Johannesburg Costs: What a Day Really Costs

The price you see is the price you pay

South Africa's VAT runs 15% (the standard SARS rate; a proposed increase was reversed in 2025), and — the part your budget cares about — displayed prices in shops and on menus carry it already. There is no add-on at the till and no tourist tax layered on a restaurant bill. What sits outside the sticker is the tip, which has its own section below, and almost nothing else: the two memory museums, the cableway and the garden gate all quote single all-in figures.

Cards first, cash for the edges

The card network covers the city: card-tap works on the Gautrain gates without a dedicated card, and four venues in the basket above — Mandela House, Constitution Hill, the Walter Sisulu garden and the Hartbeespoort cableway — are cashless outright. Cash still earns its place in the day for the small counters, the markets and the tips, but nobody needs a currency exchange strategy: change money inside banks or secure malls per the advisory's own rule, and skip the street changers entirely.

The working rule for restaurants is 10–15%, rising to 15–20% for excellent service; check the bill first, because some venues print a service charge, and doubling it is the classic tourist overpay. Around that: car guards (the informal attendants who watch street parking) take a small note or coin on return, porters a few rand a bag, and e-hailing drivers a tip in the app rather than cash. Carry a small float of notes for exactly these edges — the cashless museum door does not solve the car guard.

On a $70.6 (R1,150) mid-range day, the tips are a rounding error, not a budget line: the error visitors make is forgetting them entirely, not undershooting them.

The Gautrain is the published one: OR Tambo airport to Sandton costs $13.99 (R228) one way, flat at peak and off-peak, tapped with a contactless bank card or a Gautrain Card that costs $1.29 (R21) with a $2.33 (R38) minimum load. The red bus is the bundled one: $23.0 (R375) buys a one-day hop-on hop-off over 13 stops from Rosebank, with a complimentary shuttle from Sandton hotels and the last departure at 15:00 — a full city loop for less than two long e-hailing rides.

E-hailing is the honest gap in every Johannesburg budget guide: Uber and Bolt publish no fare table, and each trip quotes in-app by distance, demand and route — so no writer can print a true number, including us. What we can say: visitors who budget by app-quoting their actual routes the night before land within a few rand, and the minibus taxis, the city's cheapest system, are not the visitor option — the FCDO's own transport advice ranks them behind the Gautrain and e-hailing (why, on the safety page). Rea Vaya, the bus rapid transit network, publishes no accessible fare sheet at all — its official site has been unreachable with an expired certificate on every check we have made, so its fares ride as not stated.

No official source publishes restaurant prices — there is no national menu register — so this is the page's declared benchmark zone, and every figure in it is ours: a lunch plate at a township counter or a mall food floor lands near our R120 benchmark, while a starter-to-dessert dinner in Sandton runs toward our R700-for-two benchmark. Between them sits everything else: the market halls, the shisa nyama counters, the Fordsburg food streets.

The sourced way to taste across the brackets without guessing is a booked food walk: the Joburg street food tour eats through Fordsburg, the city's oldest suburb, for $78 with a born-and-raised guide, and the Soweto walking tour folds lunch into a $43 morning. What to order once you are there — and which dishes define each bracket — is the typical food guide's job; the venue-by-venue shortlist is on where to eat.

The first is dual pricing: the two memory museums charge international and South African rates, and the local rate needs a South African ID at the desk — no visitor workaround exists, so budget the international column. The second is the single-rate venues: Constitution Hill and Sterkfontein price everyone the same, which makes them the value picks for an international wallet. Third, the red bus receipt: the Apartheid Museum's own ticket office cuts the international adult rate to $13.50 (R220) on presentation of a City Sightseeing booking receipt — the only published discount of its kind in the basket.

Fourth, the combo that does not exist: nothing on the museum's official price list links it to Gold Reef City next door, so plan the two as separate entries. And fifth, the missing number: the Hector Pieterson Museum's published fees cover elderly visitors at $1.84 (R30), teenagers and students at $0.61 (R10) and children at $0.31 (R5) — an adult rate is simply not listed anywhere official, so arrive with card options rather than assumptions.

The structure of the table matters more than any single cell: entries are official and identical for everyone, meals and taxis are the levers, and the distance between the budget day and the top day is almost entirely food and ride choices — the sights cost the same whether you arrive hungry or full.

• Entries are the operators' official prices; every meal, drink and taxi cell is our benchmark, because no operator publishes one
• The cheapest sourced day-tour — the red bus at $17.00 — replaces the entries and the transport lines at a stroke
• Two people do not double the entry line at dual-rate venues' cheaper categories, but they do double every benchmark: our day-for-two benchmark is R1,200 on the rand panel above

The Wits Art Museum in Braamfontein is the daily free entry: serious African art, Tuesday to Saturday 10:00–16:00, no ticket and no charge, at the corner of Jorissen and Bertha — and it pairs naturally with Constitution Hill up the same ridge. Constitution Hill itself, the big one, flips its gate free for everyone on six public holidays — 21 March, 27 April, 16 June, 9 August, 24 September and 16 December — which are the finest and the most crowded museum days of the year at once. Outside the city centre, the Lion & Safari Park charges nothing at its gate — the fees start with the activities, from the self-drive at $24.5 (R400) to the guided safaris — and the Walter Sisulu garden prices its waterfall-and-eagles morning at $6.13 (R100).

The full free tier, itemised, lives on the Johannesburg for free page.

Visa-agent fees come first. Most visitors from the US, UK, Germany, France, Brazil and a long list of others do not need a visa for tourist stays of up to 90 days under the Department of Home Affairs' exemption list, and the applications that are needed run through VFS Global — so a "guaranteed tourist visa" fee is the scam itself, one of the FCDO's named frauds. There is no eTA yet; check the immigration directive in force before you travel and pay nobody who guarantees one (the full scam list).

Second, e-toll charges on a rental quote: the Gauteng e-tolls ended, with the gantries switched off at midnight on 11 April 2024 — any e-toll administration line on a Johannesburg rental agreement is a fossil, and worth a question at the counter. Third, the ATM "helpers": a stranger's assistance at a cash machine is a skimming play, and the advisory's rule — machines inside banks and secure malls only — costs nothing to follow.