Tour guide earnings calculator
What you actually keep from one tour, on every channel you could sell it through.
Short answer
A tour marketplace takes 20% to 30% of every booking. Booking software for your own page costs either a flat fee of about €30 to €100 a month with no commission, a smaller fee plus 1.5% to 3%, or nothing to you and about 5% to 6% added to your traveller's bill. A bare payment link costs only card processing, around 2.9% plus €0.30. Put your own price and volume in below to see all of them as real money.
Your numbers
What one traveller pays for a place.
Your typical group size.
Bookings, not people.
Tickets, transport, tastings. Leave at 0 if there are none.
Guiding is seasonal. This only changes the yearly figure.
Free walking tours only.
Free walking tours only. Usually far more than a private group.
The rate in your own supplier agreement.
What the numbers show
Every figure below is money you keep: your own take-home on that channel, after its fees and after what the tour costs you to run. What they cannot show is how many bookings each channel brings you, and that is the part that decides your year. A marketplace taking 30% of a calendar it filled for you pays better than your own page taking 0% and staying empty.
Marketplaces
They bring travellers who have never heard of you and take a share of every booking. Card processing is inside the commission, so there is nothing else to pay.
You keep per booking: €144 (−€36 fees)
You keep per month: €2,880
A flat 20% host fee, taken from your payout. Free to list, but every host is reviewed before being accepted.
Klook
You keep per booking: €144 (−€36 fees)
You keep per month: €2,880
Agreed supplier by supplier, reported between 15% and 35%. Strongest in Asia.
tourHQ
You keep per booking: €144 (−€36 fees)
You keep per month: €2,880
20% on confirmed bookings, free to join. A traveller posts a request and up to five guides reply to it.
WithlocalsYou list €136
You keep per booking: €136 (−€44 fees)
You keep per month: €2,727
You set the price you want to receive and about 32% is added on top. To show the traveller the same price as every other row, you have to list about a quarter less, which is what this row assumes.
A marketplace at your rate (25%)Your rate
You keep per booking: €135 (−€45 fees)
You keep per month: €2,700
Your own rate, from your supplier agreement. Use this row rather than the named ones, which are researched ranges and not quotes.
You keep per booking: €135 (−€45 fees)
You keep per month: €2,700
Reported 20% to 30%, starting at 20%. Paid placement pushes it to 30% to 35% in competitive cities, and each new tour costs $29 to list.
ToursByLocals
You keep per booking: €135 (−€45 fees)
You keep per month: €2,700
About 25%, set in your own agreement. Two phone interviews and reference checks before you are accepted.
Civitatis
You keep per booking: €135 (−€45 fees)
You keep per month: €2,700
Agreed individually and never published. Other sources report 20% to 30%. Strong in Spanish-speaking markets.
You keep per booking: €126 (−€54 fees)
You keep per month: €2,520
Reported 20% to 30%, set by country. New suppliers commonly start at 30%. Being paid every two weeks instead of monthly adds 2%.
Your own booking page
You bring the traveller and you keep the relationship. The software only takes the booking. Which row is cheapest depends on how busy you are: a flat monthly fee wins as your calendar fills, a percentage wins while it is quiet.
All my toursOurs
You keep per booking: €180
You keep per month: €3,600
Free during early access, and no commission. It does not take card payments yet, so you keep the whole fee but nothing is paid up front, and a no-show costs you the slot.
Xola
You keep per booking: €175 (−€5 fees)
You keep per month: €3,508
No subscription at any level. The 2.39% plus $0.30 already includes card processing, so nothing stacks on top.
Bookeo Tours
You keep per booking: €174 (−€6 fees)
You keep per month: €3,450
A flat fee and no commission, ever. You connect your own payment gateway and pay its fees directly.
TourSyncer Starter
You keep per booking: €174 (−€6 fees)
You keep per month: €3,441
0% commission on every tier, including a free one. Launched in mid-2026, so it has very little track record.
CaptainBook Starter
You keep per booking: €174 (−€6 fees)
You keep per month: €3,441
0% on bookings from GetYourGuide and Viator, 3.5% on other marketplace channels. Those platforms still take their own commission.
Samba
You keep per booking: €171 (−€9 fees)
You keep per month: €3,418
No subscription. Your first $10,000 of bookings is free of the 2%, so early months cost only card processing.
