National park passes: calculate your break-even by visitor category

How to calculate pass savings for your specific itinerary

The count that decides the answer is admissions, not days on the trail.

At Zion's entrance station the fee is $35 for the car and everyone in it, good for one to seven days. ⁴ Drive east to Bryce Canyon and the gate asks $35 again. ⁸ Five days of hiking in one canyon is a single purchase. Two canyons in two days is two.

So open the worksheet with these four facts, and look at the price of the pass last.

1. Every gate you would otherwise pay at, with its date. A seven-day Zion ticket that covers three entries is one line at $35. ⁴
2. Every person, with their age on arrival. Youth aged 15 and under enter free where the gate charges per person. ⁴
3. How each person arrives. Car, motorcycle, bicycle or on foot. The gate charges by the unit, and a full car pays the same as a driver alone. ¹
4. Who can prove US residency at the window. That single document moves a party between two different price lists. ³

For the rest of the trip, MMT's hiking trip budget covers food, beds and transport, the United States travel guide handles routes and arrival, and the hiking guides collect the rest.

What are the 2026 national park pass prices and eligibility rules?

Nine passes in one table, from $250 down to free, each with its own document check.

The Resident Annual Pass is $80 and the Non-Resident Annual Pass is $250. ² Both are America the Beautiful passes, good for twelve months across the federal recreation sites. Seven more sit under them in the table, and six of those cost $20 or nothing at all. Each cheap one comes with paperwork at the window, so put the eligible person's name beside the pass in your worksheet and keep it there.

The $80 Senior Lifetime Pass costs exactly what one Resident Annual Pass costs, and four $20 Senior Annual Passes add up to the same figure. ² A household still holding a Golden Age or Golden Access Passport keeps it on its original terms, and can swap it at a park for a current Senior Lifetime Pass, free. ²

The Volunteer Pass arrives at 250 service hours across the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau of Reclamation or the Army Corps of Engineers. ² One park page, at Montezuma Castle, still prints an older 500-hour rule dated 2007. ¹² The Service's current table is the one that governs; confirm your hours with the agency that logs them.

Do international visitors owe the $100 nonresident fee?

Charged on top of the entrance fee, carried onto a commercial tour, and still due on the 2026 fee-free days.

Yes, at eleven parks, and the Service charges it per person. Every non-US resident aged 16 and over pays $100 on top of the standard entrance fee at Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion. ³ It follows an executive order on park fees, and the $250 pass tier took effect on 1 January 2026. ³

Residency is checked by document. A US passport, a state or territory driver's license or ID, or a permanent resident card each work at the window. ³ A long holiday, a hotel address and a US bank card sit outside that list. Buy a digital Resident Annual Pass without the paperwork behind it and staff ask you to upgrade to the nonresident pass when you use it. ³

The Service lists eight fee-free dates for 2026: 16 February, 25 May, 14 June, 3 to 5 July, 25 August, 17 September, 27 October and 11 November. ² From 2026 that free entrance belongs to US citizens and residents. Nonresidents pay the standard fee and the $100 supplement on those dates as on any other. ² Timed entry and reservation fees stand on all of them.

The supplement follows you onto a bus. Zion's page applies it to nonresidents arriving with a commercial tour group, a commercial use authorization group or a concessioner tour, unless the Non-Resident Annual Pass is in hand. ⁴ The same sentence sits on all eleven parks' pages. Ask the operator in writing whether its ticket price already carries the fee.

Build a break-even worksheet with four cost columns

Two subtotals: the gates you have booked, and the gates you hope to reach.

Four columns, one row per gate, and the answer falls out of the subtraction. Set it up once and it carries to any trip in any country, as long as every figure comes from the park's own page. Keep a note beside each zero. A verified free entrance and a fee you have yet to look up look identical in a spreadsheet and behave very differently at the window.

1. 01

   List the gates, not the days

   One row for each admission you would otherwise buy, in the order you reach them.

2. 02

   Column one: the standard fee, in the right unit

   Vehicle, motorcycle or person. At a per-vehicle gate the car fee is the whole bill for everyone inside it. ¹

3. 03

   Column two: the visitor-category supplement

   $100 for each non-US resident aged 16 and over at the eleven listed parks, and zero at every other federal site. ³

4. 04

   Column three: what the pass covers

   One private vehicle's occupants, or four per-person fees, being the holder plus three adults. The nonresident pass adds two motorcycles. ^{2, 3}

5. 05

   Column four: the costs that survive the pass

   Camping, timed entry, tours and permits. Acadia's Cadillac Summit Road reservation is $6, sold per vehicle on top of entry. ¹³

6. 06

   Subtract

   Pay as you go is columns one, two and four. The pass route is its price, plus any gate it misses, plus the same column four. A positive gap favors the pass.

7. 07

   Run it twice

   Once on the gates you have booked, once with the gates you hope to reach added in. If the booked run already favors the pass, the decision is made. If only the second run does, the gap on the booked run is what you pay to keep those options open for a year. Call that number what it is and decide whether you want it.

How much will your party save: resident vs nonresident pricing

Five parties on three trips, each priced at the gates and with the pass.

Two adults, one car, Yellowstone and Grand Teton in the same week. Each park charges its own entrance fee, and both say so on their own pages: driving through one to reach the other buys nothing at the second gate. ^{5, 6} For a US-resident pair that week costs $70. For a nonresident pair it costs $470. Same road, same car, same seven days.

One park can settle it. At Zion a nonresident couple pays $35 for the car and $100 each, which is $235 for a single visit. ^{4, 3} The $250 pass costs $15 more and opens every federal gate for a year. Add a third adult and the gate price reaches $335, so the pass keeps $85 on that one visit. Add a fourth and it keeps $185. ³

Residents cross the line later. Rocky Mountain is the only one of the eleven selling two validity tiers: $30 for a single day, $35 for seven. ⁷ Three separate one-day visits cost $90, which clears the park's own $70 annual pass and the $80 national one. ^{7, 2} A family hiking there for a week buys one $35 ticket and stops thinking about it.

