Taj Mahal Tickets: Prices and How to Buy

So a foreign visitor booking online and going inside the tomb pays ₹1,250 in total — about $15. Children under 15 enter free, which surprises most families, though they still need a ticket issued.

The ₹200 supplement is the only genuinely optional part, and it is the one to pay. It admits you to the chamber holding the cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, where the marble inlay is at its finest. Skipping it means seeing the building but not the reason it was built.

The saving is small. The time saved is not. On a busy winter morning the ticket window is where the crowd concentrates, and it is entirely avoidable — the ticket is tied to your passport number and can be shown on a phone.

Tickets are valid for three hours from entry. If you plan to combine the Taj Mahal with Agra Fort, buy both online in the same sitting; a combined-monument saving applies when several Agra sites are bought together on the same day.

Night viewing runs on five nights each month — the full moon plus the two nights either side — and is not part of a normal ticket. Sessions run between 8:00pm and midnight in eight batches of a maximum 50 people, half an hour per batch.

It must be booked in advance, in person, at the Archaeological Survey of India office in Agra, generally the day before. It sells out, it is never available at the gate, and mobile phones are banned entirely for night viewing. Note also that it is viewing only — you see the monument from a distance, and you do not enter the mausoleum.