Short answer: it depends entirely on the pass, and the split isn’t random — it roughly follows whether a city’s core sights are walkable or spread out. Get this wrong when comparing two passes and you’ll compare an apples total against an oranges-plus-a-Metro-fare total.
Passes that include transport
- Roma Pass — unlimited buses, trams and metro for the full 48 or 72-hour window.
- I amsterdam City Card — includes public transit alongside canal cruises and museum entries.
- Lisboa Card — unlimited trams, buses, metro and even some funiculars and trains to nearby towns.
- Berlin WelcomeCard — zone-based transit included with museum and attraction discounts.
- Vienna City Card — unlimited public transport plus discounted entries.
These cities share a pattern: sights are spread widely enough, or transit is cheap enough relative to attraction prices, that bundling it in makes the pass feel complete rather than partial.
Passes that don’t
- Paris Museum Pass — covers museum and monument entry only. No Metro, no bus.
- The London Pass — covers attraction entry only. No Oyster, no Tube or bus fares.
- Go City products — generally attraction-only across most cities, priced around entry fees rather than transit.
Paris and London both have extensive, heavily-used transit systems that operate as a completely separate cost of living for a city, which is likely why neither pass folds it in — bundling unlimited transit into an attraction pass in a system that dense would push the price up substantially for people who mostly walk.
Why this gap matters when you compare totals
If you’re weighing two cities, or two pass products, against each other on price alone, an attraction-only pass will look artificially cheaper next to one that includes transit — because it’s solving a smaller problem. A £150 attraction-only pass and a €150 transit-inclusive pass aren’t actually the same £150 and €150 once you add in what you’d otherwise spend getting around.
The fix is simple: price your realistic transport spend separately, then add it to any pass that doesn’t already include it, before you compare the grand totals.
How to price transport separately
- Check the city’s standard daily or weekly transit pass price — most transit authorities publish one.
- Multiply by the number of days you’ll actually be moving around (not sitting in one museum all day).
- Add that figure to the cost of an attraction-only pass, or to your single-ticket total, before comparing it against a transit-inclusive pass.
For a short, walkable stay this adjustment might be small. For a longer trip with day trips to the outskirts — Versailles from Paris, Windsor from London — it can add up to a meaningful chunk of your budget, and it’s worth knowing before you commit to a pass that assumed you’d be walking everywhere.
The verdict
Don’t compare pass prices head-to-head without checking whether transport is baked in. Look up the specific pass on our Paris Museum Pass, London Pass or Roma Pass pages to confirm what’s included, and run the full comparison — attractions plus transport, priced consistently — through the calculator.