Review: Is the Copenhagen Card worth it?

As we planned our family city break to Copenhagen, I asked my usual question I ponder before every trip about its city pass – is the Copenhagen card worth it?

When it comes to loyalty or discount cards, I’m always a bit cynical – too many experiences of paying upfront for a 10% off offer that I never end up using. But there are great deals out there, it’s just working out which is which. And the same goes for city cards and city passes when you travel.

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I’ve written about the different city travel cards for Paris, Amsterdam, Porto and Helsinki over the years, which all get you into various museums and attractions for free, sometimes let you jump queues, and offer discounts and freebies in everything from restaurants to department stores.

Sometimes the savings look too good to be true – especially if major attractions are already free or not included, or the incredible figures require you to visit 20 places in a day. So will the Copenhagen Card save you money?

Check out my complete guide to Denmark with kids here

Planning for our trip to the Danish capital, the Copenhagen Card definitely seems worth the money. There’s a clever option on the site which allows you to tick the places you want to visit, add in details of your stay and who’s travelling and it works out what you can expect to save.

Having tried it with our planned itinerary, a 72 hour Copenhagen Card cut nearly 129 Euros off our total – and even when you account for the fact that we skipped the zoo in the end when it started to rain, the card still left us 90 Euros ahead.

Because there’s a lot included: free admission to 80 museums and attractions in the city and surrounding area, including the canal boat tours, Tivoli Gardens (which isn’t cheap), the Blue Planet aquarium, palaces and castles, plus museums ranging from modern art to historic royal belongings.

You can filter by family-friendly options as well, which brings up a few places you might not otherwise have considered, plus a handy filter to see what’s open on Mondays when many places close.

Click here to check out my top things to do in Copenhagen with kids

There’s also free public transport included in the Discover Card, which saves trying to work out which ticket you need as well as saving cash, plus for every adult card bought, you can bring along two children under 12 for free. Babies tend to get free entry anyway, but a family with a six and eight-year-old, for example, could cut costs considerably.

You must get a free Copenhagen Card KIDS card for kids aged 3-11 (these must be ordered at the same time as your adult pass), while there are also separate Junior cards for 12 to 15-year-olds, roughly half the price of adult versions. If you have more than two kids aged 3-11 (and you’re not travelling with another adult), you’ll need to buy a junior card.

You can also choose a HOP card which includes the hop-on hop-off bus and 40 attractions (but not public transport), and is valid for 24, 48 and 72 hours – you can use the buses multiple times as long as your card is valid.

One bonus is that if you have limited time or a rainy half hour to kill, you can also pop into a nearby attraction, even if it might not have been top of your list to start with.

The card is available for 24, 48, 72 hours or 120 hours – and it is actually done by the hour, rather than the day, so if you choose to start it at 5pm on a Friday, you’ll have until 4.59pm the following day with a 24h card (unlike some cities where starting at 5pm on Friday would see it expire at midnight the same day).

It’s worth checking the specific details for the attractions as well – most won’t allow you to prebook, so if you’re visiting in peak season, you may need to arrive early. When we took the canal tour, we had to board at a particular stop – still the case, you currently have to go to Ved Stranden, not Nyhavn – also had to queue up to get a (free) paper voucher, although that no longer seems to be required. You can now prebook same day tickets though.

It’s even easier to collect than when we were last in Copenhagen – then it could be collected at various points or sent to your home, now it’s entirely digital so you can buy online and activate in the app, or buy it directly in the app. You’ll need to be online to activate the card, but can then use the app offline/in flight mode if you don’t want to blow your data or rack up a roaming bill.

Then you just need to scan the barcode at each attraction, or when you get on a bus. If you’re taking the metro, just make sure you have it handy and that it’s been activated before you travel, then show it to any transport authorities or inspectors if you’re asked.

You can also buy it from websites such as Viator, Tiqets and Get Your Guide

There are no longer any additional discounts for things like restaurants, although I find those are never much of a saving and half the time never somewhere I want to go, so there’s no real loss there!

But when entry to major family-friendly attractions like the Copenhagen Zoo, Tivoli Gardens and the canal tour combined is more than twice the price of the Copenhagen Card, I think this is a deal that’s hard to beat.

*first published 2013, last updated 2024*

PIN FOR LATER: IS THE COPENHAGEN CARD WORTH IT?

Disclosure: I was given two 72-hour Copenhagen Cards courtesy of Wonderful Copenhagen and with assistance from Visit Denmark. Details are correct at time of writing, but may change. Contains some affiliate links: any purchases you make are unaffected but I may receive a small commission.

Main image copyright MummyTravels, Nyhavn courtesy of Depositphotos

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