The best way to explore San Francisco is by hopping on a double-decker, open-topped bus with a human guide.
These SFO bus tours give you the flexibility of seeing the best San Francisco attractions and landmarks for as long (or as short) as you like.
Sometimes, these bus tours are also combined with a tour to Alcatraz.
Tourists to Fog City love these hop-on-hop-off tours so much that there are more than 100 such tours offered by numerous tour operators.
With so many Hop on Hop off San Francisco tours, it gets very confusing for a tourist in SFO.
This article covers everything you must know before booking a hop-on, hop-off bus tour.
Top Hop on hop off San Francisco Bus Tours
# Hop on Hop off San Francisco tour by Big Bus
# CitySightseeing bus tour
# Alcatraz entry + 1 day hop-on-hop-off bus tour
Table of contents
San Francisco city tours – your options
There are many ways of exploring San Francisco. For instance –
1. You can hire a GoCar, the storytelling GPS enabled car which acts as a human guide.
Or
2. You can hire a Helicopter to enjoy a bird’s eye view of the city.
Or
3. If you don’t fancy helicopters, you can hire a Seaplane for a 30-minute aerial tour of SFO.
Or
4. If you prefer to be on land, you can book a San Francisco City tour on a Segway. Don’t worry; they will train you to use the self-balancing vehicle before the tour begins.
Or
5. If you love a much slower pace, you can rent a bike and go on your San Francisco city tour.
Or
6. The best, however, is the Hop On Hop off San Francisco bus tour which is detailed below.
Types of Hop on Hop off tours
Now that we have convinced you that the best way to explore the city of Golden Gate Bridge is the Hop on Hop off San Francisco tours, let’s tell you the different types of bus tour packages available.
Hop on Hop off San Francisco bus tours tend to be either one of the following or a combination of any of the following –
San Francisco City tours
A hop-on hop-off city tour takes you through the numerous landmarks and attractions in the city of San Francisco.
Each of these city tours has between 20 and 24 stops where you can get in or get out of the bus to explore.
These city bus tours are available for different durations – 24 hours, 48 hours, and 72 hours.
Depending on the number of days you are in the city, you can make your choice.
Sausalito Tour
Sausalito is a quaint seaside town on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
It is quite popular with the tourists because of its scenic, picture-postcard beauty.
The Sausalito bus tour is offered separately as well as in combination with the San Francisco city tour.
San Francisco night tours
San Francisco Hop on Hop off night tour has many of the attractions of the day tour.
Just that because you experience this at night – when the whole city is illuminated, it has a separate charm.
The night tours are also sometimes sold in combination with the day tours.
Our recommendation: If you have enough time and money, we suggest you try exploring San Francisco during the day and night and also visit Sausalito.
Save up to 45% on ticket prices of top 25 attractions in San Francisco. To save time and money during your SFO holiday, buy San Francisco’s Go Card
Follow the link to know more about Hop on Hop off bus tours.
Best Hop on hop off San Francisco bus tours
San Francisco has three companies that offer hop-on and hop-off city tour services. They are – Big Bus, City Sightseeing, and Grayline.
Competition between these three bus tour companies is intense. This keeps the prices low and the quality of service high.
These three SFO bus tour companies offer single-route tickets and multi-day tickets to tour San Francisco.
Most tourists tend to gravitate towards multi-day tickets because of the free additions, such as bike tours, walking tours, and discounts.
All three also offer night tours of San Francisco. These night tours can be purchased alone or in combination with the day tours.
If you haven’t already booked your Alcatraz Island tour, you can opt for one of the Alcatraz combo tours as well.
Big Bus San Francisco
Big Bus Tours is an open-top bus tour company operating in more than 20 top cities of the World.
In the USA, they operate in cities such as Las Vegas, Chicago, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC and San Francisco.
In the Golden City (another name for San Francisco!) Big Bus offers 1, 2, or 3-day passes on its hop-on-hop-off bus tours.
These tours have 20 stops – only the best attractions in the city.
All tickets include free bike rental and walking tours of the North Beach neighborhood and SFO Chinatown.
If you are short on time, the Big Bus tours are a great way to see San Francisco. Book Now!
Big Bus also has a free mobile application, which you can use to find bus stops and bus schedules.
Big Bus San Francisco tours review
Big Bus has got good reviews on Tripadvisor. Their service is rated 4 out of 5.
In fact, they have also received the ‘Certificate of Excellence’.
Based on what we could gather from Big Bus reviews on Tripadvisor, we can safely say that they are a reliable bus tour company.
Some of their Live Guides came for praise for their dry sense of humor and sarcastic narration of historical events.
Some tourists who took the Big Bus tours did leave negative reviews.
However, these were issues that the Big Bus Management could easily fix.
Hop on Hop off San Francisco tour by Big Bus
This tour helps you see the sights of San Francisco at your own pace from the top deck of a double-decker, hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus.
You have the option of dropping off and getting on at 20 key locations across San Francisco. On this tour, you can also cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
This HOHO San Francisco bus tour comes in two flavors – a 1-Day Ticket with Chinatown Guided Walking Tour or a 2-Day Ticket, Chinatown Tour, & USS Pampanito WWII Submarine.
1-Day Ticket with Chinatown Guided Walking Tour:
Select this option to benefit from a one-hour guided walking tour of Chinatown along with a one-day hop-on hop-off ticket.
Additionally, rent a bike for an hour at any Blazing Saddles location and receive another hour free.
