Edinburgh Walking Tours: Free or Paid?

The free tour and the paid tour cost about the same

A gratuity-based walk in Edinburgh settles at £10 to £20 per person for roughly two hours, because that is the norm and because the guide has no other income from it. A paid walk has a fixed price and a smaller group. The real difference is not money, it is commitment: on a free tour you can leave, and on a paid tour you cannot, which is why the free ones are pitched broad and the paid ones go deeper on one subject. Pick by subject, not by price tag.

Free, gratuity-based

SANDEMANs NEW Edinburgh has run the signature free walk since the mid-2000s, with licensed guides, several daily departures and online booking. It runs around 2.5 hours across the Castle Esplanade, the Royal Mile, Greyfriars Kirkyard, the Grassmarket and Victoria Street. The company has published more than one Royal Mile meeting point over time, so take the meeting point from your own booking confirmation rather than from a guide page.

Invisible Cities trains people who have experienced homelessness as guides and runs walks on the city’s social history. Different material, different perspective, and worth choosing over a second general tour.

The Cadies and Witchery Tours does the costumed theatrical Royal Mile walk. City of the Dead Tours has the only access to the Covenanters’ Prison in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Mercat Tours and Auld Reekie Tours both pair a street walk with an underground section, Blair Street for Mercat and Niddry Street for Auld Reekie. If you want a comparison of what is currently on sale, you can browse Edinburgh walking tours and sort by subject.

Verdict: take one free general walk on day one to get the geography, then one paid specialist walk later. Two general walks repeat each other.

Four routes you can walk without a guide

1. The Mile, downhill. The Royal Mile runs downhill from the Castle to Holyrood, which is the easy direction and the historically correct one. Around 80 closes run off it. Go into Lady Stair’s Close, where the flagstones of Makars’ Court carry quotations from Scottish writers and the free Writers’ Museum sits at the end; Advocate’s Close, medieval and steep, with a framed view of the New Town; and World’s End Close, where brass markers in the roadway show where the Netherbow Port stood in the old city wall. Museum hours at Edinburgh’s council museums .

2. The Grassmarket. The gallows stood at the east end. What is there now is the Covenanters’ Memorial, a circular monument raised by public subscription in 1937 with a plaque naming those hanged here between 1661 and 1688; a St Andrew’s Cross set into the causeway on the gallows site, which replaced an original sandstone block in 1823; and a gibbet outline laid in dark paving during the 2009 and 2010 streetscape works. Victoria Street curves up out of the north side and is the photograph everybody takes.

3. The New Town grid. Laid out from the 1760s below the Old Town ridge, and the other half of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Charlotte Square, George Street, Queen Street and the Portrait Gallery on it, free and open daily 10am to 5pm. This is the flat walk, which matters more than it sounds in a city this steep.

4. The Water of Leith. Roughly 12 miles from Balerno to Leith, through Dean Village, Stockbridge and Canonmills. Dean Village is a former mill village ten minutes from the West End and its set-piece, Well Court, dates from 1884. Climb up to Belford Road for Modern One and Modern Two, both free with grounds open from 9.45am, or follow the river the other way into Leith, the Shore and the tram home.

The two things nobody tells you about walking here

The core is hilly, cobbled and full of stairs. Edinburgh is walkable end to end in 20 to 25 minutes, but it is not flat walking, and footwear matters here in a way it does not in Paris or Amsterdam. Closes are often stepped. Plan the New Town for the day your legs have had enough.

August changes the Mile completely. During the Fringe the street becomes a continuous corridor of flyering and performance, which is a real spectacle and is also genuinely hard to walk through. Dates are at the Fringe . Crowd density also raises pickpocketing risk, so carry your phone somewhere that is not a back pocket.

Walking up Arthur’s Seat is a different activity

Holyrood Park starts ten minutes from the foot of the Mile, and the 251m summit is a hill walk, not a continuation of the city stroll. The ground is rough and rocky, the final section is bare rock that turns slippery in rain and in ice, and it wants footwear with real grip rather than trainers. Summit weather bears no relation to the weather on Princes Street, and the wind off the Firth of Forth is what people misjudge. Allow 45 to 60 minutes up from Holyrood, 30 on the shortest route, and check a forecast before you start. The flat option in the same park is the loop past St Margaret’s Loch and the ruin of St Anthony’s Chapel. Park information is published by Historic Environment Scotland .

For the indoor half of the same ground, see the Edinburgh sightseeing guide . Closing tip: if you want the Mile without the crowd, walk it between 7.30am and 9am. Most of the closes are public rights of way and open at that hour, and staying in the Old Town is what makes that possible without an early bus.