How do I know if a ticket website is official?

Check the domain against the one the operator or government publishes: for example tickets.museivaticani.va for the Vatican Museums or ticketing.colosseo.it for the Colosseum. Then compare the price with the official face value. A different domain, a single inflated total or a price in a foreign currency means you are on a reseller.

Are tickets from resellers like GetYourGuide or Viator valid?

Tickets from the big platforms are generally real, and they name themselves as resellers. They cost more than the official ticket, and some products have pitfalls, such as a voucher that is not the entry ticket or collection at a separate office. The problem sites are the ones that pretend to be the monument.

What should I do if I bought tickets from a fake site?

Check whether a real ticket in your name has arrived. If it has not, or the site took card details for tickets it never issued, contact your card issuer at once to block the card and ask about a dispute, and keep screenshots and emails. If dates are still available, buy a real ticket on the official site rather than risk being turned away.

Is the official site always cheaper?

For the same plain ticket, yes, at every sight on Sightsale. A reseller can still be the better buy if the official slots are sold out, if you need free cancellation, or if the price includes a guide or transport you actually want.

Official tickets vs resellers: how to tell them apart

At the most visited sights, buying a ticket has become a test of whether you can find the right website. Resellers buy search adverts above the official site, use the sight’s name in their domain, copy its photos and call themselves “official”. Some sell the real ticket at a mark-up. A few sell nothing at all. Here is how to tell the difference.

The official domains

Start from the operator, not from a search result. The official ticket site is linked from the sight’s own website, from the government body that runs it, or from the infobox on its Wikipedia page. These are the official sellers for the sights on Sightsale, as of October 2026:

Sight	Official ticket site
Alhambra	tickets.alhambra-patronato.es
Colosseum	ticketing.colosseo.it
Eiffel Tower	ticket.toureiffel.paris
Louvre	ticket.louvre.fr
Vatican Museums	tickets.museivaticani.va
Sagrada Família	sagradafamilia.org
Acropolis	tickets.hh.gr
Tower of London	hrp.org.uk (checkout on booking.hrp.org.uk)
Neuschwanstein	shop.ticket-center-hohenschwangau.de
Pena Palace	bilheteira.parquesdesintra.pt
Statue of Liberty	statuecitycruises.com
Sydney Opera House	sydneyoperahouse.com
Machu Picchu	tuboleto.cultura.pe
Petra	petrapass.pdtra.gov.jo, or jordanpass.jo for the Jordan Pass
Pyramids of Giza	egymonuments.com
Taj Mahal	asi.paygov.org.in or asi.payumoney.com
Angkor Wat	angkorenterprise.gov.kh
Great Wall (Mutianyu)	en.mutianyugreatwall.com

Read the whole address, right to the end. The real Vatican seller ends in .va; copies use .com or .org with “vatican” in the name. The Colosseum’s is colosseo.it, Italian spelling, one word. Some official sites are not on the obvious domain: the Pyramids’ ticket shop is egymonuments.com, while egymonuments.gov.eg is the ministry’s information site and sells nothing; tajmahal.gov.in is a tourism information site, not a ticket shop.

Tell-tale signs of a look-alike

“Official partner” and similar wording

The company that runs the Eiffel Tower says it gives no “official partner” or “authorised site” labels, and that a site selling a plain lift ticket with no added service cannot be official, because only the operator may do that. At the Acropolis, look-alike sites carry a line in the small print saying they are not affiliated with the government. Read the footer before you read the price.

Prices above face value, or in the wrong currency

Know the official price before you search. A plain adult ticket costs €22.27 at the Alhambra, €18 at the Colosseum, €30 at the Acropolis, €26 at the Sagrada Família and £38 at the Tower of London (October 2026). Visitors on the TripAdvisor Athens forum report paying €70–€109 for Acropolis tickets whose printed face value was €20–€60.

Currency is a giveaway too. Machu Picchu’s official prices are in soles (S/ 152 for a foreign adult); a site charging a dollar price for the ticket alone is a reseller. Pyramid tickets are priced in Egyptian pounds. The Vatican shows €20 plus a €5 booking fee as two figures; copies tend to show one larger total, sometimes with a countdown timer.

