Metropolitan Museum admission, New York: prices, pay-what-you-wish and free entry

An adult ticket to the Metropolitan Museum of Art costs $30 (checked September 29, 2026), and it gets you into both of the museum's buildings, the Met Fifth Avenue and the Met Cloisters, on the date printed on it, special exhibitions included. Seniors pay $22, students $17, and children 12 and under are free. Pay-what-you-wish still exists, but only for New York State residents and for students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. If you're visiting from anywhere else, you pay the posted price unless you belong to one of the free or discounted groups further down this page.

You don't need to book, there is no time slot, and nobody outside the museum can sell you a voucher it will accept. Those three facts cover most of the questions people ask about Met tickets. The rest of this page is the detail: the online billing-address rule, the free programs, the membership level that looks cheaper than it is for New Yorkers, group rates, and where the old three-day ticket story came from.

The museum publishes one price list for both sites. Here it is as it stood on the museum's Plan Your Visit page on September 29, 2026 (the museum last edited that text on September 24, 2026).

Prices move, the structure much less. When the museum made admission compulsory for out-of-state visitors, the adult price was $25 (press release of January 4, 2018); today it is $30. The split between who pays full price, who pays what they wish and who gets in free has held since March 1, 2018. If you're reading this months from now, trust the categories and check the numbers on the museum's own ticket page before you pay.

Two small things the table doesn't say. The disability rate and the free care-partner ticket are sold in person only, so there's no point hunting for them online. And the museum's ticketing policy states that all ticket recipients must be present during purchase: at the desk, you can't collect tickets for friends who are still on the subway.

Two groups, and only two. Residents of New York State, whatever their age, and students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. For them the museum's wording is plain: "the amount you pay for admission is up to you, but you must pay something ($00.01 minimum per ticket)." One cent is the floor, and the museum sets no other condition on the amount.

Oddly, the museum's own page still heads this section "Suggested Admission", a label left over from a different era. Until March 2018 the posted price was a suggestion for everybody. A class action settled in February 2016 made the museum change the wording on its signs from "recommended admission" to "suggested admission" (press release of February 26, 2016), and two years later the fee became compulsory for visitors from outside New York State. Old guidebooks, forum threads and a few current travel sites still describe the pre-2018 system, which is why some tourists still arrive expecting to pay whatever they like.

If you live outside New York State and you are not a student in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, pay-what-you-wish does not apply to you. A New Jersey or Connecticut home address alone doesn't qualify either: in those two states the exception covers students only.

Online, the museum checks one thing: to buy pay-what-you-wish tickets on its website you need a New York State billing address on the payment card. That creates a few awkward cases to sort out before you get to Fifth Avenue:

• A New York resident paying with a card billed elsewhere (a parent's card, a company card, a card from a previous address) can't get the pay-what-you-wish price online. Buy at a desk instead and show proof of residency.
• New Jersey and Connecticut students can't buy pay-what-you-wish tickets online at all. The museum sells them only in person, with a valid student ID.
• New York students can use either route; the billing address rule applies online.

At the desk, the museum accepts a New York State driver's license or state ID card, an IDNYC card, a current bill or statement with a New York State address, a student ID, or a New York library card. Anything on that list works; you don't need two.

You pay the student rate, $17, which is the posted price for students who don't fall into the tri-state exception. The price table doesn't list any further conditions, so carry a student ID that shows a current date and expect to be asked for it. International students on a trip to New York are in this group too.

There is no free day for everyone. What exists is a long list of programs and cards, published on the museum's complimentary admission page (last edited June 5, 2026). The rule that applies to all of them: free tickets are picked up at a ticketing desk on site, not bought online. The programs a visitor is most likely to use are these.

A few details from the same page change the picture for specific visitors. The Museums for All membership for New York State EBT/SNAP cardholders admits up to two adults plus children 17 and under, with a limit of nine people per visit. The Blue Star Museums window is seasonal, so a military family visiting in October pays. Museums on Us depends on the calendar: the first full weekend, meaning the first Saturday and Sunday that both fall in the month. The museum also admits holders of a reciprocal membership card from a participating institution, corporate sponsors' employees with their ID, and press with a valid press ID.

The museum's ticket page ends with a line that reads like a bargain: "Membership starts at $90 per year." It's accurate, but the $90 level is the Global membership, which the membership page reserves for "Members outside of a 200 mile radius of the Museum." If you live in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia or anywhere else within 200 miles, the entry level is Individual, at $120. Some other visitor guides put membership at $80 or "around $100"; neither figure matches the museum's page.

Now the arithmetic. The Individual card admits the cardholder and one guest, so each visit is worth two adult tickets, $60. The museum's own pitch, "Membership pays for itself in two visits," is correct at that level. For a New Yorker who goes twice a year, it's a wash; three times and it's a saving.

