Thingvellir Entrance Fee & Parking: What Visitors Need to Know

Is There an Entrance Fee for Thingvellir?

No. Entry to Þingvellir National Park is free, and so is every path, viewpoint and fissure in it. There is no ticket office and no gate.

What you pay for is parking. A passenger car with five seats or fewer costs 1,000 ISK for the day, according to Þingvellir National Park.

That single payment covers all three fee-charging car parks for the whole day, so you can move between them without paying again.

The Full Parking Price List

Six categories, based on the number of seats rather than the size of the vehicle.

• Motorcycle: 400 ISK
• Passenger car, 5 seats or fewer: 1,000 ISK
• Passenger car, 6 to 9 seats: 1,200 ISK
• Bus, 10 to 19 seats: 2,200 ISK
• Bus, 20 to 32 seats: 3,800 ISK
• Bus, 33 seats or more: 4,200 ISK

If you are on a guided tour, this is already included in your fare and you never see it. It matters only to self-drivers and hire-car visitors.

A common surprise is the 6 to 9 seat category. A family in a seven-seat hire car pays 1,200 ISK rather than 1,000, and the system reads the registration rather than counting heads.

Which Car Parks Charge

Three of the park's car parks collect a fee, and the naming is not intuitive.

P1 Hakið sits at the visitor centre above the Almannagjá gorge, and it is the one most visitors use. This is where the main viewpoint and the top of the gorge path are.

P2 Efri-Vellir is below Öxarárfoss, and it is the shortest walk to the waterfall. It fills quickly in summer.

P5 Valhöll is near the church, the old farmhouses and the Silfra fissure, on the valley floor. Our page on Þingvellir National Park maps out what sits at each end.

P3 and P4 exist as trailhead parking without a fee attached, though the park signage is the authority on any given day rather than a blog post.

Your day's payment covers P1, P2 and P5 together, which is the detail worth knowing: park at the top, walk down, then drive round to the church without paying twice.

P1 Hakið sits above the gorge, and the paved path down starts a minute from the car.

How the Payment System Works

Þingvellir uses licence plate recognition rather than a ticket on the dashboard, which changes how you should handle it.

Cameras at Hakið read your plate on arrival and check it against the Transport Authority registry. On exit, the plates are compared against the park's payment record.

That means there is no ticket to display and nothing to leave on the windscreen. It also means forgetting to pay produces a charge later rather than a fine on the day.

You can pay at machines inside the visitor centre, in the toilets block beside it at Hakið, at P2 below Öxarárfoss and at P5 Valhöll.

Online payment goes through Checkit, and it works on a phone in the car park if the machines have a queue.

Pay soon after arriving rather than on the way out. The visitor centre closes earlier than the park does, and the walk back up from the valley floor takes longer than people plan for.

Disabled Parking Permits

Holders are exempt from the fee, with one procedural step.

Display the permit as usual, then go to the visitor centre at Hakið to have your plate removed from the camera system.

Skipping that step means the camera records an unpaid stay, and sorting it out afterwards is more trouble than the two-minute visit.

What the Fee Pays For

Worth knowing, because 1,000 ISK for a car park in a national park invites the question.

The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and receives several hundred thousand visitors a year on a small footprint of paths and boardwalks. It has also been a protected national park since 1930, the first in Iceland, and the Environment Agency of Iceland lists it among the country's protected areas.

Those boardwalks, the paved gorge route, the toilets and the trail maintenance are funded from parking rather than from an entry ticket. The choice to charge for parking instead of entry keeps the park itself open to anyone who arrives on foot or by bus.

It also spreads the cost. A coach carrying 40 people pays 4,200 ISK, which is 105 ISK per passenger.

What Is Not Included

Three things people assume are covered and are not.

Silfra snorkelling and diving are run by licensed operators and booked separately. Expect a tour price rather than a permit fee, and the operator handles the park permissions.

Guided walks in the park are also separate, though the park runs free ranger talks in summer that are worth catching.

Camping at the park's site is charged per night and is not part of the day parking fee.

Fishing on Þingvallavatn requires its own permit, sold locally rather than at the visitor centre.

Facilities at Thingvellir

Modest, and concentrated at one end of the park.

The Hakið visitor centre at P1 has an exhibition on the geology and the assembly, a café, a shop and the main toilets. It is the warm room on a cold day.

Toilets on the valley floor near P5 are more limited and can have queues in high summer.

There is no petrol station inside the park. The nearest fuel is at Laugarvatn or on Route 36 towards Reykjavík, so fill up before you arrive.

Mobile coverage is good across the main sites and patchy on the longer trails to the north.

Food options in the park are limited to the visitor centre café, which is another reason most itineraries eat at Friðheimar or Efstidalur later in the day.

P5 Valhöll serves the church, the old farmhouses and the walk to Silfra.

Planning Your Stop

Where you park decides what your visit looks like, so choose before you turn off the road.

For the classic visit, park at P1 Hakið. The viewpoint is two minutes away, the gorge path starts there, and the walk down to Lögberg takes about 15 minutes.

For Öxarárfoss with the shortest walk, park at P2 Efri-Vellir, which puts you on the boardwalk almost immediately.

For the church, the farmhouses and Silfra, park at P5 Valhöll on the valley floor.

Allow 1 to 1.5 hours for a standard visit covering the viewpoint, the gorge and Lögberg. Our guide to walking between the tectonic plates covers the routes in detail.

The valley floor loop adds another hour if you want the church, the farmhouses and the fissures rather than just the gorge.

Add 2.5 to 3 hours if you are snorkelling Silfra, which is a separate booking and a separate part of the day.

When It Is Quietest

Þingvellir is the first stop on most Golden Circle itineraries, and that shapes the day.

Coaches from Reykjavík arrive between nine and eleven in the morning. P1 is at its fullest then, and the gorge path is busiest.

Early afternoon is calmer at Þingvellir as the same groups move on towards Geysir and Gullfoss.

Late afternoon in summer is the best of both, with long light on the rift walls and the car parks emptying.

In winter the whole calculation changes. Daylight is the constraint rather than crowds, and arriving after two in December means walking the gorge in the dark.

Road status on Route 36 into the park is published at umferdin.is, and it is the thing to check before a winter self-drive rather than the forecast.

Running the loop in reverse, taking Gullfoss first and Þingvellir last, is the standard fix for the summer crowds and it works well.

Doing It Without the Car Park at All

The parking question disappears entirely on a guided day, which is worth weighing against the cost of a hire car.

A tour fare covers the park fee, the fuel, the driving and the decision about where to leave the vehicle. Our classic Golden Circle tour drops at P1 and collects on the valley floor, which removes the return climb.

Self-driving still wins on flexibility, particularly if you want to be at the gorge at seven in the morning.

The honest comparison is that a hire car for a day, plus fuel and the park fee, is not far from the cost of a small-group seat once there are fewer than three of you.

Skip the Parking Machine Entirely

Þingvellir is the stop where a self-drive day loses the most time, between finding a space, working out which car park serves which sight and walking back up the gorge to the car. Our small-group Golden Circle tour with Kerið and Friðheimar covers the park fee in the fare, drops at the top of the gorge and collects at the bottom. Tell us your dates and we will find you a departure.