Is GetYourGuide legit? What 1.9 million reviews show

What GetYourGuide is, and what it is not

GetYourGuide is a marketplace. Local companies list their tours, tickets and activities; GetYourGuide takes the booking and payment, and the operator runs the tour. That means quality depends on the operator, not on GetYourGuide: the same site sells excellent small-group tours and tired bus excursions. TourTruth tracks 10,281 rated GetYourGuide listings with 1,931,182 reviews in 324 cities in 4 countries.

The real problem: ratings that all look the same

69.9% of rated GetYourGuide tours are rated 4.5 stars or higher, 45.8% are 4.8 or higher, and 29.2% show a perfect 5.0. When nearly everything is rated 4.8, the stars stop telling tours apart.

Small samples make it worse. 46.8% of GetYourGuide listings have fewer than 10 reviews, so a perfect 5.0 can come from a handful of customers. A tour rated 4.7 from 3,000 reviews is usually a safer pick than a 5.0 from six.

Inflation is strongest in some destinations: in Zion National Park, Traverse City, Scottsdale, more than 84% of tour listings are rated 4.8 or higher. See every city in the rating inflation index.

Is GetYourGuide cheaper than Viator?

Not consistently. We compared 630 tours sold on both sites with the same duration: 26% differ in price by 10% or more. GetYourGuide was at least 5% cheaper for 25.9% of them, Viator for 14.1%. See the biggest gaps in Viator vs GetYourGuide.

How to book on GetYourGuide without regrets

1. Weigh the review count, not just the stars. Prefer tours with hundreds of reviews. Treat a 5.0 with fewer than 20 reviews as "unknown", not "perfect".
2. Read the recent negative reviews. They show what goes wrong on a bad day: late pickups, crowded boats, a rushed itinerary.
3. Check who runs it. The operator's name is on the listing. Many operators also sell on Viator and on their own site, sometimes for less.
4. Read the cancellation terms. They are set per listing. Many tours can be cancelled for free up to 24 hours before, but not all.
5. Compare against the city. On TourTruth every tour gets one 0–10 score that compares its rating with all others on the same site and weights it by review count, plus its rank in the city ("Top 5% in Chicago").

Questions

Is GetYourGuide legit?

Yes. GetYourGuide is a Berlin-based company founded in 2009, and it sells tours run by independent local operators. The booking itself is safe; the part to read carefully is the rating, because 45.8% of GetYourGuide tours are rated 4.8 stars or higher.

Are GetYourGuide reviews reliable?

They are real but inflated as a signal: so many tours sit between 4.8 and 5.0 that the stars rarely separate a great tour from an average one. Look at the number of reviews and compare the rating with the other tours in the same city.

Why do so many GetYourGuide tours have 5 stars?

29.2% of rated GetYourGuide listings show a perfect 5.0, and 46.8% have fewer than 10 reviews. A handful of happy customers is enough for a perfect score, which is why TourTruth weights each rating by its number of reviews.

Is GetYourGuide cheaper than Viator?

Sometimes. Among 630 tours sold on both sites, 26% differ in price by 10% or more, in both directions. Compare before you book.

Figures are recalculated with every weekly data update. How we measure. Also: Is Viator legit?