What a day at Preikestolen costs

Start from the part that is free

Roughly 350,000 people a year walk up Preikestolen and none of them pay to do it. There is no gate, no permit, no time slot, no entrance desk and no opening hours. The trail is not staffed and nobody checks anything. I grew up three kilometres down the road from the car park and this was a Sunday walk long before it was a photograph, which is most of the explanation: you cannot charge people for a hill they have always walked up. The longer version is on whether the hike is free.

So when somebody asks me what a Preikestolen ticket costs, the honest answer is that they are asking about the wrong thing. What costs money is getting to the trailhead, which is an hour outside Stavanger with no practical way to reach it on foot.

The car park, which is the one thing drivers cannot avoid

There is a parking fee at Preikestolen Fjellstue, paid at a machine, normally on the way out rather than on the way in. I am not going to print the amount, partly because of the rule I set myself above and partly because a stale figure at a barrier is worse than no figure at all. What is useful to know is the layout: the main lot holds around 400 cars and a score of coaches, the overflow at Moslimyrå adds about 600 more, and between them there are roughly a thousand spaces. They are staffed for part of the day, longer in summer than in winter. Sleeping in a vehicle overnight is not allowed. The detail is on the car park page.

The bus exists, but only for part of the year

A seasonal service runs from Byterminalen, the central bus terminal in Stavanger. In March and April it is two morning departures. From around 20 June to around 13 September it builds up to as many as nine a day. Tickets are bought online in advance and are not sold on board, which catches people out at the terminal. Outside those months there is effectively no bus at all, and that single fact reshapes the cost of a winter visit more than anything else on this page. Timetable thinking is on the bus page.

A guide is optional in summer and not in winter

From roughly May to September the trail is marked, busy and hard to lose. A guide adds company, pace and someone who knows what the ground is doing, but it is not a safety requirement and I will not pretend otherwise. From roughly November to March the picture inverts: snow covers the cracks and the streams, the rock ices, the daylight is short, and both Visit Norway and the trail's own operators tell you to go with a guide or at least not alone. That is a seasonal change in what is worth paying for, not a change in the trail. The argument is set out on whether you need a guide.

The boat is a different product, not a cheap hike

The Lysefjord cruise passes 604 metres directly below the plateau and does not land. Nobody gets onto Preikestolen from that boat. It is the right answer for a lot of people, and the wrong answer for anyone who thinks they are buying a shortcut to the top. Treat it as a separate thing you might want: the cruise from below.

Four shapes a day takes

Your own car. Fuel, the tunnel out of Stavanger, the car park. The cheapest version if the car already exists, and the only version that lets you start at six in the morning. Laid out on the getting-there page.

The seasonal bus. Transport only, in summer only, on somebody else's timetable, and you still walk unguided. See every way out of the city.

A guided hike. Transport plus the guide in one booking, which is why it is the usual choice for anyone without a car and for anyone off a ship: the guided hike and the version with hotel pickup.

The water instead. Either the cruise on its own or the long day that puts the boat and the hike together: cruise and hike combined.

Where the money actually goes

If you total up a Preikestolen day honestly, the trail is nothing, the car park is small, and the transport is nearly all of it. That is the one useful sentence about cost on this site, and it is why I spend more pages on how to get there than on what to bring. The comparison between the formats is on which one to choose.

Booking the transport

Below is the guided hike that starts at the Stavanger cruise terminal, which is the shortest of the guided days. The rest are on the bookings page.

A reminder about what that widget is. It books the ride out of Stavanger and, on most of these, a guide. It does not book Preikestolen. Nobody sells a ticket to the trail: it is free, open and unguided, and you can walk up it without paying anyone a thing.

Frequently asked questions