Pilot vs. GetYourGuide: feature comparison, ratings, and FAQ

What is GetYourGuide?

GetYourGuide is a tours and activities booking site. People use it to book guided tours, activities, and attraction tickets. It books tours and activities rather than hotels, and it does not plan the wider trip.

What is Pilot?

Pilot is a trip booking and planning app. You plan the whole trip in one place, a flexible itinerary, a map of your stops, notes, and your group, and you book your hotel in the app at private rates straight from hotels, the kind usually reserved for travel agents. Where GetYourGuide books the tours, Pilot plans the whole trip and books your hotel directly.

Is GetYourGuide legit?

Yes, GetYourGuide is a legitimate, Berlin-based company (GetYourGuide AG) founded in 2009 that sells tours, activities, and attraction tickets worldwide, with mobile tickets and QR-code entry. Its app rates around 4.9 in the app stores for the booking and ticket-retrieval experience. The more mixed signal is on Trustpilot, where it sits around 3.9 across roughly 52,000 reviews, with recurring complaints about refund disputes when an operator does not show up and full-refund agreements being walked back with commission deductions. Pilot is a different kind of product: it helps you plan your whole trip and lets you book your hotel at private rates straight from hotels, with real people on support, and it is rated 4.7 by 50,000+ travelers.

Is GetYourGuide free?

GetYourGuide is free to browse and the app is free to download; you pay for each tour, activity, or ticket you book, and the price shown can be marked up over what the operator charges directly, with sponsored placement pushing some listings higher. Pilot is completely free to use, with no paywall on planning, and it is free to book your hotel through, because Pilot earns from hotels when you book rather than charging you to plan. So with Pilot you can plan the entire trip, collaborate with your group, and book your stay without a subscription or a fee to unlock the basics.

How does GetYourGuide make money?

GetYourGuide takes a commission from the tour and activity operators it lists, and it sells sponsored placement so some experiences rank higher, which means the top result is not always the best deal for you. It also marks prices up over the operator's direct rate at checkout. Pilot makes money when you book a hotel through the app, at a private rate straight from the hotel, and it does not sell sponsored placement, so results are ranked for you, not for whoever pays the most, and the planner stays free.

Can you book hotels on GetYourGuide?

GetYourGuide is built mainly to sell tours, activities, and attraction tickets, not hotels, so it is not where most people book a place to stay. Pilot lets you book hotels directly in the app, across more than 3,000,000 hotels, at private 'book early' rates straight from hotels, the kind usually reserved for travel agents, with no sponsored results. With Pilot the hotel booking lives alongside the rest of your trip, so your stay, your plans, and your group are all in one place. To be upfront: Pilot lets you book hotels, not activities, so for a guided tour or a museum ticket, GetYourGuide is still the place to book that part.

Is GetYourGuide worth it for booking tours?

For booking a guided tour, skip-the-line ticket, or day activity, GetYourGuide has a broad global catalog with mobile tickets and free-cancellation filters, so it can do that job. The trade-offs are prices marked up over the operator's direct rate, sponsored placement in results, and recurring refund disputes when an operator does not show. Pilot does not book activities, so it is not a replacement for that specific task. Where Pilot wins is everything around the activity: planning the whole trip on a flexible itinerary, mapping it, collaborating with your group, and booking your hotel at private rates with real support, all free.

Can Pilot replace GetYourGuide?

Partly, and it is worth being honest about where. Pilot replaces the planning and the hotel booking: a flexible day-by-day itinerary, a map of your whole trip, real-time collaboration with your group, and your hotel booked directly at private rates straight from hotels, with real people on support. What Pilot does not do is book tours and activities in the app, which is GetYourGuide's main job, so you would still book a guided tour or attraction ticket on GetYourGuide and add it to your Pilot trip. In short: use Pilot to plan the trip and book the stay, and GetYourGuide to book a specific activity.

GetYourGuide vs Pilot: which should I use?

Use Pilot to plan the whole trip and book your hotel: a flexible itinerary, a map, real-time group collaboration, and a stay booked directly at private rates straight from hotels, with real support, all free. Use GetYourGuide when you specifically need to book a guided tour, a skip-the-line ticket, or a day activity, which Pilot does not book. Many travelers use both: plan the trip and book the hotel in Pilot, then book a tour on GetYourGuide and add it to the Pilot itinerary so everything sits in one place.