Statue of Liberty Tickets: Costs, Crown Access and How to Book

The number that surprises people first is thirty cents. A crown ticket to the Statue of Liberty costs $26.30 for an adult, and a plain grounds ticket costs $26.00. The crown is not gated by money, it is gated by supply: tickets are name-bearing, photo ID is checked at boarding, and the release window sells out months ahead for peak dates. Almost everything else about visiting is straightforward, and this page covers it all: what each ticket tier includes, how to book, what the lookalike cruises get wrong, and how to plan the day around the ferry schedule.

One warning before anything else, because it is the single most common mistake at Battery Park. Statue City Cruises is the only ferry operator authorised by the National Park Service to sell tickets for and dock at Liberty Island and Ellis Island. Numerous sightseeing operators sell boat trips that circle the islands and never land, some charging more than the real ferry. A visitor holding one of those tickets cannot set foot on Liberty Island. Every price and rule below applies to the official ferry only, sold at statuecitycruises.com and at the booth inside Castle Clinton in Battery Park.

How Much Do Statue of Liberty Tickets Cost?

An adult grounds ticket, covering the ferry to both islands plus both island museums, costs $26.00 with fees and taxes included. Children aged 4 to 12 pay $17.00, seniors 62 and over pay $23.00, and children under 4 ride free. Crown and pedestal access costs $26.30 adult, only thirty cents more, because the barrier there is availability rather than price.

The full tier table, identical whether you depart from Battery Park in New York or Liberty State Park in Jersey City:

Those figures come straight from the National Park Service fee page, and the $26.00 adult grounds price is independently confirmed by the CityPASS box-office table, which lists the same attraction at the same price. Two sources agreeing on a New York admission price is rarer than it should be, so it is worth stating plainly.

Note what is not in the table: no processing surcharge, no dynamic pricing by date, no premium summer rate. The ferry price is flat year-round, which makes it one of the few major New York attractions that does not move with demand. The scarcity lives entirely in the crown and pedestal inventory, not in the fare. The Ellis Island Hard Hat Tour of the hospital complex adds $55 and is restricted to ages 13 and up, which is why it sits in the table as an add-on rather than a tier.

How Do You Book Statue of Liberty Tickets, and How Far Ahead?

Buy directly through Statue City Cruises online, or in person at the booth inside Castle Clinton in Battery Park. Crown tickets must be reserved in advance online, are limited to four per order per household, carry the holder's name and are checked against photo ID at boarding. Crown inventory is released on a rolling basis and is reported to sell out around ninety days, often several months, ahead, so book as early as your dates allow.

The grounds ticket is forgiving. Same-day purchase at Castle Clinton usually works outside peak summer weekends, and the ferry runs frequent sailings from both Battery Park and Liberty State Park. The crown is a different product entirely. Only a limited number of visitors per day climb the double-helix staircase inside the pedestal, and the National Park Service controls that number tightly. If the crown is the point of your trip, treat the ticket like a Broadway hit: buy it the day your travel dates are fixed, not the week before.

Pedestal access sits between the two. It is capacity-limited and benefits from the same early booking, but it does not evaporate as fast as crown inventory. A visitor who misses the crown window should check the pedestal before giving up on going inside the statue altogether.

For anyone who wants the islands with a guide attached rather than a self-directed visit, there are organized options worth comparing:

The official ferry ticket listing and the guided islands tour cover the same two islands, but they solve different problems. The plain ticket is for visitors who want to move at their own pace with the included audio tours. The guided version adds a reserved ferry slot and a walking guide on both islands, which suits travelers who would rather not plan the sequencing themselves. The evening cruise is a different animal entirely: it stays on the water, and that distinction matters enough to have its own section below.

Crown, Pedestal or Grounds: Which Statue of Liberty Ticket Should You Buy?

Buy the crown ticket only if you can commit early and climb tight staircases: it costs $26.30, sells out months ahead, requires photo ID and allows no bags in the crown. Buy the pedestal ticket if you want to go inside the statue but missed or cannot manage the crown climb. Buy the plain grounds ticket if your interest is the museums and the island itself.

