Things to Do in Las Vegas on a Budget: Free and Cheap Picks

Yes, you can do Las Vegas on a budget, and we’ve done it more than once. Across our visits we’ve watched the free Bellagio fountains, ridden the free Strip trams, filled whole days with things that cost nothing, and saved our money for the handful of paid attractions that are actually worth it. Once your room is paid for, a careful day in Vegas can cost you well under $100, and a lot of the best things on the Strip are free. Every photo in this guide is one of ours, taken on those trips.

This is our budget guide to Las Vegas: what’s free, what’s cheap but worth paying for, what to skip, and the money traps to dodge (resort fees, self-parking charges, $25 cocktails and club covers). We’ll give you current visitor prices for the attractions worth your time, a free-versus-cheap-versus-splurge table you can plan from, and the insider tricks we use to keep the cost down. We’ve also kept all the practical bits you need, from getting around to where to stay and the best free and cheap day trips out of the city.

Quick take: Vegas is as expensive as you let it be. The Strip is built to separate you from your money, but the city is also packed with free spectacle.

The single best free thing to do is watch the Bellagio fountains after dark. Add free casino shows, a walk down the Strip at night, and the Fremont Street light canopy and you’ve got a full day for nothing.

For paid attractions, almost everything worth doing comes in under about $40 per adult. Budget roughly $50 to $100 a day for activities, food and getting around (on top of your room), and you’ll have a great trip. The big money goes on hotels, clubs, dayclubs and dinner buffets, which are the easiest things to skip or downsize.

 

Free and Cheap Things to Do in Las Vegas at a Glance

Here’s the quick decision frame we use. The free column alone could fill a couple of days. Prices are per adult at the visitor (non-resident) rate, which is what you’ll pay if you’re not a Nevada local, and they’re current at the time of writing.

Thing to do	Cost tier	Price (per adult)	Worth it on a budget?
Bellagio fountains	Free	$0	The best free show in Vegas. Do it twice.
Walk the Strip after dark	Free	$0	Yes. The whole spectacle, for nothing.
Fremont Street Experience	Free	$0	Yes. Free to stand under the light canopy.
Fall of Atlantis at Caesars	Free	$0	Yes if you’re passing. Runs Thursday to Monday.
Flamingo Wildlife Habitat	Free	$0	Yes. Real flamingos, no ticket.
Welcome to Las Vegas sign	Free	$0	Yes, for the photo. Expect a queue.
STRAT SkyPod deck	Cheap	about $20	Yes for the view. Thrill rides add about $5 each.
Neon Museum (daytime)	Cheap	$25	Yes. Go by day and save $10 on the evening rate.
Springs Preserve	Cheap	$18.95	Yes if you want a break from the Strip.
Mob Museum	Cheap	about $35	Yes. One of our favourites. Cheaper before 11am.
Madame Tussauds	Cheap	$29 online	Only if you book online. The gate price is higher.
High Roller wheel (day)	Cheap	about $28	Maybe. The free fountains give a better view for nothing.
Venetian gondola ride	Cheap	$39 per person	A splurge for 15 minutes. Lovely, but optional.
Bacchanal Buffet (dinner)	Splurge	$$$	Go at lunch instead for a lower price.
Cirque du Soleil show	Splurge	$$$	Worth doing once. Use Tix4Tonight for same-day deals.
Nightclub bottle service	Splurge	$$$$	Skip it on a budget. Free club entry exists via promoters.

 

Free Things to Do in Las Vegas

This is where a budget trip lives. The Strip is one of the most expensive few miles in the USA, but it’s also a giant free attraction, paid for by the casinos to keep you walking past the slot machines. Lean into that. Here are the free things we always come back to.

 

Watch the Bellagio Fountains

If you do one free thing in Vegas, make it the fountains of the Bellagio. A choreographed show of water, light and music plays out across the 8 acre lake in front of the hotel, with over 1,200 nozzles lit by more than 4,500 lights. The water shoots hundreds of feet into the air and the music changes through the day, so it’s worth catching more than once.

