Wadi Rum Entrance Fee: What You Pay and What a Trip Really Costs

The Wadi Rum Protected Area charges every foreign visitor an entrance fee at the Visitor Centre on the road into the reserve. You pay once per stay, not once per day, so a three-night trip costs the same at the gate as an afternoon. Bring your passport, which you show with a Jordan Pass.

Here are the published figures, with the exact figures some booking listings use alongside them.

The 7 JD and $10 quotes are worth taking seriously even though the official figure is lower. One half-day jeep listing in this catalog states the fee as 7 JD, and one other listing quotes $10. Plan your cash on the higher figure so a higher quote never leaves you short at the window.

You pay at the Wadi Rum Visitor Centre, which sits 21 km (13 mi) from the Desert Highway turnoff, with Rum Village a further 7 km (4 mi) on. Every vehicle coming from the highway passes it, including tour transfers. Keep small notes handy.

• Pay in person at the Visitor Centre gate, in Jordanian dinars.
• Jordan Pass holders show their passport and their pass instead of paying.
• The fee is charged per person, not per vehicle.
• The fee is charged once per stay, so leaving and coming back the same day does not cost a second fee.
• If you enter from the Disi side, you are not in the UNESCO protected area. One listing warns that touts offering free entry are often from Disah camps and take visitors into the other desert.

The most common budgeting mistake is reading a tour price and assuming the gate fee is inside it. It is not. The $7.05 (5 JD) fee buys access to the protected area.

Everything else is a separate purchase, and no listing in this catalog includes the fee, including the cheapest and the most expensive.

• What the fee covers: entry to the Wadi Rum Protected Area, once per stay.
• What it does not cover: the jeep, the guide, the camel, the balloon, meals, the camp night, transfers from outside the reserve, and parking.
• The gap in practice: our cheapest listing, the camel ride at $49, still requires the gate fee on arrival, and the sunrise balloon flight at $235 does too.
• Worked example: a couple booking the $53 camp stay pays $106 for the tour, $14.10 (2 x $7.05) at the gate, plus any transfer, so the real trip total starts near $120 before extras.

The Jordan Pass bundles entry to more than 40 attractions, including Wadi Rum and Petra, and it waives the tourist visa fee when bought before arrival with a minimum 2-night stay in the country. The only difference between tiers is how many days of Petra entry you get. The math is simple: Petra alone costs 50 JD ($70.50) for one day if you stay overnight in Jordan, and 90 JD ($126.90) if you visit on a day trip without a night in the country.

On entry fees alone, Petra for one day plus Wadi Rum comes to 55 JD ($77.55), less than the cheapest pass. The pass pays off through the visa fee it waives and the other sites it covers.

The comparison below uses the official Petra rate for visitors staying overnight in Jordan against the pass tiers that include the same Petra days.

One caveat: Petra charges day visitors who do not stay a night in Jordan 90 JD ($126.90). If your plan is a Petra and Wadi Rum day trip from Amman with no overnight in Jordan, the visa-waiver benefit does not apply to you anyway, so compare the pass against the 90 JD day rate rather than the 50 JD rate. The pass also has to be bought before you arrive.

Pass tiers and conditions: Jordan Pass. Petra prices: Petra fees page. Entrance fee and village prices: Wikivoyage Wadi Rum.

The table lists every trip in the catalog with its listed per-person price and what that price includes. See the best Wadi Rum desert tours overview on the homepage for the full live listings, because prices shift with season and the booking page is the number that governs.

All figures are the listed per-person prices.

Note the gate fee sits outside every one of these prices, as do pickups from outside the protected area and parking at the Rest House.

Beyond the entrance fee, three real extras appear in the listings and none of them are optional if they apply to your plan. Each has a fixed published figure.

• Visitor Centre transfer, $14.10 (10 JOD): the full-day jeep tour with an overnight camp lists this as extra unless you drive to Wadi Rum Village yourself.
• Parking at the Rest House, $7.05 (5 JOD): one listing charges this in cash for parking at the Wadi Rum Village Rest House, while another says parking next to the Rest House is easy and free. If you drive, carry cash for the possible charge.
• Camel add-ons: the half-day private jeep tour sells a 45-minute camel ride as an option, and the 9-hour jeep tour includes a 20-minute camel ride only if you select it. Neither listing gives a separate price for the add-on, so check the booking page.
• Cash at the gate: the fee itself, at $7.05 (5 JD) officially and up to $9.87 (7 JD) on some quotes.

No listing states a tipping norm for Wadi Rum guides or drivers, so ask your operator if tipping matters to you.

You do not need a booking platform to see the desert. Wikivoyage publishes reference prices for arranging jeeps, camels and camps directly in Rum Village, and for groups they can beat the catalog prices. The trade-off is that you organize the meeting, the route and the camp yourself, which is why our guide on how to get to Wadi Rum covers the transport legs in detail.

The figures below are reference prices for arranging everything yourself, per jeep or per person as noted.

When the number at the gate or a live booking page disagrees with the figures here, the gate and the checkout win.

The cheapest real day out, the best first visit, the family pick and the photographer pick, each priced with the gate fee included in the math.

One honesty note: every combination here works without a tour too. The tour buys timing, transport and a set route, not access, because the gate fee is the same for everyone.

Each of these comes with a real number.

• Buy the Jordan Wanderer pass before arrival at $98.70 (70 JD) if Petra is on your plan. It costs 15 JD more than Petra for a day plus the Wadi Rum fee, and earns that back through the visa fee it waives with a 2-night minimum stay and the other sites it covers.
• Stay overnight in Jordan if you are doing Petra: the day-visitor rate is 90 JD ($126.90) against 50 JD ($70.50) with a night in the country, a difference of $56.40 per person.
• Share a village jeep instead of booking per person: at 50-75 JD ($70.50-$105.75) per vehicle for 3-5 hours, four travelers pay roughly $17.63 to $26.44 each.
• Drive yourself to the Rest House where possible. It saves the $14.10 (10 JOD) Visitor Centre transfer on the overnight jeep listing, and parking there is either free or $7.05 (5 JOD).
• Travel in spring or autumn. The listings show no seasonal price difference, but these months avoid cold winter nights around 3.2°C (38°F) and summer afternoons around 34°C (93°F), which our best time to visit guide breaks down month by month.
• Book free-cancellation listings early: most catalog tours allow free cancellation up to 24 hours before the start, so you can lock a price and rebook if it drops.

Value per hour is the cleanest test. The 9-hour jeep tour at $64 works out to about $7.11 per desert hour, the half-day private jeep at $72.50 to about $18 per hour, and the balloon at $235 to about $94 per hour including transfers. The gate fee of $7.05 (5 JD) is small against any of them, so the real decision is which vehicle and how many hours, not whether to pay the fee.

If you are happy organizing your own route and camp, the DIY village prices in the table above are genuinely competitive, especially for groups, and our camps guide explains what the different camp types cost. If your time is short, our guide on how long to spend in Wadi Rum helps you size the trip before you spend.