The crown staircase is the part people underestimate. The climb from the pedestal to the crown is a tight double-helix of narrow steps, and National Park Service rules prohibit bags of any kind beyond a very small camera case inside the crown section. Lockers are available at the departure point for a fee. Visitors with claustrophobia, small children who cannot be carried, or anyone who cannot manage sustained stairs should plan around the pedestal or grounds instead.

The pedestal itself is a substantial visit. It contains the original torch exhibit space and a viewing platform at the statue's feet, reached by elevator plus a modest stair climb, and it is the highest point most visitors can reach without a crown reservation. The grounds ticket, meanwhile, is not a consolation prize: Liberty Island's promenade walk, the fort foundation and the Statue of Liberty Museum are the parts of the island most photographs are actually taken from, and the outdoor views are free with any ticket.

A quick decision table:

That last row deserves emphasis, because it is where the confusion costs money. A non-landing cruise is a legitimate product for what it is: a fast, cheap way to see the statue and the skyline from the water. It is not a substitute for the ferry. If standing on Liberty Island is the goal, no cruise ticket gets you there.

For visitors who want the islands with a guide handling the timing, the reserved-ferry guided tour is the organized version of the full visit:

The guided option earns its premium for a specific kind of traveler: someone who wants both islands decoded rather than discovered, and who would rather hand the ferry timing to a professional. Independent travelers with a good plan and the plain $26.00 ticket lose very little by skipping it. Either way, the next thing to lock down is the ferry slot itself, because summer weekends are when the reserved inventory thins out fastest.

What Is Included in Every Statue of Liberty Ferry Ticket?

Every ticket, at every tier, includes the round-trip ferry, access to both Liberty Island and Ellis Island, entry to the Statue of Liberty Museum and the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, and self-guided audio tours on both islands. Ranger-led programmes are free when running, subject to availability. Food is not included, and the islands have limited, expensive concessions, so plan accordingly.

The both-islands detail matters for scheduling. The ferry runs a loop, Battery Park to Liberty Island to Ellis Island and back, and your ticket lets you ride it in that order with a stop at each. Most visitors spend roughly two hours on Liberty Island and one to two hours on Ellis Island, plus ferry queueing and sailing time. A realistic total, door to door from Lower Manhattan, is four to five hours at an unhurried pace.

The audio tours are genuinely good and included rather than upsold, which is unusual for a major American attraction. The Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, in particular, rewards the time: the registry room and the recorded oral histories carry more weight than most visitors expect, and many people leave saying Ellis Island, not the statue, was the highlight. If your time is short, it is worth reading our Ellis Island guide before deciding how to split the day.

Can You See the Statue of Liberty Without a Ticket?

Yes, and there are three free ways: the Staten Island Ferry passes the statue at a distance on every round trip, the Brooklyn waterfront and Governors Island offer skyline angles, and the ferry's outdoor decks give non-landing cruise passengers a close water view. None of these put you on Liberty Island. Only the official ferry lands there, so if standing on the island is the goal, the $26.00 ticket is the only route.

The Staten Island Ferry is the classic budget move, and it costs nothing. It passes Liberty Island at a distance that is fine for a skyline photograph but not for detail. The statue appears small, and you see her from the port or starboard side depending on direction, so choose the right side of the boat. Our Staten Island Ferry guide covers the practical details, including the terminal locations on both ends.

The paid middle option is a non-landing cruise. These boats leave from Midtown and Seaport piers, run fifty minutes to a couple of hours, and pause near the statue for photographs. For visitors with limited time or a tight budget, that is a reasonable product, provided nobody aboard believes they are going to land. The fifty-minute express run is the cheapest of them:

How Long Does a Visit Take, and When Should You Go?

Plan four to five hours for the full two-island visit from Lower Manhattan, including security screening, ferry queues and time on both islands. The first ferry of the morning is the best slot: shortest lines, thinnest crowds on Liberty Island and the most flexible window for the return legs. Summer weekends are the busiest sailing days, and midweek mornings in the shoulder season are the calmest.