The show runs every 30 minutes from 3pm to 7:30pm on weekdays, then every 15 minutes from 8pm to midnight. At weekends and on holidays it starts earlier, from noon. It’s free, it’s in the dead centre of the Strip, and it’s the easiest “wow” you’ll get for nothing. Wind can cancel it occasionally, but most evenings you’ll have no trouble.

While you’re at the Bellagio, walk inside to the Conservatory and Botanical Garden. It’s free, open around the clock, and the displays are changed out several times a year for the seasons. We’ve wandered through it late at night with hardly anyone else around.

 

Catch a Free Casino Show

The Bellagio fountains aren’t the only free show in town. The casinos put on plenty of spectacle to draw a crowd, and you don’t have to spend a cent to watch.

Our pick is the Fall of Atlantis at the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace, a free animatronic show that runs hourly from noon to 8pm, Thursday through Monday. Over at Circus Circus, free live circus acts (acrobats, aerialists and clowns) perform throughout the day in the centre of the Midway, which is a great free option if you’ve got kids in tow. You’ll also find free street performers and the occasional free concert as part of the Fremont Street Experience downtown.

One thing to know if you’ve read an older guide: the Mirage volcano is gone. The Mirage closed in 2024 and is being rebuilt as a Hard Rock resort, so the famous free volcano eruption is no more. The shows above have happily filled the gap.

 

Walk the Strip After Dark

The most famous road in Las Vegas is the South Las Vegas Boulevard, almost always just called The Strip. It’s a 4.2 mile stretch lined with the city’s biggest hotels and casinos, and walking it at night is one of the best free things you can do. The neon comes alive after dark and it’s a lot cooler than the daytime, which matters in summer when the Strip in full sun is hard work.

You don’t need to walk all of it. The two mile stretch between the Luxor and the Venetian has the most to look at. Wander into the hotels as you go, because the public areas are free and most of the famous ones welcome you in to look around. You can see the canals and a replica of St Mark’s Square at the Venetian, a half-scale Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, the pyramid and sphinx at the Luxor, and the New York skyline at New York-New York. It’s tacky in the best way, and it costs nothing.

If you’d rather not walk, a night sightseeing tour or a hop-on hop-off bus will run you along it with commentary, but for our money the free walk wins.

 

Explore Fremont Street and Old Vegas

Before the Strip took over, the heart of Las Vegas was Downtown, around Fremont Street, and these days it’s where your money goes furthest. We found food, drink and table-game minimums all lower here than on the Strip, so it’s a great area for a budget trip.

The covered part of Fremont Street, the Fremont Street Experience, runs for five blocks under a canopy fitted with over 12 million lights and a huge sound system. Standing under the Viva Vision light shows is free, and there are free concerts, street performers and plenty of people-watching. This is also where you’ll find the original casinos, including the Golden Gate (the oldest hotel in the city), the Golden Nugget and the El Cortez.

 

See the Famous Las Vegas Sign

The “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign has been a landmark since 1959, and it’s free to visit. You’ll find it at the south end of the Strip, just past Mandalay Bay, sitting on a small island in the middle of the road with its own little car park behind it.

It is popular, so there’s usually a queue for the photo, and you do have to cross live traffic to reach it, so use the crosswalk and take your time. Early morning is the quietest time if you want the shot without a crowd.

 

Free Gardens, Wildlife and Chocolate

A few more free stops are worth your time. At the Flamingo, the Wildlife Habitat is a free garden in the middle of the resort with real Chilean flamingos, ducks and koi, open during daylight hours. It’s a lovely, quiet break from the casino floor and it costs nothing.

A bit further out in Henderson, the Ethel M Chocolate Factory has a free self-guided tour where you can watch chocolate being made, plus a free Botanical Cactus Garden next door. The garden is free year-round except during the ticketed holiday light display (roughly mid-November to January) and around Valentine’s Day. You’ll need a car to get there, but it pairs well with a Lake Mead or Hoover Dam day.

 

Gamble (or Just Watch) Without Spending Much

Gambling is what built Vegas, but it doesn’t have to be a big budget line. Watching is free, and you can wander any casino floor for nothing. If you do want to play, two things keep the cost down. First, the drinks are free while you’re playing, even at the cheap end (a dollar or two tip per drink is the done thing). Second, the table minimums are much lower away from the centre of the Strip. We found minimums and fees noticeably lower for blackjack downtown and at the off-Strip casinos than at the big Strip resorts.

So if you fancy a flutter, set yourself a small fixed budget, head downtown or off-Strip for a low-minimum table, nurse a free drink, and treat it as entertainment rather than an investment. The house always wins in the end, but a couple of low-stakes hands is a cheap way to soak up the atmosphere.

 

Cheap Things to Do in Las Vegas

When you do want to pay for something, the good news is that most of the attractions worth doing come in under about $40 per adult. Here are the ones we’d spend our money on. Where a price has a Nevada-resident discount, we’ve quoted the visitor rate, because that’s what you’ll pay as an out-of-state or international visitor.

 

Go Up the Strat

For the best view in the city, head to the STRAT (formerly the Stratosphere), at the north end of the Strip. Its tower is 1,149 feet (350 metres) tall, which makes it the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States. The SkyPod observation deck costs around $20 for an adult, which is a lot of view for the money.

This being Vegas, a deck isn’t enough, so there are also thrill rides bolted to the very top of the tower: the Big Shot, X-Scream and Insanity, each adding around $5 to your ticket. Jess’s brother did the Big Shot last time we were up there while the rest of us were quite happy watching from the deck. There’s also the SkyJump, a controlled descent off the tower, but that’s a separate and much pricier add-on, so don’t lump it in with the cheaper rides. Access to the tower is also included on the Go Las Vegas Pass, which we’ll come to in the money-saving section.

 

Ride the High Roller or the Big Apple Coaster

If you want a ride rather than a static view, the High Roller at the LINQ is the giant observation wheel halfway up the Strip. A daytime ticket is around $28, rising to about $40 in the evening, so go by day to save. On a budget, the free Bellagio fountains and a Strip walk give you a better Vegas view for nothing, so we’d treat the wheel as a nice-to-have rather than a must.

Over at New York-New York, the Big Apple Coaster loops around the hotel’s Manhattan skyline for about $19 by day or $23 in the evening. It’s a proper roller coaster and good fun if you like that sort of thing. You can also pay to go up the half-scale Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas for another Strip view, or zip down Fremont Street on the FLY LINQ zipline.

 

Visit the Mob Museum

The Mob Museum, officially the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, is one of our favourite paid attractions in the city. It sits, fittingly, in a former federal courthouse downtown, and tells the story of organised crime in Las Vegas and the law enforcement that chased it, from bootlegging and Al Capone to Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover.

The exhibits are hands-on and absorbing, and there’s a crime lab, a distillery tour with a tasting, and a speakeasy bar where you can sit down with a drink at the end. Adult admission is around $35, but there’s an off-peak discount of roughly $7 if you go before 11am or after 5pm, so time your visit to save. You can book tickets in advance here, and it’s also on the Go Las Vegas Pass.

 

See Old Vegas at the Museums

Downtown is also where the city’s best-value museums cluster. On our last trip we visited three and rated all of them.

The Neon Museum, also known as the Neon Boneyard, is an outdoor yard full of the old neon signs that once lit up the Strip. Daytime admission is $25 for an adult, and the evening visit (when some signs are relit) is $35, so go in the day if you’re counting the pennies. The projection show, Brilliant!, is a separate add-on from $17.

Nearby, the National Atomic Testing Museum tells the strange history of the nuclear tests carried out in the desert north of the city, which were once a tourist draw in their own right. And if you’ve got kids, or a soft spot for old arcades, the Pinball Hall of Fame is one of the best cheap days out in Vegas: admission and parking are free, and you just pay per game, from 25 cents on the older machines up to about a dollar on the newest ones.

 

More Cheap Picks and Exhibitions

A few more paid attractions land in the cheap tier and are worth knowing about. Madame Tussauds at the Venetian is $29 if you book online (the walk-up price is higher, so always book ahead). The Springs Preserve, a museum and botanical garden complex on the site of the original Las Vegas spring, is $18.95 for an adult and a proper break from the neon. For a quick novelty, the Minus5 Ice Bar (carved entirely from ice, parka included) is around $24 to get in.

The big hotels also host rotating exhibitions, usually at the Luxor. The Titanic Artifact Exhibition and the Real Bodies exhibit are the long-running ones, and you can see what else is on and book tickets here.

One more cheap novelty that’s very Vegas: getting married. The city is the wedding capital of the world precisely because it’s so quick and so cheap, with chapels, hotel venues and even drive-through options, and themes from Elvis to Star Trek. Even if you’re already hitched (as Jess and I are, having long since tied the knot at sea), a quick look round one of the chapels is free fun, and a vow renewal is one of the cheapest “experiences” in town.

 

See a Show for Less

A show is one of the things we’d always make room for in a Vegas budget, because the standard is high, with world-class performers on stage every night. There’s everything from Cirque du Soleil and big-name residencies to magic, cabaret and tribute acts. We tended to wind down our evenings at a show after dinner, and we particularly liked the Cirque du Soleil productions.

The trick is not paying full price. For same-day deals, the discount ticket booths around the city, especially Tix4Tonight, sell unsold seats at a cut, often 30% to 50% off. The catch is you take what’s available, so it suits anyone flexible on what they see, or visiting at a quieter time of year. If you want to lock in a specific show in advance, we booked ours on Vegas.com, and it’s worth comparing prices across Viator and GetYourGuide too, as they all list shows.

One venue worth a mention even if you don’t buy a ticket is the Sphere, which opened in 2023. The outside of this enormous spherical building is a wraparound LED screen, and it puts on a free light display every night that you can watch from the street. A show inside is a splurge, but the exterior is a free spectacle in its own right.

 

Cheap Eats in Las Vegas

Food can quietly eat your budget in Vegas, but it really doesn’t have to. The city is famous for fine dining and its Michelin-starred rooms, and yes, if you want a blowout, the likes of Joël Robuchon and the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars are there for it. But that’s a one-off splurge, not how you eat every day.

For value, a few habits go a long way. If you do want to try a buffet or a nicer restaurant, go at lunch rather than dinner, where the same food is often a good bit cheaper. Hunt out happy hours, which are everywhere in Vegas and can get you decent food and drink at half the evening price. The hotel food courts and the casual spots off the casino floor are far cheaper than the headline restaurants, and the burger at the Burger Bar in Mandalay Bay is a reliable, reasonably priced favourite of ours.

It’s also worth getting off the Strip. Some of the best food in Vegas is in unglamorous strip malls. Jess and her brother once trekked out to Lotus of Siam, a northern Thai restaurant in a small shopping centre, on the recommendation of her chef cousin, and had to queue for a table. Good news if you’ve read an older guide: the original Sahara Avenue location reopened in May 2026 after several years closed, so it’s back on the map. If you’d like a guided taste of the scene, a food tour like this one is a fun way to sample several places at once.

 

How to Save Money in Las Vegas

This is the part that makes the biggest difference to your bill. Vegas is full of charges that catch first-timers out, and a handful of small habits that quietly save you a lot. Here’s what we do.

Watch out for resort fees and parking. The room rate you see is rarely the price you pay. Most Strip hotels add a mandatory “resort fee”, often $40 to $60 a night, on top of the advertised rate, supposedly for wifi and the gym whether you use them or not. Always check the final total before you book, because a cheap-looking room can work out dearer than a pricier one with no fee. Many Strip resorts also now charge for self-parking, so if you’ve hired a car, factor that in or look for the properties (more common downtown) that still park you for free.

The drinks are free while you gamble. As above, if you’re playing on the floor, even low stakes, the drinks come free. Tip a dollar or two and it’s still far cheaper than the $20-plus you’ll pay for a cocktail at a Strip bar.

Grab a coupon book. There are still physical coupon booklets floating around the city with discounts on food, shows and attractions. They turn up in hotel lobbies, the airport and visitor centres, and they’re free to pick up.

Consider a timeshare presentation, with eyes open. If you’ve got time and patience, sitting through a timeshare presentation gets you free gifts, often show tickets, dinner vouchers or similar. Jess’s parents used to do these to score free tickets. There’s no obligation beyond your time, but the sales pressure is real, so only do it if you can comfortably say no.

Refill your water. This is the desert, and a bottle of water on the Strip can be $5. Carry a refillable bottle and top it up from fountains and restaurants, and you’ll save a surprising amount over a hot few days while staying properly hydrated.

 

Is a Las Vegas Attraction Pass Worth It?

We nearly always look at a city attraction pass when we travel, and Vegas has a good one in the Go Las Vegas Pass. It comes in two flavours: an All-Inclusive pass that covers 40-plus attractions for a set number of days, and an Explorer pass where you pick a fixed number of attractions to use within 30 days. Whether it saves you money comes down to simple maths, so here’s how we’d think about it.

At the time of writing, a one-day All-Inclusive pass is around $89 and a two-day around $149. Now total up what you’d actually do. Say in one busy day you wanted the High Roller (about $28), Madame Tussauds ($29), the Mob Museum (about $35) and the Big Apple Coaster (about $19). Paid separately that’s around $111, so the $89 day pass saves you about $22 and lets you add more if you have the energy. Stretch the same appetite over two days and the individual total climbs past $200, comfortably beating the $149 two-day pass.

The rule of thumb we use: a pass is worth it if you’ll do at least three or four paid attractions per pass-day, and you’ll actually cram them in. If your trip is mostly the free things in this guide with one or two paid extras, skip the pass and just buy those tickets. And if you like a slower pace, the Explorer pass (pick a set number, 30 days to use them) often suits a budget trip better than racing round to justify an all-day pass.

 

Getting To and Around Las Vegas

Las Vegas sits in the Mojave Desert, and most people arrive by air or by car. The airport (Harry Reid International) is close in, around 2.5 miles from the south end of the Strip, with both domestic and international flights. From the airport you can take a taxi for a fixed fare to Strip hotels (you can check the zones and fares here), use a rideshare, or save money with public transport by taking Route 109 and transferring to the Deuce at the South Strip Transfer Station.

If you’re driving, Vegas is about a 4 hour (270 mile) drive from Los Angeles, 5 hours (301 miles) from Phoenix, and 9 hours (570 miles) from San Francisco. It also makes a brilliant start or end point for a road trip, and we have a full two week USA road trip itinerary built around it. There are long-distance Greyhound buses from around the country, but no passenger train; the nearest station is in Kingman, Arizona, about 90 minutes away.

 

The Cheapest Ways Around the City

Vegas is bigger than it looks on a map. Even walking from one end of a single hotel to the other takes longer than you expect, and in summer the daytime heat makes long walks outdoors a bad idea. The good news is there are some cheap, and some free, ways to get about.

Start with the free options. Several stretches of the Strip have free trams linking neighbouring resorts: one runs between Mandalay Bay, Luxor and Excalibur at the south end, and the Aria Express links Bellagio, Aria and Park MGM in the centre. Downtown, the Downtown Loop is a free shuttle connecting Fremont Street and the Mob Museum with the STRAT at the top of the Strip.

For everything else, the cheapest paid option is the bus. The route you want is the Deuce, a double-decker that runs the length of the Strip and on to downtown. A 24-hour pass is $8, which is far better value than repeated rideshares (the RTC has proposed raising this to $10 later in 2026, so check the current fare before you ride). The Las Vegas Monorail is faster but pricier, at $5.50 for a single ride online or $13.45 for a 24-hour pass; it runs 3.9 miles with seven stops, but it only serves the east side of the Strip behind the hotels, so it’s only worth it if your plans line up with its stations. Uber and Lyft both operate too, with designated pick-up points at the big hotels, and they’re handy late at night when the buses thin out.

Our budget verdict: lean on the free trams and the Deuce, use rideshare only when you have to, and skip the Monorail unless your hotels happen to sit on its line.

 

Where to Stay in Las Vegas on a Budget

Las Vegas has 13 of the world’s 30 largest hotels, close to half and more than any other city, so there’s no shortage of rooms, and that works in your favour. The hotels make most of their money from gambling, food and entertainment rather than the rooms themselves, so they’d rather fill a room cheaply than leave it empty. Visit mid-week or out of season and even smart hotels can be a bargain.

Two things to keep in mind. First, watch for the resort fees we mentioned above, because they change the real price. Second, location matters less than you’d think on a budget, since the Deuce and the trams get you up and down the Strip cheaply. Here are a few options we’d point a budget traveller towards.

• El Cortez is a well-reviewed value option on historic Fremont Street downtown, with free parking, which is increasingly rare in Vegas.
• Sin City Hostel in the Arts District is the pick if you want proper budget, hostel-style accommodation, with good-value shared rooms, private bathrooms, free parking and free breakfast.
• The Flamingo is the oldest resort still running on the Strip (since 1946) and regularly one of the best-value central options. It’s an older property, but the location is excellent and the wildlife habitat is free. We’ve stayed here and were happy with it.
• Paris Las Vegas and New York-New York are good mid-range Strip picks if you catch a deal, both central and full of the themed fun Vegas is known for.
• If you do want one splurge night and a deal lines up, the Bellagio is worth it; we stayed in a room overlooking the fountains and loved it. For a quieter, no-casino stay, the former Delano (now W Las Vegas) sits next to Mandalay Bay; Jess has stayed there and rates it for couples.

You can browse the full range of Las Vegas hotels on Booking.com, or look at apartment and vacation rental options on Vrbo, which can work out cheaper for groups.

 

Free and Cheap Day Trips from Las Vegas

Some of the best value around Las Vegas is outside it, in the desert and canyon country that surrounds the city. The cheapest way to do any of these is to hire a car and drive yourself, which is why we’d recommend sorting car hire if you plan to get out of town. We use Discover Cars to compare rental prices across companies. If you’d rather not drive, there are guided tours to all of these, which we’ve linked.

• Red Rock Canyon is the closest and cheapest escape, around 20 minutes west of the Strip and ideal if you’ve hired a car. The scenic loop drive costs $15 per vehicle plus a $2 timed-entry reservation (needed October to May), so split between a carful of people it’s a very cheap half-day of red sandstone cliffs and easy trails.
• Valley of Fire State Park is about an hour northeast, and our pick for the best scenery near Vegas. Entry is $15 per vehicle for out-of-state cars (Nevada-registered vehicles pay $10), again a per-car fee rather than per person, so it’s great value for a group. The flame-coloured rock formations glow in the late afternoon light.
• The Hoover Dam is about 45 minutes away and an impressive piece of engineering on the Colorado River. You can drive there and pay for a tour at the dam, or take a guided trip from Vegas. Nearby Lake Mead is free to look out over and a nice stop on the way.
• The Grand Canyon is the big one. The West Rim is around 2.5 hours away and the South Rim further still, so it’s a long day by car; you can also do it on a guided tour or, for a splurge, by helicopter.
• Bryce, Zion and Antelope Canyon are further afield in Utah and Arizona and better as overnight trips, but they’re doable as long days on a tour, including Bryce and Zion or Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend.

We’ve also got a dedicated guide to our favourite day trips from Las Vegas if you want more detail and ideas.

 

When to Visit Las Vegas for the Best Value

Timing makes a real difference to what Vegas costs. The most pleasant weather is in spring (March to May) and autumn (September to November), which is why those are also fairly busy and pricier at weekends. The busiest and most expensive stretch is from around Christmas through the end of January.

For the cheapest rooms, the summer is your friend, as long as you can handle the heat. This is the Mojave Desert, and daytime temperatures regularly top 40°C (104°F), so you’ll be planning your days around air conditioning, pools and evenings out. The trade-off is real value: Jess once visited in August and got a lovely hotel room at a great price, though she was glad of the pool. Whenever you go, aim for mid-week over the weekend, and check the convention calendar and steer clear of the big trade shows, which push room prices up sharply (the largest tend to land in January).

 

What We’d Skip to Save Money

Part of doing Vegas well on a budget is knowing what to leave out. None of these are bad, and if one is your idea of a perfect night then go for it, but here’s where we’d save, based on what we’ve learned over our trips.

Nightclubs and bottle service. Club covers run $20 to $75 and bottle service climbs into the hundreds fast. If you want a night out, look for free club entry through the promoters who work the Strip, or stick to happy hours and the free casino bars.