2-Day Ticket, Chinatown Tour, & USS Pampanito WWII Submarine:
Select this option to receive admission to the WWII submarine USS Pampanito, a 1-hour guided walking tour of Chinatown, and a 2-day hop-on hop-off ticket.
Ticket Prices
1-Day Ticket with Chinatown Guided Walking Tour
Adult (13+ years): US$57
Children (3-15 years): US$66
2-Day Ticket, Chinatown Tour, & USS Pampanito WWII Submarine:
Adult (13+ years): US$60
Children (3-15 years): US$68
Infants up to two years are not charged anything.
City Sightseeing San Francisco
If you are a regular traveler you must have seen a City Sightseeing bus sometime or the other.
After all City Sightseeing is the World’s largest open-top, double-decker sightseeing tour bus operator.
They are available in more than 150 cities all over the World.
In San Francisco, City Sightseeing offers 1-day, 2-day, or 3-day Hop on Hop off bus tours. Book Now
They provide a total of four tours, two of which are only available as combo tours when you book for multiple days.
Besides the regular, City Sightseeing also offers the Mega Pass. Wherein you choose 3, 4, or 5 attractions (out of the top 25 in San Francisco), you want to visit and use their tour buses to visit them over the next seven days.
CitySightseeing also offers a mobile app that can be used as a live bus tracker. This feature helps hopping in the bus and hopping out of it easily.
This bus tour company is also often referred to as Skyline Sightseeing.
City Sightseeing San Francisco Reviews
City-Sightseeing also has an overall 3.5 out of 5 stars rating on TripAdvisor.
One of the negative reviews for City Sightseeing, which one hears occasionally, is the lack of punctuality of their buses.
However, the ability to track the bus from the mobile app has helped improve the experience for the tourists.
The good thing is, with intense competition, these tour companies must take Tripadvisor reviews seriously and work on them.
City Sightseeing bus tour customers who used them during peak seasons came back with raving reviews.
CitySightseeing bus tour
This HOHO San Francisco, bus tour ticket, gives you 48 hours to explore the city across all three different loops.
Some of the highlights of this bus tour are the special 2-hour night tour of San Francisco, the drive across Golden Gate Bridge, and the visit to Sausalito.
The live guide keeps the narration going, and if you want the commentary in a different language, you can always resort to the pre-recorded audio guide.
This tour operates all through the day and night.
San Francisco Gray Line tours
Gray Line is a Colorado-based company founded in 1910. They offer bus tours all over the World, and a good chunk of their buses ply on American soil.
In San Francisco, they offer Hop-on, Hop-off bus tours in partnership with City Tour. Book Now
Gray Line bus tours in San Francisco happen on two kinds of vehicles – the usual double-decker open-top bus and trolleys (custom-built buses with heating and air conditioning).
Gray Line offers three routes, which are offered by both Big Bus and City Sightseeing.
The first loop takes the tourists around the city of San Francisco, the second takes them over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, and the third route is the Night tour of the city.
City Tour (Gray Line) reviews
The Gray Line Hop On Hop off buses in San Francisco has a smaller customer base. And hence, there are not many reviews.
Tripadvisor has less than 2000 reviewers on Gray Line tours, and they have rated it 3.5 out of 5.
The timing of the buses is mentioned in some of the reviews. In some others, the quality of the human guides is being questioned.
Overall, tourists who opted for Gray Line went home satisfied.
If you are in San Francisco and are looking for HOHO bus tours, check them out here.
Hop on hop off San Francisco with Alcatraz
Almost all tourists visiting San Francisco try to visit Alcatraz.
However, since Alcatraz is quite popular, getting tickets to see the infamous prison is very difficult.
Alcatraz tickets on the Alcatraz Cruises website are known to vanish quickly, sometimes even two months before the visit date.
In such a scenario, the best bet is to book a combo ticket – a ticket that includes a visit to Alcatraz as well.
The most popular combination for such tourists is Alcatraz along with the Hop on Hop off San Francisco bus tour.
Here are our two favorites-
>> Alcatraz entry + 1 day hop-on-hop-off bus tour
>> 72-Hour Hop-on Hop-off Bus tour + Alcatraz
Bus tours outside of San Francisco
The region around San Francisco is too good to be ignored.
That’s why, besides the hop-on-hop-off tours within the city, the tourists also opt for bus tours outside of San Francisco.
Three of the most popular tourist spots outside of San Francisco are:
1. Muir Woods
2. Napa Valley
3. Yosemite National Park
>> Muir Woods, Giant Redwoods and Sausalito tour from San Francisco
>> Redwoods and Wine Country: Napa and Sonoma Full-Day Tour
>> Napa & Sonoma Valley Wine Tour from San Francisco
>> San Francisco to Yosemite Park small group tour
>> 1-Day trip from SFO to Yosemite National Park, Giant Sequoias
Sources
# Tripadvisor.com
# Hop-on-hop-off-bus.com
# Sftourismtips.com
The travel specialists at TheBetterVacation.com use only high-quality sources while researching & writing their articles. We make every attempt to keep our content current, reliable and trustworthy.
Popular attractions in San Francisco
# Alcatraz Island
# San Francisco Zoo
# San Francisco MoMA
# California Academy of Sciences
# Monterey Bay Aquarium
# San Francisco aquarium
# Exploratorium
# De Young Museum
# San Francisco Bus Tours
# Madame Tussauds
# San Francisco Bay Cruise
# San Francisco Ghost Tour
# The Tech Interactive
# San Francisco Dinner Cruise
# SFO Go Car Tour
# Legion of Honor Museum
# Walt Disney Family Museum
# Museum of 3D Illusions
# 7D Ride Experience