Yellowstone Trip Cost and What a Week Costs

A Yellowstone trip costs about $3,300 for two adults spending six summer nights in gateway town motels at the federal ceiling, before flights, fuel and room taxes. Camp inside the park and the same week drops to a few hundred dollars plus food, while a lodge room in July can push it past $4,000. The swing comes almost entirely from where you sleep and when. Entry is the small line: $35 per car for seven days, or $70 if your route also crosses Grand Teton.

Those figures come from public sources rather than a guess: the GSA per diem rates for fiscal year 2027 (in effect from October 1, 2026), the National Park Service fee and campground pages for 2026, and the nonresident fee rules that started this year. Below is the cost line by line, three worked budgets, and the month that cuts the lodging bill in half.

How much does a trip to Yellowstone cost per night?

Lodging is the number that decides your budget, and it doubles in summer. The GSA sets a ceiling for what a federal employee can be reimbursed for a hotel night and a day of meals in each area. It tracks what rooms actually cost in that town and season, which makes it the most honest benchmark available for the towns around Yellowstone.

Two things stand out. Cody is the cheapest base of the three by a wide margin, about $113 a night below West Yellowstone in summer, but it sits roughly 50 miles east of the East Entrance, so every park day starts with an hour in the car. And Jackson is the most expensive town in the region, which matters because a lot of people fly into Jackson Hole and spend their first or last nights there without pricing it.

These are ceilings, not quotes. A plain motel room can come in well under them and a lodge with a view well over. Room taxes are on top in both Montana and Wyoming.

Yellowstone entrance fee and the Grand Teton fee

Yellowstone charges $35 for a private vehicle, $30 for a motorcycle and $20 per person on foot or bike, each valid for seven days. The pass covers everyone in the car, and children under 16 are free. Vehicle reservations are not required to enter.

The fee people miss is the second park. Driving between Yellowstone's South Entrance and Jackson takes you straight through Grand Teton, which charges its own $35. If your route also includes Glacier or a Utah park, the $80 America the Beautiful annual pass is cheaper than paying three gates.

Visitors who live outside the US pay more from 2026. Every nonresident aged 16 and over owes an extra $100 per person at Yellowstone and at Grand Teton, on top of the vehicle fee, unless the car carries a $250 nonresident annual pass, which covers the holder and up to three other adults. A family hosting two relatives from Europe would pay $400 in surcharges across the two parks without that pass, so buy it before you arrive.

How much does it cost to camp in Yellowstone?

Camping is the cheapest way to sleep inside the park, and the 2026 nightly fees are published. Every campground needs a reservation in summer, and sites open on a rolling basis six months before the date, so popular weeks go fast.

Six nights split between Madison and Canyon comes to about $250 before taxes. That is less than one summer night at the gateway ceiling, which is why campers can do Yellowstone for a fraction of what a motel trip costs. The trade is gear, early starts and a campsite you have to win six months out.

Is it cheaper to stay inside or outside Yellowstone?

Camping inside is the cheapest option. For rooms, the gateway towns usually win on price and the in-park lodges win on time. Yellowstone has nine lodging options inside the park, all run by the concessioner Yellowstone National Park Lodges. The Park Service grades them only from $ to $$$ rather than listing rates, and rates move with the season, so price the exact dates on the concessioner's site before you count on one.

What a park room buys you is the drive. Old Faithful to West Yellowstone is about 30 miles each way, and the park is a 142 mile figure eight that takes three to four days to see properly. Sleeping at Canyon or Old Faithful can save two hours of driving a day. A sensible split for most first trips is two nights near the west side for the geyser basins, then two nights in or near Canyon or Lamar for the canyon and the wildlife, rather than six nights in one town.

Yellowstone trip cost for 2, for a family and on a budget

Here are three worked budgets built only from the published numbers above. Fuel, the flight or drive to the region and room taxes are left out of each because they depend on where you start.

A couple in July, six nights in motels

Four nights in West Yellowstone at the $326 ceiling and two in Jackson at $441 come to $2,186. Meals and incidentals for two at $80 and $92 a day add $1,008. Both park gates add $70. Total, about $3,264. A couple who books plain motel rooms and eats a picnic lunch most days will land well under it.

A family of four camping in July

Six nights at Madison and Canyon cost about $250 before taxes. Entry is $35 for the car, since the kids are free and the family skips Grand Teton. The rest is groceries, a few restaurant meals and fuel, so the camping family's whole park week can come in under a single motel couple's lodging bill.

A couple in late May, the shoulder season

Move the motel trip to May and the West Yellowstone ceiling falls from $326 to $169. Six nights there come to $1,014 instead of $1,956, a saving of $942 before anything else changes. The catch is weather and access: some roads and services open in stages through May, so check what is open on your dates. October is the mirror image, cheaper rooms with shorter days and the first road closures.

What is the cheapest time to visit Yellowstone?

Late May and the first half of October are the cheapest months to visit Yellowstone by car. The lodging ceilings in West Yellowstone, Jackson and Cody all drop back to their low season rate from October to May, roughly half the summer figure, while most park roads are still open. From early November to mid April most park roads close to regular cars, apart from the road between the North and Northeast entrances, so a winter trip is a different, guided kind of trip with its own costs.

Flights follow the same curve. Bozeman, Jackson Hole, Cody and Idaho Falls all serve the park, and West Yellowstone has a seasonal airport. Price two or three of them against your route rather than defaulting to the closest, because the drive from a cheaper airport is often shorter than it looks.

How much money do you need for Yellowstone for a week?

For two adults, plan on about $1,500 to $3,500 for a week in Yellowstone excluding flights. Campers with a car sit near the bottom of that range, motel travelers in summer near the top, and a Jackson night or an in-park lodge can push you past it. Add room taxes, fuel for a lot of driving and any guided tour on top.

The fastest way to get your own number rather than a range is to plan the actual days. Our national park road trip planner takes the parks, your dates, who is going, a total budget and the city you start from, and returns the route in driving order with the nights split between towns, every drive on its day and an estimate on each stay, activity and meal, totaled per day. If Yellowstone is one stop on a longer loop with Grand Teton and Glacier, it orders the parks so you never double back. For a trip you have already shaped, the trip cost calculator gives the total from the same inputs, and families can start from the family vacation planner, which paces the days for kids.

One habit saves money on any long park trip: put the trip's spending on a single card and set a real-time spending alert on it at the daily figure your plan gives you, so you see the day fuel, groceries and tours run past the budget while there is still time to adjust the next one.

How the costs stack up

Put in order of size, a summer Yellowstone trip for two breaks down like this: lodging first (two thirds or more of the budget in a motel), then meals, then fuel and the flight, and entry last. That order is why the two decisions that matter are where you sleep and which month you go. Everything else moves the total by tens of dollars, those two move it by thousands. The same holds further north: our Alaska trip cost breakdown shows a summer week from Anchorage to Denali swinging by about $500 on the month alone, and the Utah national parks road trip runs the other way, with three of its four gateway towns at the federal standard rate all year.

TripAgent.ai plans and costs the itinerary; you reserve the campsites, rooms and any tours yourself, on recreation.gov or with the concessioner, with the plan as your list. You can try it once with the one-time demo, and the paid plans start at $24 a month billed annually.