No name, no passport

At sights with named tickets, a seller who never asks for your details cannot have booked you a real ticket. At the Great Wall every ticket is tied to a passport number; at the Alhambra, the Colosseum and Machu Picchu your name is printed and checked against your ID at the gate. A ticket in someone else’s name, bought from a stranger or a resale group, will be refused.

Sold-out dates that are miraculously free

A site showing every hour available for months ahead, when the official site shows a date sold out, is either reselling at a mark-up or taking your money for a ticket it hopes to find later. The Eiffel Tower’s operator lists “every hour free for months ahead” as a warning sign.

Search adverts and AI answers

Paid results sit above the official site for most of these sights. The Eiffel Tower’s operator warns that fake sites are also pushed in AI chat answers. Type the official address yourself, or follow the link from the sight’s own website.

When a reseller is worth it

Resellers are not all bad. The big platforms (GetYourGuide, Viator, Tiqets, Klook, Headout) and local tour companies name themselves and sell real products. They earn their mark-up when they give you one of these:

A slot the official site has sold out. On 6 October 2026 the official Vatican site showed every day to mid-October sold out; a reseller ticket then costs roughly twice the price.
Free cancellation. The official Sagrada Família, Eiffel Tower and Vatican tickets cannot be refunded. If your plans may change, a cancellable reseller ticket may be worth the extra, which starts at about €8 at the Sagrada Família.
A guide. A guided tour includes entry and commentary. Check whether the official site sells its own guided visit first: the Sagrada Família’s costs €30, only €4 more than the basic ticket, and the Vatican’s €40.
Transport and logistics. A day tour to Machu Picchu from Cusco bundles trains, buses and entry (from €295); a Great Wall booking on a platform handles the real-name purchase in English if you cannot pay with a Chinese wallet.

Pitfalls even with legitimate resellers

Collection elsewhere. Some Neuschwanstein resellers make you collect paper tickets at their own office, for example in Füssen station, hours before your tour.
Times that move. Agencies receive their Alhambra Nasrid slots from the operator and sometimes shift a tour start time, even two days before.
Downgrades. At the Statue of Liberty, recent reviews report third-party pedestal access downgraded to grounds-only days before the visit.
Cancelled bookings. The Tower of London cancels Ceremony of the Keys bookings made by tour operators or other third parties.
No help from the sight. The Sagrada Família says it cannot vouch for tickets bought elsewhere and will not handle refunds or changes for them.
A voucher, not a ticket. On Great Wall platform bookings, the platform’s QR code is not the entry ticket; the operator sends the real-name ticket separately.

If you bought from a look-alike

Do not panic, and do not wait until the gate.

Check what you have. Is there a ticket with your name, date, time and the operator’s name on it? Does the price printed on it match the official face value? If a real ticket has arrived, it will probably work; you have just paid too much.
If nothing has arrived, contact the seller in writing and keep every email, receipt and screenshot.
Contact your card issuer if the seller does not deliver or the ticket is not real. Ask about a dispute (chargeback) for goods not received or not as described. If you entered card details on a site that turned out to be fake, ask the bank to block the card straight away. The Grand Egyptian Museum warned in May 2026 of fake booking sites built to harvest card details, and said it had shut more than 50; the Taj Mahal’s operator warns never to share a one-time password on a site that is not a government portal.
Report it. The Colosseum’s ticket site has a form for reporting resale at inflated prices. Many museums, including the Louvre and the Acropolis Museum, publish warnings about specific copycat sites on their own pages.
Buy a real ticket if you still can. If the official site still has your date, buying again is cheaper than a wasted day. In April 2026 the Archaeological Survey of India said tickets from one fake Taj Mahal site would not get anyone in.

The surest protection is the simplest: decide which ticket you want on the sight’s page, then type the official address yourself. Our planning guide covers when to book, and skip-the-line tickets, explained covers what the extra money usually buys.