For someone from far away, the Global level can pay off even on a single trip. Two adults and two teenagers pay between $94 and $120 at the desk, depending on whether the teens have student ID. Global membership costs $90, admits the cardholder, a guest and children 17 and under, and adds perks the ticket doesn't have: Weekend Member Mornings (Saturdays and Sundays from 9 to 10 am at Fifth Avenue, before the public opening) and express entry through the Members Entrance at 81st Street. Express entry means you don't queue for tickets. It doesn't exempt you from security: the museum says members present their card "after passing through a security check".

One limit to remember: membership benefits and other passes are not valid for group admission, so a member traveling with a registered group pays the group rate like everyone else.

The museum treats any group of 10 or more, and any guided tour run by a third party, whatever its size, as a group that must register in advance. Registered groups get their own rates, which are lower than individual ones: $28 for adults, $20 for seniors and $12 for students, according to the museum's group visits page (edited July 28, 2026). One group leader per self-guided reservation comes in free, and organizations with limited resources can ask for reduced rates or a fee waiver.

• Self-guided group: request the visit at least one week ahead. Up to 50 people, split into groups of no more than 25 per lecturer.
• Tour with a museum guide: $300 flat per 25 people for one hour, plus admission, requested at least three weeks ahead. Limited highlights tours are offered in ten languages, subject to guide availability.
• Anyone who lectures in the galleries needs a museum-issued lecture badge, and the group guidelines are blunt: "Unauthorized lecturers will be asked to end their tour immediately." Special exhibitions are off limits for any lecturing.
• Payments are final: no refunds or credits for overpayment or cancellation.
• A registered group can visit the second location on the same day at no extra charge, with a reservation.

Those rules are also how commercial tours reach the galleries, which matters if you're booking one. We explain what to check in a tour listing in how to choose a Metropolitan Museum tour.

The museum's wording: "All tickets include exhibitions and same-day entry to both Met locations for the date printed on your ticket." You can leave for lunch in Central Park and come back; the visitor guidelines warn that you may be asked to re-validate the ticket when you exit and re-enter the galleries. The same ticket opens the Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park: about an hour north by A train and a walk through the park, or about an hour and 25 minutes on the M4 bus by the museum's own estimate.

Seeing both on one date is possible but tight. The Cloisters shuts at 5 pm in the warmer months (March to October) and half an hour earlier, at 4:30 pm, from November to February. A two-site day works best if you go uptown first and come back to Fifth Avenue for the afternoon, and better still on a Friday or Saturday, when Fifth Avenue is open until 9 pm. Our guide to the Met Cloisters and the page on getting to the museum cover the route.

Search for Met tickets and you'll still find pages promising a ticket "valid for three consecutive days". It was the rule for two years, from March 2018 until the Covid closure of March 2020. Validity has changed more often than most visitors realize.

Why does the three-day version survive? The museum never announced its end with a release of its own. The sentence that retired it sits in the middle of the August 25, 2020 release about reopening and a bicycle valet: "all admission tickets include entry to exhibitions as well as same-day entry to both Met locations after September 12, 2020." Pages written in 2018 and 2019 kept ranking, and some reseller listings still repeated the three-day claim in 2026. We collect this and similar stale claims on our page of Metropolitan Museum myths and curiosities.

Not for plain admission. The museum's complimentary admission page opens with this sentence: "The Met does not accept vouchers or passes from any outside ticket sellers. Please purchase your ticket at metmuseum.org or at a ticketing desk on-site." Its ticketing policy adds that resales of any admission ticket without the museum's prior and express authorization are strictly prohibited, that tickets can't be transferred, refunded or exchanged, and that the museum can turn away anyone holding a ticket it didn't issue itself or through someone it has authorized.

For general admission, buy from the museum: on its website or at a desk on Fifth Avenue or at the Cloisters. A voucher from anyone else is a risk you don't need to take, because the museum's own ticket needs no booking.

A guided tour that says "admission included" is a different product. You're paying for a guide, and getting your group into the galleries under the museum's group rules is the operator's job; the wording of those listings varies a lot, which is why we read them closely in our tour guide. City passes are a separate question, and the answer is no: none of the big ones includes the Met, as we explain in do New York City passes include the Metropolitan Museum?

There is no ticket line you are forced to stand in. The museum says so on its ticket page:

The line everyone stands in is security. The visitor guidelines leave no room for exceptions: "For everyone's safety, all visitors and members must pass through a security check." No ticket, membership card or tour changes that. So a product sold as "skip-the-line" at the Met can, at most, save you the wait at the ticket desk, which a $30 ticket bought on the museum's own website already does. The security check is the same for everyone.

When do you actually need the desk? When you have no choice: the disability rate, the free care-partner ticket, the free programs above, pay-what-you-wish for New Jersey and Connecticut students, and New York residents paying with an out-of-state card all go through a desk. Everyone else can buy on a phone while walking up Fifth Avenue. Bags slow the security line more than anything else, and the rules on them are on our page about bags, photos and what to bring.