Skip the Line at the Eiffel Tower: A Complete Guide
How to avoid the Eiffel Tower queues — ticket options, summit vs second floor, the best time to visit, and what a guided tour adds.
The Eiffel Tower sells around 25,000 visitor tickets a day and still routinely runs out — waiting without a plan can mean an hour or more in line before you even reach security. Here’s how to avoid that.
Second floor or summit?
The second floor is the classic view — close enough to feel the height, with the best photos of the tower’s ironwork itself. The summit (top level) climbs higher and reaches above most of Paris’s rooftops, but the elevator queue there runs separately and adds time. If photos of the tower matter more than the view from it, the second floor is usually the better trade.
Buying ahead vs a guided tour
Official tickets go on sale in batches and sell out fast, especially for popular summit slots. A skip-the-line tour books a fixed group entry time in advance, which removes the guesswork — useful if your dates are locked in and you don’t want to be refreshing a ticket page weeks ahead.
Sunset is the single best time to go up — you get daylight Paris on the way up and the city lit up on the way down, in one visit.
When to go
- Early morning (first entry) has the shortest security queues.
- Sunset gives you both daytime and night views in one visit — the most popular slot, so book ahead.
- Midday in summer is the busiest and hottest time to queue — avoid if you can.
- Stairs to the second floor are usually faster than the elevator queue, and cheaper.
However you go up, pair it with a walk through the Trocadéro gardens across the river — it’s the classic photo spot looking back at the tower, and free.
Book it: related France tours
Turn the plan into a trip — browse the experiences from this guide.
Keep reading
- Louvre Guided Tour vs Skip-the-Line Ticket: Which Should You Book?A straight comparison of Louvre guided tours and skip-the-line tickets — what each actually buys, who each suits, and how to decide before you spend the money.
- How Many Days Do You Need in Paris?A practical guide to trip length in Paris — what you can realistically see in 2, 4 or 7 days, and how to match your itinerary to your time.
- How to Visit the Louvre: Tickets, Entrances and a Route That Actually WorksHow to visit the Louvre without losing a morning to queues — how timed entry works, which entrance to use, and how to choose a route through the collection.
- 90 Minutes in the Louvre: A Worked Plan for a Short Paris TripA worked 90-minute Louvre plan — the entrance, the route, the stops that make the cut and the ones that don’t — for travellers with a single free morning.
- The Louvre Shouldn’t Always Be Your First Museum in ParisThe Louvre is the default Paris museum booking — but on a short trip it is often the wrong one to lead with. When to book it, when to book something smaller.
- 9 Things Worth Seeing in the Louvre That Aren’t the Mona LisaNine Louvre highlights beyond the Mona Lisa — which wing each sits in, why it earns the detour, and how to string them into one visit that stays manageable.