Security screening is airport-style and applies at the departure terminal, not on the island. Bags go through X-ray, and the queue for the first sailings moves fastest. Arriving thirty to forty minutes before your intended departure is the standard advice, more on a summer weekend. The last ferries back leave in the late afternoon or early evening depending on season, and the National Park Service posts the current schedule, so check the conditions page before you commit to a late-day visit.

The time budget, roughly:

Weather shapes the day more than most visitors plan for. July is actually New York's wettest month by the official Central Park climate record, averaging 4.60 inches of precipitation, ahead of August and June, so a summer visit carries more rain risk than most people assume. Winter visits are colder but far quieter, and the statue photographed across gray water has its own appeal. Whatever the season, dress for standing outside on an exposed island, because the harbor wind is real in every month.

How Do You Get to the Ferry, and What Does the Trip Cost?

Take the subway to South Ferry or Whitehall Street, both a short walk from Castle Clinton in Battery Park, and the fare is $3.00 per ride with contactless payment. Since 1 January 2026 the MTA no longer sells or refills MetroCards at all, so tap a credit card, debit card, phone or OMNY Card directly at the turnstile. A rolling $35 weekly cap applies automatically after twelve paid rides in seven days on the same card or device.

The fare rules changed in ways most published guides have not caught up with. There is no 7-day unlimited pass to buy any more; the weekly value now arrives as an automatic OMNY fare cap of $35, which starts with your first tap and resets every seven days. The catch is that the cap only counts taps on the same physical card or device, so a traveler alternating between their phone and a plastic card in their pocket will never hit it. Tap one thing, every time.

For a visitor stacking several subway rides into a New York week, the cap quietly pays off without any decision-making. The transport details, including the airport connections that feed into a Lower Manhattan day, are covered in our OMNY guide.

Getting to the departure points:

Is the Statue of Liberty Worth the Ticket Price?

At $26.00 for two islands, two museums, the round-trip ferry and audio tours, the official ferry is among the best value tickets in New York, and most visitors rate the day among their trip's highlights. The honest caveats are time and crowds: it consumes half a day, summer queues are long, and the crown, the part many people fixate on, is usually unavailable to late planners. Value depends on wanting the islands, not just a photograph.

The visitors who report disappointment are almost always the ones who expected a quick photo stop and got a five-hour commitment, or who bought a non-landing cruise expecting to land. Set expectations correctly and the day delivers. Ellis Island in particular lands harder than people expect: it is a migration-history site, and the registry room where twelve million arrivals were processed does not need urgency framing or ranking language to make an impression.

For a first visit to the city, the statue pairs naturally with the rest of Lower Manhattan. The ferry terminal sits minutes from the Financial District, and many visitors walk from the ferry to the 9/11 Memorial plaza, which is free and needs no ticket, in the same afternoon. The broader Lower Manhattan picture, including how the statue fits a first-timer's week, is laid out in our things to do in NYC overview.

Common Questions About Statue of Liberty Tickets

These are the questions visitors ask most: whether the crown is worth the booking effort, whether tickets sell out, whether the same-day walk-up window works, what children pay, and whether the non-landing cruises count as visiting the statue. The short answers: book the crown early if you want it, grounds tickets rarely sell out outside peak weekends, children under 4 ride free, and a cruise that never lands is not a visit to the statue.

One Last Planning Note

If the crown is the reason you are reading this page, open the National Park Service crown page today, before anything else on your itinerary, because that is the one element of a New York trip that can be genuinely unavailable by the time you get around to it.

Everything else is logistics: a $3.00 subway tap to South Ferry, a $26.00 ticket, a morning ferry, and half a day on two islands at the center of what you came to see.

The order of operations for a well-planned visit is simple. Fix your travel dates first, then check crown inventory the same day, then fill in the rest of the Lower Manhattan week around whatever the crown page tells you. Travelers who do it in that order almost never lose the crown. Travelers who reverse it, itinerary first, crown last, often do.

The New York City Travel Guide covers the rest of the Lower Manhattan day, from the memorial plaza to the harbor, in the pages linked throughout this guide.

For travelers who prefer the statue from the water with the skyline lit behind it, the evening cruise is the atmospheric version of the harbor, and it pairs well with a day that already used the morning for the islands: