English-Speaking Private Tour Guide in Paris

Licensed Private Tour Guides in Paris for the Louvre, Versailles and Notre-Dame

English-speaking guide-conférenciers for museums, palaces and city walks, arranged on request

Request an English-speaking private guide in Paris

Send your dates, the size of your party and the places you want to see; the request goes to licensed guides working in Paris, and the guide who takes it on writes back to you directly in English.

Are you a licensed guide-conférencier in Paris? Register on the platform here.

The Louvre pyramid, the museum’s main entrance

Who may guide you inside Paris museums and monuments

French law regulates a single guiding role, the guide-conférencier. Article L221-1 of the Code du tourisme reserves commented visits in the musées de France and in listed historic monuments to people who hold the professional card, whenever the visit is sold by a travel operator. The professional card is issued by the regional prefect; in Paris that authority is the Préfecture de la région Île-de-France. Guiding in the streets, in markets or around restaurants is not regulated, which is why anyone may offer a walking tour of the city.

The Paris Tourist Office spells out the practical result in its English advice to visitors: inside museums, monuments and châteaux, only licensed guides with a professional card are authorised, whereas outdoor-only tours such as shopping or food walks do not require a licence. Online marketplaces list licensed and unlicensed hosts side by side, so the professional card is the first thing worth checking when your plans include the Louvre, Versailles or Notre-Dame.

OfficialGuides is a platform for licensed guides. For Paris it forwards your request to guide-conférenciers who hold the professional card issued by the Préfecture de la région Île-de-France; the guide who accepts writes to you directly, and the programme and timing are settled between you and that guide.

Louvre

The Louvre grants the right to speak to a group in its galleries, the droit de parole, to holders of the French guide-conférencier card and to a short list of other categories such as museum lecturers and teachers with their pupils. A private guided visit is treated as a group visit. A small group is up to six participants plus the group leader and must be booked through the museum’s group ticketing. Individual tickets bought on the museum’s own ticketing site are not valid for group visits, which is the point most first-time visitors miss.

Notre-Dame

From 1 July the cathedral changed its rules. Every professional guided visit inside now needs three things: a reservation made in advance with the cathedral, headsets rented from its approved provider, and a guide-conférencier who carries the professional card visibly throughout. The rule applies from the first visitor, whatever the size of the party. A guided group counts from two to twenty-five people including the guide and may stay inside for one hour at most. Entry to the cathedral itself remains free.

Versailles

The palace admits guided groups only when they are led by a guide holding a professional card. Group tickets carry a single price for all nationalities, unlike individual tickets, and both are listed in the price section below.

Private guide rates in Paris and museum costs

Rates are per hour for your whole party rather than per person, with a minimum of three hours. The lower end of each range applies to couples and small families, the upper end to larger private groups. Entrance tickets, group booking fees, headsets and transport are paid separately.

Dollar and pound figures are rounded conversions at the European Central Bank reference rate of 22 September; you pay in euros.

Museum and monument fees for a guided visit are set by each site and differ from what an individual visitor pays:

Visitors under 18 enter the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles free of charge, and so do EEA nationals and residents under 26.

What a private guide can arrange in Paris

The blocks below are formats rather than fixed routes. Each shows what the guide takes care of on that kind of day; the exact route, the pace and the themes are agreed with the guide once your request has been accepted.

English-speaking guides and other languages

The Paris Tourist Office keeps separate lists of licensed guides working in English, in French, in Spanish, and in German and Dutch. The national federation of licensed guides, the FNGIC, says it has more than 1,500 members across France working in over 50 languages. The rates on this page apply to English-speaking guides. For languages spoken by fewer licensed guides, prices tend to be higher: one Paris agency states that it adds a supplement for languages such as German or Portuguese simply because of supply and demand.

Many licensed guides in Paris work in more than one language; guides in the federation’s directory, for example, list visits in French, English and Spanish. If your party mixes languages, say so in your request so that it reaches a guide who covers all of them.

Walking guide or driver-guide

Inside Paris most private visits combine walking with the metro, a bus or a taxi, and fares are not part of the guide’s rate. For Versailles and for day trips some licensed guides and agencies work as driver-guides with their own car or minivan. That changes the price structure: the vehicle, fuel, tolls and parking are added to the guiding time, and the price usually depends on the number of passengers. State in your request whether you need a vehicle and how many people will travel.

Entry requirements for France

Entry rules depend on your nationality and are set at European level. Check them on the French government’s official visa site, France-Visas, and on the European Union’s Travel to Europe site, which covers the Entry/Exit System and ETIAS. Versailles applies a separate check of its own: nationals and residents of the European Economic Area pay a lower price and may be asked at the entrance for an identity document, passport, visa or residence permit.

Questions about private guides in Paris

Prices and site rules on this page come from official sources and can change; confirm them with the museum or monument before your visit. See our terms of service.