Does party size change the break-even calculation?

Children under 16 ride free, and a second car pays in full even with a pass in the first.

At a per-vehicle gate a couple pays exactly what a solo driver pays. At a per-person gate every adult adds to the bill. Yosemite states it plainly: arrive in a private vehicle and the $35 vehicle fee is the entire charge for everyone inside. ¹ Zion sets the limit on that: a private vehicle means 15-passenger capacity or less, and a party of sixteen is priced by the head instead. ⁴

• Children ride free at the per-person gate. Youth aged 15 and under enter free at the walk-in and bicycle rate at all eleven parks. ^{4, 14}
• Motorcycles are their own unit. One $30 ticket admits up to two machines and four riders, and that is the main-season rate at all eleven parks. Glacier drops to $20 from 1 November, and Rocky Mountain charges $25 for a single day, both on the same two-machine rule. ^{1, 4, 15, 7}
• A big group has a ceiling. A non-commercial group of 16 or more at Yosemite pays $20 a head, to a maximum of $300 per vehicle. Zion charges the same $20 a head and caps it at the commercial rate for the vehicle: $80 for 16 to 25 seats, and $190 for 26 or more. ^{1, 4}
• One pass sits in one place. The holder stands at the gate with photo ID. Split the party across two cars on the same morning and the second car pays in full. ²

Age on the day matters on a long trip. A nonresident child who turns 16 mid-route becomes a $100 line at those eleven parks from the birthday onward. ³ Record every age against the arrival date. Then total the household bill before anyone splits it, because dividing the car fee first hides which costs grow with each traveler.

Compare a local park pass with the America the Beautiful pass

Zion, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Sequoia and Kings Canyon and Yosemite sell their $70 pass to US citizens and residents.

All eleven parks sell their own annual pass at $70, and for a US household with one favorite park that is the cheaper answer. ^{4, 8, 15} The national pass costs $80 and opens every federal gate. Ten dollars buys the rest of the country, and a park you will never drive to adds nothing to the sum. Compare the extra $10 against the extra gates, and the choice takes a minute.

Zion shows the shape of the choice for a resident household. One $35 ticket covers a whole week. ⁴

Each local pass carries its own rules. Glacier's $70 pass admits the vehicle party, or the holder with a spouse, children and parents arriving on foot or by bicycle. ¹⁵ Everglades prices its $70 pass for a vehicle or a vessel, and the same fees cover a boat or a paddlecraft arriving at the park. ¹⁶ Sequoia and Kings Canyon's $35 vehicle ticket also covers the Hume Lake Ranger District next door. ¹⁷

What the pass covers, and what to budget separately

Acadia's $6 Cadillac Summit Road reservation is the shape of what a pass leaves standing.

The pass buys entry, and the rest of the trip keeps its own price list. Campsites, tours and permits sit outside every pass, and a pass in your pocket leaves the reservation queue exactly where it was. Book the bed and the slot first.

• Beds for the night. MMT's camping vs huts comparison prices an overnight both ways, with the cancellation terms.
• Guided days. Read the operator's inclusions; the guided vs self-guided comparison sets out what that fee buys.
• The ride back from the end of a linear hike, which the point-to-point transport guide prices for you.
• Timed entry and vehicle reservations, park by park. Glacier requires none anywhere in the park in 2026, while Acadia's Cadillac Summit Road reservation runs mid-May to October. ^{15, 13}

School groups apply in advance. Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act an outing for non-commercial educational purposes by a school or a bona fide academic institution can win an entrance-fee waiver, granted by application against published standards. ¹⁵ Glacier wants that application three weeks ahead, and the fee office decides it. Service, civic and fraternal groups such as Scouting, Rotary and the Elks qualify only where they meet the same standards. Camping and amenity fees stay payable. ¹⁵

The money stays close to the gate that took it. A park keeps at least 80 percent of the entrance fees it collects: about $9 million a year of projects at Grand Teton, and about $12.1 million a year on average at Yellowstone. ^{6, 5} The $35 you hand over at the window funds the work on the road you then drive.

Beside two parks, Native nations set their own fees

The Havasupai campground permit is $455, the Grand Canyon West pass $99, and the Blackfeet permit $20 for the year.

The Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe and the Blackfeet Nation govern land along two of the eleven parks, and each sets and publishes its own prices. An America the Beautiful pass stops at the park line. ¹⁸ Budget these as separate destinations, because that is what they are.

The Havasupai Tribe is federally recognized and sovereign, and its reservation holds Havasu Falls, inside the Grand Canyon and outside the national park. ¹⁸ A campground permit runs $455 per person for three nights, reached from the Hualapai Hilltop trailhead. Inside 90 days of the start date the booking is final, in any weather. ¹⁸

Grand Canyon West sits on the Hualapai Reservation, west of the national park and reached by its own roads. Every visitor buys the $99 All-Access Pass, which carries entry, the Skywalk, the zipline, the shuttle and Hualapai cultural experiences, with $10 off a meal and $10 off merchandise. ²¹ The Tribe's own site states the ticket supports the Hualapai Tribe Nation, a sovereign Indigenous nation that receives no federal funding. ¹⁹

Glacier's east side runs along the Blackfeet Reservation, and the approaches to Chief Mountain, Two Medicine and St. Mary run with it. The Blackfeet Nation's 2025 to 2026 fish and game regulations price a non-member recreation and conservation permit at $20 for the year, with a $50 permit for a recreational vehicle. ²⁰ Buy it before you hike there, from the Nation's own fish and wildlife department.