Affiliate Disclosure

Plainly, and before anything else: Mount Pilatus 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 by Viator and GetYourGuide. 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. A ticket you buy at a station counter, or from Pilatus-Bahnen direct, earns us nothing.

What we are not

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

We have no connection with Pilatus-Bahnen AG, the Lake Lucerne boat company, Lucerne Tourism, SBB, Switzerland Tourism or any tour operator. The railway's names, timetables and fares are theirs.

How tours get listed and badged

Operators cannot pay for placement, position or a badge. Our badges are measurable claims: Top rated goes to a rating of 4.9 or higher from at least 10 reviews, Best seller to the tour with the most reviews, and Best value to the cheapest fare, here the gondola and cableway ticket from Kriens. Pilatus-Bahnen's own tickets and the Best of Switzerland days are sold on both platforms, and each listing appears on its own because each is separately bookable and priced.

The featured tours at the top of the homepage are three different ways to go: the guided half-day from Lucerne, the railway's own loop ticket, and the guided day from Zurich.

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 25 September 2026. They move, and the figure at checkout is the one that counts. Every tour fare is quoted in US dollars because that is the currency the listings were captured in; nothing is converted at an exchange rate. Pilatus-Bahnen's own fares and passes are quoted in Swiss francs, as it publishes them. The helicopter flight is priced per aircraft; every other fare here is per person, including the private days, whose per-person fare falls as the group grows.

The heights, the railways, the 2026 season dates and closures, the fares, the passes and the summit activities come from Pilatus-Bahnen; journey times from the Swiss public transport timetable; the climate averages from MeteoSwiss. Where a detail comes from an operator's listing, such as a meeting point, a group size or the time at the top, it belongs to that tour.

What we deliberately do not publish

• A time for the last ride down. The listings and the railway's own timetable give different times, and they change with the season. Check the timetable for your date.
• A price for the cogwheel seat reservation. We have not found it stated on an official page. The railway sets it when you book.
• Swiss Travel Pass coverage. The pass gives 50% off Pilatus, not a free ride, and we say so wherever it comes up. The railway's price list shows the Lucerne Travel Pass as free travel on the mountain; we print that beside its source and nothing more.
• A queue you skip. Some listings use skip-the-line wording. A prepaid ticket saves the ticket window, not the seat reservation or the wait to board.
• The year of a royal visit, or the length of the rock path. Sources disagree, so we give neither; we give the railway's own walking time for the path.
• A helicopter landing. The flight listed passes Pilatus and does not land.
• Paragliding from Pilatus. The tandem flight listed takes off above Engelberg, with Pilatus in view.

The Tripadvisor Travelers' Choice badge and the Switzerland Tourism mark shown on the homepage are part of the confidence row the site's operator supplied; the award belongs to Tripadvisor's own programme, not to a review we wrote.