém route draws the best reviews of any route we compared, and the free walk at Stop 10 adds a guide.
• Less worth it for a single packed day. Guests who planned four or five stops in one day are the ones most likely to give up and take an Uber.
• Hard going with small children. Long waits in the sun are the most repeated complaint from parents, and several gave up for a taxi or the Metro after the second stop.
• Consider public transport instead. A 24-hour Carris and Metro pass costs €7.25 and covers every public bus and tram, including Tram 15 along the river to Belém and Tram 28 through Alfama. You lose the commentary and the top deck, not the sights.

If what you want is the story behind the streets rather than a ride past them, a two to three hour guided walk covers the centre better; we compare them in our Lisbon walking tour guide. For the river on its own, see the Lisbon boat tours comparison. If mobility is why you are considering the bus, our guide to Lisbon for seniors covers the gentler ways to see the city, and our best things to do in Lisbon guide ranks what to see.

• Arriving by cruise ship? Check where your bus actually stops. Recent reviewers found the Yellow Bus kiosk at the cruise terminal unstaffed and its stop moved across the road. On both operators, the bus from the port goes to the central hub first rather than straight to Belém, which can add close to an hour.
• Yellow buses and red buses are different companies. A Yellow Bus ticket will not get you onto a City Sightseeing bus, or onto the other red-liveried sightseeing buses you will see around the city.
• Join the Yellow Bus WhatsApp channel on day one. The QR code at each stop links to it, and it is where cancelled departures are posted.
• Check for strikes, marathons and holidays before your dates. Guests have lost half a ticket to a public holiday, a marathon morning and a parade. On 25 April, for example, reviewers describe half the lines running from a different street.
• Go by the windscreen sign, not the route name. Yellow Bus marks the Belém route with a blue sign and Modern Lisbon with a pink one, while reviewers and even staff variously call the lines blue, red or purple. Check the sign before boarding, or you may spend two hours on the wrong loop.
• Screenshot the stop map before you set off. From what we've seen in reviews, stop numbers are rarely announced on board and the kerbside signs are low and easy to miss, so guests regularly overshoot the stop they wanted.
• Start early. The first departures have free seats on the top deck. Later in the day, a bus arriving after a cancelled run is often full, and the people at the stop are told to wait for the next one.
• Expect a pause at Stop 1. What typically happens is that buses wait at the terminus before starting the next loop, and some passengers riding through have been asked to get off there.
• Ride the full Belém loop once before hopping off. You see everything from the top deck, then get off where it matters. Hopping off at every stop is where the waits add up.
• Bring your own earphones. Broken headphone sockets are one of the most repeated complaints on both operators, and on a full bus you cannot change seats to find one that works.
• Use the public trams your ticket already includes. Yellow Bus tickets cover the Carris trams while valid, so if a bus is late, Tram 15 runs along the river between the centre and Belém.
• Visiting in October? Our Lisbon in October guide covers the first rainy month of autumn, the marathon weekend and the clock change, all of which affect a day on the open top deck.
• Book the boat for a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday. It does not sail on the other three days, and nobody on the bus will necessarily tell you.

For a longer day out of the city, our Sintra day tour guide compares the guided trips to the palaces, none of which the city buses reach.