Petra entry fees and what a full day costs

Petra entry costs 1 JOD for Jordanians, 10 JOD for residents, 30 JOD for Arab visitors and 50 JOD for a foreign visitor on a one-day ticket. Those are the official rates published by the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority in Jordan as of July 2026, and children under 12 enter free during daytime hours. The ticket is not what makes the day expensive, though. At YallaChalet we took the full fee schedule and costed out one day at Petra for a Jordanian family of four, which is the number no official fee table will give you.

Petra entry fees by nationality

Petra entry fees run from 1 JOD for a Jordanian to 90 JOD for a visitor not staying overnight in Jordan, with 10 JOD for residents, 30 JOD for Arab visitors and 50 JOD for a foreign visitor on a one-day ticket in between. These are July 2026 figures, and the fee is set by nationality and residency status rather than by season or day of the week:

Category	Entry fee
Jordanian	1 JOD
Jordan resident (residency card valid at least one year)	10 JOD
Children of Jordanian mothers	10 JOD
Temporary-passport holder	10 JOD
Arab visitor	30 JOD
Foreign visitor, one day	50 JOD
Foreign visitor, two days	55 JOD
Foreign visitor, three days	60 JOD
Visitor not staying overnight in Jordan	90 JOD
Child under 12	Free

The line people miss is the third one. The 30 JOD Arab-visitor rate is a category of its own that almost nothing written about Petra mentions, and it sits 20 JOD per person below the foreign rate. The Jordanian rate is the lowest by a wide margin, and the foreign rate is the highest apart from the 90 JOD no-overnight rate.

Three small details change what you actually pay. Two-day and three-day tickets are valid on consecutive days only, so you cannot visit today and come back next week. The gap between a one-day and a two-day ticket is five dinars, the cheapest full day you will ever buy in Jordan. And the window takes Jordanian dinars in cash or a Visa card, nothing else, so do not arrive with foreign currency to change there.

The full schedule lives on the official Petra fees page, worth checking before you travel because rates change by administrative decision rather than on a published date. To see what the ticket buys you, the Petra travel guide and the monuments inside the site walks from the Siq to the Monastery.

The 90 JOD rate: who it applies to

The 90 JOD line is the rate for a visitor who enters Jordan and leaves the same day without spending a single night in the country. It is the highest published Petra entry rate and the one that confuses readers most. It exists because a day trip arriving from outside the border, from Eilat or a cruise ship docked at Aqaba, pays for what it does not leave behind.

Getting out of it is cheaper than paying it. Spend one night in Jordan, anywhere, and you drop back to the 50 JOD ticket. That is 40 JOD per person, or 80 JOD for two. Put that figure next to the price of one night in Wadi Musa before you commit to a same-day visit.

What the Petra ticket does not include

The most expensive thing the Petra ticket does not include is the Petra by Night show at 30 JOD per person, followed by a tourist guide at 50 JOD for the main route and a club car at 15 JOD to the Treasury. The daytime ticket covers entry and walking the site and no service inside it. These separate items are priced on the same official Petra fee schedule as the entry tickets:

• Petra by Night: 30 JOD per person. Not part of the day ticket and not part of the Jordan Pass, and it requires a valid daytime ticket, so it is an addition to your day rather than an alternative to it. It starts at 20:30 from the visitor centre with a licensed guide, returns around 22:30, and is free for children under 10. The running nights are where the authority's own pages disagree with each other: one lists three nights a week, another lists five, Sunday to Thursday. Do not plan an overnight around a number you read secondhand, this page included. Check the current nights on the official site before you book.
• Club cars. Visitor centre to the Treasury is 15 JOD, and 25 JOD there and back. Petra theatre to Qasr al-Bint is 10 JOD, and 15 JOD there and back. Ask at the window whether the price is per car or per person before you budget it for a family.
• 4x4 transfers from the Nabataean village to the Monastery trail: 5 JOD per person one way, daily from 07:30 to 15:00. The cheapest line on the schedule, and the most useful if your legs are finished before the Monastery is.
• Tourist guide: 50 JOD for the main route, 100 JOD for the main route plus the Monastery or the High Place of Sacrifice. Ask how many people a guide ticket covers before you divide it across your group.

The Jordan Pass covers the daytime ticket and waives the tourist visa fee if you buy it before you arrive. It does not cover the night show, the club cars or a guide.

What a full day at Petra costs a Jordanian family

For a Jordanian family of four, two parents and two children under 12, driving down from Amman for one day: entry costs 2 JOD, and the real cost of the day is 62 to 72 JOD. The tickets are around 3% of the day. Everything else is road and food.

Item	Cost
Entry for two Jordanian adults	2 JOD
Two children under 12	Free
Fuel for 470 km round trip (about 40 litres in a family car)	About 45 JOD at 2026 prices
Water and food for a long day of walking	15 to 25 JOD
Total	62 to 72 JOD

Price the fuel at the pump rate on the day you travel rather than at ours; it is the only moving line here. If one of your children has turned 12, add one dinar.

Run the same day for a resident family of four and the tickets become 20 JOD instead of 2, so the total lands at roughly 80 to 90 JOD. A foreign family of two adults and two children under 12 pays 100 JOD for one day and 110 JOD for two full days. Ten dinars for a second complete day inside the site is the strongest number on this page, and it only works if you sleep near the gate.

Taking club cars both ways for two people adds 50 JOD, close to half the cost of the whole day, so treat it as a decision rather than a detail. When you go matters more to the fuel and food lines than to the ticket, and the best time to visit Petra explains which months make eight kilometres on foot bearable at all.

Opening hours and distances: why a night in Wadi Musa changes the maths

The site opens at 06:00 and closes at 18:00 in summer; in winter it runs 06:30 to 17:00. The main trail from the visitor centre to Qasr al-Bint runs eight kilometres, and the Siq alone is more than 1,250 metres before the Treasury comes into view. So a full day at Petra starts at six in the morning, not at ten, and what the ticket really buys is daylight hours ahead of the heat and the coaches.

This is where the number that decides the trip shows up. Amman is 235 km each way, so a day trip means around six hours of driving, a fuel bill more than twenty times the family's tickets, and arrival at the gate after the sun is already up. One night in Wadi Musa splits the road cost across two days, puts you at the gate at 06:00, and removes the 90 JOD rate for anyone arriving from outside Jordan. Browse chalets in the Petra area and message the owner directly on WhatsApp, with no commission and no middleman.

The two routes from Amman and how long each takes are covered in how far Petra is from Amman.

Before you book, check how far the stay is from the gate and that its photos are of the actual place; at YallaChalet we verify that before any listing goes live. The stays available in Wadi Musa and Petra sit on one page, so you can compare them on price and location before you spend a dinar at the gate.