Which version of the Stockholm Pass fits you?

Counting days or counting visits

The All-Inclusive Pass sells you time. You choose 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 days, and within that span each of the 68 attractions included is open to you once. The days run from the first scan through consecutive calendar days, including days on which you do nothing at all.

The Essentials Pass sells you visits. Three of them, and you have 30 days from the first scan to use them. No block of days, no time pressure, but a hard ceiling.

The selection rule of the Essentials Pass

This is where the catch sits, the one Go City mentions only in passing in its own marketing. “Three attractions” sounds like a free choice, but it is not:

• Exactly one of your three choices comes from the premium list. That list has three entries: The Vasa Museum, The Royal Palace and Skansen.
• Exactly two come from the standard list: Winter Boat Tour with Guide, Stockholm Highlights Boat Tour, Stockholm Hop-On Hop-Off Bus, Royal Djurgården Boat Tour, Drink at ICEBAR Stockholm, Fotografiska, The Viking Museum, SPRITMUSEUM, SkyView Stockholm, Nordiska Museet, Nobel Prize Museum and the Traditional Swedish Fika at Systrarna Andersson.

So you can neither take two of the three big names nor pick three places from the standard list.

Ten or twelve? A number that does not add up

In its own text Go City describes the pass as “one of the three main attractions plus two from the Top 10”. The selection lists behind it, however, hold twelve standard entries, not ten. Those are the ones above. The list itself is binding, not the heading above it. Because the provider's own text contradicts it, the number remains only moderately documented. For the buying decision it changes nothing essential: what counts is which places are on the list, not how many. If you want to rely on a particular number, check the list in the Go City App shortly before you buy.

And whatever appears on neither list simply does not exist with the Essentials Pass: Gröna Lund Amusement Park, the full-day trips to Birka, Artipelag and Gustavsberg and Nationalmuseum are included in the All-Inclusive Pass only.

Which version for whom

If you have three to five consecutive days in Stockholm and want to get out on the water, take the All-Inclusive Pass. The full-day trips into the archipelago are the expensive items in this city, and the smaller version leaves them out completely.

If you are there for longer and only do something now and then (in the city for work, staying with relatives, across several weekends), you are better off with the Essentials Pass. Three visits across 30 days is a different way of travelling from three visits on three days.

If you have a single destination in mind, you need neither of them. The single ticket at the door is always cheaper then, whichever one it is.

What is absent from both versions

Public transport. Neither the All-Inclusive nor the Essentials Pass includes an SL ticket for the Tunnelbana, the buses, the Pendeltåg or the Pendelbåtar. In a city made of islands that is the point most often overlooked; the details are on the public transport page. Also in neither version: ABBA The Museum, which stands on Djurgården right next to Gröna Lund Amusement Park and is readily assumed to be included.