Trekbooker Pro
You keep per booking: €172 (−€8 fees)
You keep per month: €3,407
Up to 30 tours, their branding removed, and the fee halves against the free tier.
You keep per booking: €172 (−€8 fees)
You keep per month: €3,387
Owned by Tripadvisor. Bookings that arrive through Viator carry no Bókun fee, because Viator's own commission applies to those instead.
Trekbooker (free)
You keep per booking: €169 (−€11 fees)
You keep per month: €3,382
Free tier, 3% per booking, up to 10 tours and their branding on your page.
You keep per booking: €169 (−€11 fees)
You keep per month: €3,333
3% online on every plan. Paying for a higher tier lowers the offline fee only, not this one.
TrekkSoft Starter
You keep per booking: €169 (−€11 fees)
You keep per month: €3,333
Billed for a full year up front. It is the only major tool here with no month-to-month option.
BookingTerminalYou list €171
You keep per booking: €166 (−€14 fees)
You keep per month: €3,318
5% added to the traveller's bill. It is the only tool of this kind that publishes the rate rather than hiding it.
Peek ProYou list €170
You keep per booking: €165 (−€15 fees)
You keep per month: €3,307
Quote only, so you cannot price it without talking to their sales team. The surcharge is reported at roughly 6% and you can choose to absorb it rather than pass it on.
FareHarborYou list €170
You keep per booking: €164 (−€16 fees)
You keep per month: €3,286
Nothing comes out of your payout. Around 6% goes onto the traveller's total at checkout instead, and FareHarbor has never published that rate. Owned by Booking Holdings, so its pitch is the distribution that comes with it.
You keep per booking: €169 (−€11 fees)
You keep per month: €3,283
One plan, no tiers to compare, and no extra fee on marketplace bookings.
TripWorks
You keep per booking: €164 (−€16 fees)
You keep per month: €3,274
No subscription, but 6% is more than double the going rate for this model at any volume.
No booking software
A payment link, a spreadsheet and your own calendar. Always the cheapest in cash, and always the most of your own time.
You keep per booking: €180
You keep per month: €3,600
The cheapest possible option and the riskiest. Nothing is paid up front, so a no-show costs you the whole slot.
You keep per booking: €174 (−€6 fees)
You keep per month: €3,490
A link you send by email or message. Payment links cost nothing beyond the card fee, but you track every booking yourself.
PayPal checkout
You keep per booking: €173 (−€7 fees)
You keep per month: €3,465
Higher than Stripe on both parts of the fee, and cross-border cards cost about 4.49% plus a currency spread.
Free walking tours
The traveller pays nothing to book and tips at the end. The platform charges you per person who turns up, whatever they decide to tip. These rows use the free-tour headcount you set above, not your private group size.
GuruWalk
You keep per booking: €113 (−€38 fees)
You keep per month: €2,250
About €2.50 per booked traveller for professional guides, charged whether they tip well, badly or not at all.
Freetour.com
You keep per booking: €113 (−€38 fees)
You keep per month: €2,250
A per-traveller fee between about €0.50 and €4.50, depending on the city. You keep every tip.
Paid listings
You pay to be listed and keep 100% of the tour price. Enquiries arrive by message, and you handle the booking yourself.
Private Guide World
You keep per booking: €180
You keep per month: €3,596
An annual subscription of roughly €20 to €100 and no commission at all. It is a listing that sends you enquiries, not a booking system.
What the commission costs you over a year
At 25% you keep €135 of each booking. Selling the same tour yourself with a Stripe payment link you keep €174, card processing already taken off. Across 20 bookings a month and 12 working months that gap is €9,475 a year.
Read it the other way round as well. To earn what the marketplace pays you this month, your own page needs 16 bookings instead of 20. If you cannot fill those 16 yourself, the commission is buying you something real. The goal is a commission line that shrinks over a season, not one that disappears next week.
Why every row uses the same traveller price
Every row is priced at the same total to the traveller, because that is the only fair way to line them up. A traveller comparing your tour will not pay €59 on one site and €45 on another for the same walk.
A few channels add their fee at your traveller's checkout instead of taking it out of your payout. To show the same price as everyone else on those, you have to list lower and absorb the difference, so their rows carry an orange label with the price you would actually have to set. It is the same money either way, just taken somewhere you do not see it.