Paid dayclubs and pools. The hotel dayclubs charge to get in, and the loungers and cabanas add up quickly. Most hotels have a normal pool for guests that’s perfectly nice and already included in your stay.

Designer shopping. The malls (the Forum Shops, the Grand Canal Shoppes, the Shops at Crystals) are spectacular to wander, and wandering is free. We always have a look round and rarely buy a thing. If you do want a bargain, the Broadacres Marketplace is a huge outdoor swap meet at the other end of the price scale.

Dinner buffets. The big buffets are a Vegas institution, but at dinner they’re a splurge. Do one at lunch instead, or skip it for the cheaper eats above.

Pricey paid viewpoints, if you’re watching every dollar. The High Roller and the various observation decks are fun, but you get a free Strip view from the Bellagio fountains, a Strip walk, or simply the upper floors and bars of the big hotels.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Visiting Las Vegas on a Budget

Can you really do Las Vegas on a budget?

Yes. We’ve done budget Vegas trips more than once. The Strip is one giant free attraction, with free fountains, casino shows, the Fremont Street light canopy and a Strip walk at night all costing nothing.

The money goes on hotels, clubs, dayclubs and dinner buffets, which are the easy things to downsize. Keep those in check and a great day in Vegas costs very little.

What are the best free things to do in Las Vegas?

The Bellagio fountains are the top free thing, with a water and light show every 30 to 15 minutes from afternoon to midnight. Add the free Fall of Atlantis show at Caesars, the free circus acts at Circus Circus, and the Fremont Street Experience light canopy downtown.

Walking the Strip after dark, visiting the Flamingo Wildlife Habitat, and photographing the Welcome to Las Vegas sign are all free too.

How much money do you need per day in Las Vegas?

On top of your room, budget roughly $50 to $100 a day for activities, food and getting around if you’re being careful. Most paid attractions come in under about $40, free things fill the gaps, and the free trams plus the $8 Deuce day pass keep transport cheap.

You can spend far more if you add clubs, dayclubs, shows and fine dining, so the daily figure really depends on how many splurges you build in.

What is the cheapest way to get around Las Vegas?

The free trams between neighbouring resorts and the free Downtown Loop shuttle cost nothing. For longer hops, the Deuce bus runs the length of the Strip and downtown, with a 24-hour pass at $8.

The Monorail is faster but pricier at $13.45 for a 24-hour pass, and it only serves the east side of the Strip, so it’s only worth it if your hotels line up with its stations.

Is the Go City Las Vegas pass worth it?

It’s worth it if you’ll visit at least three or four paid attractions per pass-day. A one-day All-Inclusive pass is around $89, and four typical attractions bought separately can easily cost more than that.

If your trip is mostly free things with a couple of paid extras, skip the pass and just buy those tickets. The Explorer pass, where you pick a set number of attractions to use within 30 days, suits a slower budget trip better.

How do you avoid resort fees in Las Vegas?

Resort fees of $40 to $60 a night are hard to avoid entirely on the Strip, but you can manage them. Always check the all-in total before booking, since a cheaper headline rate can cost more once the fee is added.

Some downtown and off-Strip hotels have lower fees or none, and a few still offer free self-parking, so they can work out cheaper overall even if the room rate looks similar.

 

Further Reading

That’s our budget guide to Las Vegas. To help you plan the rest of your trip, here are some other resources you might find useful.

• We have a detailed guide to our favourite day trips from Las Vegas if you want to get out of the city for a day or more.
• Vegas is a great start point for a road trip. See our two week USA road trip itinerary starting from Las Vegas, plus our itineraries for a USA Deep South road trip, a California road trip, a Route 66 road trip and the Pacific Coast Highway.
• For trip-planning help, see our guide to how much it costs to travel in the USA, and our tips for driving in the USA if it’s your first time behind the wheel here.
• We’ve visited a lot of other US cities. See our guides to Huntsville, Savannah, Charleston, Albuquerque, New Orleans at Mardi Gras, Cambria, Houston, Dallas, Omaha and Santa Fe.

As always, we’re happy to answer your questions and help you plan your visit. Just pop them in the comments below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.