Teotihuacán Tickets

At the gate. Every one of the five gates has a booth, they open with the site at 08:00, and they take cards as well as cash. This is the normal way in and the cheapest: MX$210, or MX$105 with a Mexican ID or residency card.

Online at ventadeboletosenlinea.inah.gob.mx. INAH's own shop sells the same ticket at the same price for a chosen day. It is useful if you want the purchase done before you travel or you would rather not queue at all; it is not cheaper and it does not give you a different entrance.

Everything else is a reseller

Sites with names built out of the words teotihuacan and tickets, plus the tour platforms, all resell entry with a margin on top. That is a legitimate business — you are paying for a card transaction in your own currency, an app-based ticket and, on the tour products, a coach and a guide. It is worth knowing what the margin is: about MX$283 on a $29 entry-only ticket against the MX$210 gate price.

What the ticket covers

The entire archaeological zone, both site museums — the Museo de Sitio Manuel Gamio with the scale model, and the mural museum — and re-entry within the same day at the discretion of the staff. It does not cover parking, which is charged separately at the gates that have it, and it does not cover the obsidian workshop demonstrations you will be steered towards, which are shops.

Teotihuacán has no timed entry and no capacity cap in normal operation. The ticket booths at Puerta 1 and Puerta 2 serve arrivals as they come, and outside the equinox and the busiest Sunday mornings the wait is measured in minutes. There is no Uffizi-style two-hour queue here to be rescued from.

What does cost you time is the road and the car park: coaches from the city arrive in a band between about 10:00 and 13:00, and in high season the parking at the main gates fills. If you are driving, being at a gate by 09:00 solves a problem that no ticket can solve. If you are coming by coach from Terminal Central del Norte, the first departures from about 06:00 do the same job.

A platform entry-only ticket lists at US$29 — about MX$493 at US$1 = MX$17.0 — against MX$210 at the gate. That is a margin of roughly MX$283, or 135%, for the identical walk through the identical turnstile. There is rarely a queue to skip at Teotihuacán, so the extra is not buying time; it is buying a card payment in your own currency, a QR code on your phone before you leave home, and free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead, which the gate does not offer because the gate does not need to.

The guided departures are a different calculation and a fairer one. An early-access tour at US$68 covers the MX$210 entry, the coach both ways, a licensed guide and a start before the coach parties — priced against MX$330 for doing it yourself, that is about US$49 for transport and a guide. Whether that is good value depends on how much you want the hour before ten, which is the part you cannot buy separately.

What is never worth it: a third-party 'skip the line' upgrade sold as though the zone had timed entry. It does not. The only thing that limits entry here is the 16:30 cutoff and the 17:00 close.

Independent is roughly a quarter of the price of a guided departure and costs you the early gate and the explanation. Whether that trade is worth it depends on whether you would rather read the site or have it read to you.

Two practical notes for the independent version. Ask for las pirámides when you buy the coach ticket, or you will be set down in the town of San Juan Teotihuacán, 3 km short. And keep enough time for the return: the last buses back leave in the early evening, but the site closes at 17:00 and standing at a roadside gate at dusk is nobody's plan.

Puerta 1, at the southern end, is where the coaches from Terminal Central del Norte stop and where the Ciudadela and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent are. Starting here means walking the Avenue of the Dead northwards, gently uphill, in the order the city was laid out.

Puerta 2 is nearest the Pyramid of the Sun and is the shortcut if you have three hours rather than five.

Puerta 3 serves the Plaza of the Moon at the northern end — the best exit if you have walked the whole avenue and do not fancy walking it back. Puertas 4 and 5 are quieter side entrances used mostly by drivers.

One route that works well: in at Puerta 1, out at Puerta 3, and a taxi or the local bus back round to where you started. The site map shows all five with the monuments between them.

Sunday is free entry for Mexican nationals and foreign residents. For a visiting foreigner it is the worst day of the week: you pay the full MX$210 and share the avenue with the largest domestic crowd of the week.

The spring equinox, around 21 March, brings tens of thousands of people in white. INAH runs a special operation with extended arrangements and closes car parks as they fill; the pyramids remain closed to climbing regardless of what the day is supposed to mean.

Monday is the quiet surprise. The site opens every day of the year, so while the Anthropology Museum, Chapultepec Castle and the Casa Azul are shut, this is open and comparatively empty. Building a four-day trip around that single fact is the most useful scheduling decision in this guide.

The single decision worth making about Teotihuacán is not which ticket but which hour: on the site by 09:00, out by 13:00, and the day still has an afternoon in it. Add the Basílica de Guadalupe on the way back if you are driving or on a tour that includes it, and keep the museums of the city for the days they are open. The full site walk-through is on the Teotihuacán page.

The rest of the city's prices, read the same week, are on the Mexico City city guide.