Statue of Liberty tickets: real prices, the crown, the pedestal, and what to book when the crown is gone

There is no entrance fee for the Statue of Liberty. What you pay for is the ferry, and one company runs it: Statue City Cruises, the only operator the National Park Service authorises to sell tickets and to dock at the islands. Every ticket includes the return ferry, Liberty Island, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty Museum, the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration and the audio tours.

The choice is how far up you go. General admission keeps you on the ground, with the museum and the walk around the statue. Pedestal Reserve takes you inside the stone base to the balcony at the statue’s feet, by lift or by 215 steps. Crown Reserve adds the climb inside the statue itself to the 25 windows in the crown. Both cost 30 cents more than general admission, so the only reason not to book them is that they are limited and general admission is not.

Prices are set by age, and they are the same from New York and New Jersey. Under-fours travel free on every ticket they are allowed on. The crown has a height rule in place of an age rule: children must be at least 42 inches (1.1 metres) tall and able to climb on their own.

National park passes and fee-free days do not apply, because the charge is for the ferry. The operator’s FAQ says there is no extra fee for international visitors.

The National Park Service says crown tickets are usually reserved three to four months ahead, and the operator says they usually sell out months ahead. The calendar on 10 November 2026 agreed. Booking was open to 30 April 2027. From Battery Park, the crown had no places on any date for the rest of 2026 except three at 1pm on 17 November. The next date was 4 January, and even there the 9am, 10am and 11am entries were already gone. By 6 January every hour was open.

The pedestal behaves like a different attraction. It was on sale for every operating day, with hundreds of places an hour. Only the busiest mornings had gone: 9am to 11am on the three days before Thanksgiving, 9am to noon on the Friday after it, and 9am on the Saturday. The afternoons of those same days were still open.

Book the pedestal. It costs the same $26.30, it gets you inside the monument, and it ends on the balcony at the statue’s feet, above the harbour. You can take the lift, which the crown does not have. On the day we read the calendar, a visitor who had left it to the same morning could still book a pedestal entry for noon, 1pm or 2pm.

If your dates are fixed and the pedestal has gone too, general admission still lands you on both islands, with the Statue of Liberty Museum and the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. The Park Service says it is the most widely available ticket and the one that remains when the others sell out.

If the crown is the point of the trip, plan the trip around it: in our reading the first week of January was already filling, and from the second week every hour was open. The operator has no waiting list and sells no crown tickets on the day, and nothing can be upgraded once you are on the island, so the calendar is the only place to look.

Staying in Manhattan, use Battery Park: three subway stations sit beside it and its boats run more often. With a car, or staying in Jersey City, use Liberty State Park: it has parking, and the operator says security there is often faster.

The two piers run the loop in opposite directions. Battery Park boats call at Liberty Island first, Liberty State Park boats at Ellis Island first. You can finish at the other pier if you like, but the operator will not then ferry you back to where you started. In our reading the crown had more left from New York: 4 January against 1 February from New Jersey.

The time on your ticket is the time you join the security queue, not the time your ferry leaves. Screening is airport style at both piers. The operator says the check itself takes about 5 to 10 minutes; the Park Service says the wait to reach it can be an hour or more in summer, at weekends and on holidays. Boats leave about every 20 minutes from Battery Park, so you board the next one after you clear.

For both islands in a day, take an early entry. The operator says an entry of 2pm or later leaves time for one island only, and suggests one to two hours for Ellis Island alone. In the schedule we read, the last boat left Liberty Island at 5:00pm and Ellis Island at 5:15pm. The ferries run every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

Pack light. Suitcases, carry-on luggage and large parcels are not allowed on the ferries, and there are no lockers at the piers. Pedestal and crown visitors go through a second screening on Liberty Island and leave backpacks, food and pushchairs in lockers there, which take a 25-cent deposit in quarters. Crown visitors can carry only a phone, a camera, water in a plastic bottle and medicine.

Yes. The Staten Island Ferry is free, needs no ticket and runs 24 hours a day, every day of the year, according to the New York City Department of Transportation. It sails 5.2 miles across the harbour from the Whitehall Terminal, next to Battery Park, to St. George on Staten Island, and the statue is in view on the way.

It does not stop at Liberty Island or Ellis Island, so it is a view and not a visit. That makes it a good partner to a ticket, not a substitute: a sunset crossing on the evening after your island visit, or the answer for a day when you have an hour and not a morning.

Six things that follow from the official rules and from what the calendar showed.

The first boat leaves at 9:00am and the early entries are the ones worth having, so a bed downtown helps. The Beekman, A Thompson Hotel is in the Financial District, the closest of our New York hotels to The Battery. 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge sits across the East River in DUMBO, and citizenM New York Bowery is on the Lower East Side, a short subway ride from the tip of Manhattan.