The four ways a channel charges you
Once you can name the shape, a new platform takes about ten seconds to price.
- A share of the price. The marketplaces. Between 20% and 30%, taken before you ever see the money.
- A flat fee, no commission. You pay the same every month whether you run two tours or forty. Predictable, and the cheapest of the software options once you are past roughly ten bookings a month.
- A fee plus a percentage. The most common shape for booking software. Worth checking whether a higher tier actually cuts the percentage. With some vendors it does, and with others the upgrade only buys features. A few (Xola, Samba, TripWorks) drop the subscription entirely and charge only the percentage, which suits a quiet calendar.
- Nothing from you, a surcharge on your traveller. Free to sign up, about 5% to 6% added at checkout. Most vendors in this group do not publish the rate anywhere.
What this calculator cannot tell you
Commission is the price of reach, and for a guide with no reviews and no audience it is often a fair price. Nothing in the table can tell you whether you are that guide, because the table only knows fees.
It also stops at the money the channel takes. Tax is yours to work out, and in most countries the tour price includes VAT that was never really yours. The yearly figures multiply your month by the months you say you work, so a season entered as a peak month will still read high. Treat the annual number as the size of a problem, not as a forecast.
The number worth watching is not the commission rate. It is the share of your bookings that came through someone else. Most guides do best running both at once: let the marketplace find new travellers, then send those travellers to your own booking page for the next tour and for anyone they recommend you to. That is the hybrid approach, and it is what the last block of the calculator is measuring. That block deliberately compares the marketplace with a plain payment link rather than with our own product, so the gap it shows is the one any guide can reach.
Where these rates come from
Vendor pricing pages and supplier documentation where a rate is published, and industry reporting where it is not, all checked in July and August 2026. Several rates here are genuinely unpublished. Viator and GetYourGuide do not state a base commission publicly, and FareHarbor and Peek Pro do not state their guest-paid percentage at all. Those rows say so.
Subscription prices are shown as the vendor lists them, in dollars or euros, and are not converted when you switch the currency. The percentage rows are correct in any currency. For the full pricing breakdown per vendor, read the booking software comparison or the individual GetYourGuide and Viator fee guides.
Frequently asked questions
How much commission do tour marketplaces take?
Between 20% and 30% on the big platforms. Viator is reported to start at 20% and drift to 30% or more once paid placement is involved. GetYourGuide commonly starts new suppliers at 30%. Airbnb Experiences is a flat 20%. Klook is negotiated per supplier and reported anywhere from 15% to 35%. Your own figure is in your supplier agreement, so check it there rather than trusting a general range.
Is it cheaper to sell tours from my own website?
Almost always, in pure fees. A marketplace takes a fifth to a third of the price. Your own page costs a flat monthly fee, or a percentage in the low single digits, plus card processing of about 2.9%. The catch is that fees are not the whole cost. A marketplace also brings the traveller, and your own page does not until people know it exists.
What does booking software cost a solo tour guide?
There are three shapes. A flat subscription with no commission runs about €30 to €100 a month. A subscription plus a percentage runs €29 to €99 a month plus 1.5% to 3% per booking. The free ones charge your traveller instead, adding about 5% to 6% at checkout. Card processing sits on top of all three unless the vendor says it is included.
Do free walking tour platforms cost anything?
Yes. GuruWalk charges professional guides about €2.50 per booked traveller, and Freetour.com charges roughly €0.50 to €4.50 per person depending on the city. The fee is charged whether that person tips well, tips badly or does not turn up at all, so a poor tipping day can still cost you money.
How many direct bookings replace one marketplace booking?
At a 25% commission you keep three quarters of the price, so four marketplace bookings pay you the same as three direct ones. The calculator does this sum with your own numbers. The useful question is not the ratio but whether you can actually fill those bookings yourself, because a commission you avoid on a booking you never get is worth nothing.
How accurate are these numbers?
Treat them as a ballpark. The commission rates are researched from vendor pages and industry reporting in July and August 2026, and several vendors do not publish a rate at all. Subscription prices are the vendor's own list price in dollars or euros and are not converted between currencies. Your own agreement is the only figure that is exact.
