Affiliate Disclosure

Hours, prices and access verified by the Washington Night Tours team — last checked 2026-09-27.

Plainly, and before anything else: Washington Night Tours may earn a commission when you book through a link on this site, at no extra cost to you.

What that means in practice

The tours listed here are sold through GetYourGuide and Viator. When you follow a link from one of these pages and go on to book, the platform pays us a share of its own commission. You pay the same fare either way; the price on the booking page is the operator's price, not a marked-up one.

What we are not

We are not a tour operator. We do not run any of these tours, employ any of these guides or drivers, or hold your booking. Your contract is with the operator, through the platform.

We have no connection with the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, Destination DC, WMATA, or any tour or transport company.

How tours get listed

Operators cannot pay for placement, position or a badge. A badge on a card is a measured claim: Top rated only on a tour rated 4.9 or higher, Best seller only on the tour with the most reviews, Best value only on the lowest fare one person can book. A platform's own badge is not shown.

Today Best seller sits on USA Guided Tours' 7:30pm coach from Navy Memorial Plaza, which has the most reviews. Two fares tie for the lowest, at $48 a person: a van tour and an open-air e-cart. Best value sits on the van, because its fare also includes a next-day pass to the National Air and Space Museum. Top rated sits on Heart of DC Tours' van, rated 5.0 from 353 reviews.

The featured tours at the top of the homepage are three different ways to spend the evening from three different starts: a coach from Navy Memorial Plaza, a van from the Grand Hyatt, and a private tour from your hotel.

Some operators sell the same tour more than once. The Old Town Trolley's Monuments by Moonlight, the shared night bike ride and Signature Tours' coach are each listed on both platforms, and two other operators list near-identical tours from the same kerb. None of these is shown side by side, and each listing is described from its own page.

Prices, ratings and how current they are

Prices, star ratings and review counts belong to the operators and were taken from their own listings on 27 September 2026. They move, and the figure at checkout is the one that counts. Every fare is quoted in US dollars, the currency the listings were captured in. A price is shown as the whole dollar below it, so $59.95 reads as $59.

One coach tour was on a 20% offer when it was captured, at $55.99 against a regular $69.99, ending on 30 September 2026. Its card shows the offer fare and says when the offer ends. Where a listing showed a struck-through "was" price, only the price you would actually pay is shown.

Some fares are per person and some per vehicle or group, and each price says which.

Facts about the memorials, such as their hours, the rangers' hours and the ticket rules for the Washington Monument, come from the National Park Service's own pages. Sunset and dark times come from the U.S. Naval Observatory, temperatures from NOAA's climate normals, and Metro hours from WMATA. Where a detail comes from a listing, such as a meeting point, a start time or what the fare covers, it belongs to that tour.

What we deliberately do not publish

Night admission that does not exist. Several titles promise "entry tickets". They are optional timed passes for the next day, used on your own, and we say so wherever the title appears.
A title's promise the listing does not keep. One listing titled "small-group" is a private tour priced per minivan, so we call it private. One titled "open-top" sells a minibus whose glass top stays on from October to March. One says it picks you up at your hotel but names two pickup points, and we give the points.
A guide who is not one. One private car's driver acts as an informal guide, and the listing leaves licensed guides out; we never call it guided.
Figures no official source settles. Opening hours for places with no official page to cite, this year's Christmas-tree dates and heights, or crime figures.