From the Fee Index

The most expensive safari parks in Africa (2026)

Name: Hwange National Park
Address: Zimbabwe

Twenty-nine parks, one comparable standard day, and a ranking that has almost nothing to do with fame. Here is what the priciest gates on the continent actually charge, and the single line item behind each number.

If you only want the answer

Ngorongoro tops the Safari Fee Index at $278 for one standard day, nearly $150 of it the crater descent fee alone. The Masai Mara is second at $244, for a day that officially runs 6:00 to 18:00, not 24 hours. Akagera is third at $145. At the other end, Nyika's incomplete floor sits at $15 and Hwange's cheapest complete day at $26, so the gap between the most and least expensive park fees in Africa runs past ten to one.

What counts as a standard day

Every figure here is a standard day: one international, non-resident adult's daily entry or conservation fee at the sleeping-inside rate where a park distinguishes it, half of one standard private vehicle's daily fee split between a two-person party, and one night at the cheapest bookable public campsite, with VAT added where the park charges it on top of the printed price. Tanzania adds 18% to every line; Zimbabwe's gazetted rates already include VAT. Every component is rounded to the whole dollar first, and the total is the sum of those rounded parts.

The ten most expensive safari days in Africa

Reverse the index and the same 29 parks tell a different story. Here is the top ten, ranked by standard day, with the single line item that pushes each one up.

#	Park	Country	Standard day	What does the damage
1	Ngorongoro	Tanzania	$278	Crater service fee share, $148
2	Masai Mara	Kenya	$244	Person fee, $200 (high season)
3	Akagera	Rwanda	$145	Person fee, $100
4	Serengeti	Tanzania	$142	Person fee, $83 (18% VAT included)
5	Nyerere	Tanzania	$142	Person fee, $83 (18% VAT included)
6	Mahale	Tanzania	$129	Person fee, $94 (18% VAT included)
7	Amboseli	Kenya	$122	Person fee, $90
8	Gonarezhou	Zimbabwe	$119	Camping, $100
9	Tarangire	Tanzania	$118	Person fee, $59 (18% VAT included)
10	Nairobi National Park	Kenya	$102	Person fee, $80

Tsavo's day also comes to $102, tied with Nairobi for the last spot on this list; both hit the fee ceiling on person fee alone. The full order of all 29 parks, ties included, is on the index page.

Ngorongoro: the crater descent costs more than most whole parks

Ngorongoro's $278 is not really an entry-fee problem. The entry permit is $71, the vehicle share $24, camping $35, all in line with Tanzania's other parks. What sets Ngorongoro apart is a fourth line the other 28 parks do not have: the crater service fee, $295 per vehicle per descent, split between a two-person party to $148. That single line costs more on its own than a complete day at fifteen of the seventeen parks in our own network. Skip the crater and the day drops to $130, itself still one of the ten most expensive on the index. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority sells one entry within 24 hours and one vehicle permit per descent, so a second trip down into the crater on the same day adds another $148.

The Masai Mara's $244 buys twelve hours, not a day

Second place goes to the Masai Mara, and Narok County's own fee card is explicit about what $244 buys: a $200 person fee in high season (July to December), a $4 vehicle share, $40 for camping. The 'day' the card sells runs 6:00 to 18:00 by definition, whatever time you actually cross the gate, twelve hours for the price that everywhere else on the index buys 24. Low season, January to June, drops the person fee to $100 and the whole day to $144, still expensive, just no longer the country's most expensive ticket. Nairobi National Park and Amboseli, both priced off Kenya Wildlife Service's own conservation fee card, sell a full 24-hour access window for less than the Mara's twelve.

Tanzania's 18% VAT stacks on every line

Half of the ten most expensive parks on the index are Tanzanian, and the pattern behind all five is identical. TANAPA and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority both price from a base figure and add 18% on top of the person fee, the vehicle fee and the camping fee separately, so VAT compounds across all three lines of a standard day rather than landing once. Serengeti and Nyerere's $83 person fee is $70 plus $12.60 of VAT; Ruaha, Katavi, Udzungwa and Mahale run the same math on their own numbers. Across the five Tanzanian parks in the table above, VAT alone adds between $18 (Tarangire) and $42 (Ngorongoro) to the total, money that never appears as its own line on the price you are quoted.

Where the icons get cheap: Kruger, Etosha, Addo

Not every famous name sits on the expensive half of the table. Kruger charges $50 for a standard day and Addo $43, and both numbers hide the same mechanic: SANParks charges no vehicle fee at all. The daily conservation fee is a per-person charge, full stop, so a party of four pays the same per head as a party of one. That $50 undercuts Kidepo Valley, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls, three Ugandan parks a fraction as well known, by four to ten dollars a day. Etosha runs the same logic at $45, a N$150 entry that beats every Tanzanian park on the index. Southern Africa prices for the self-driver: no vehicle fee, cheap public campsites. East Africa prices for the vehicle and the season. That mechanic, not fame or wildlife numbers, is most of what separates a $45 day from a $244 one.

What this does not measure

This is a fee index, not a cost-of-a-trip index. Every number above is park fees only: entry, one vehicle share, one night of camping. It leaves out the lodge or tented camp you will actually sleep in, all food, fuel and transfers, park-run activities like game drives or a crater descent beyond the one flagged for Ngorongoro, and any guide fees. A park with a $45 gate fee can still be the most expensive trip on your itinerary once flights and lodges are added; a park with a $278 gate fee can be a single line in a much bigger budget. Rows marked with an asterisk on the full index, Nyika, Chobe, Lower Zambezi, South Luangwa and Udzungwa among them, are floors, not totals: at least one component, usually the campsite or the vehicle fee, has no published rate, so the true standard day there costs more than the number shown.

See the full 29-park index

This piece is the top of the table. The complete ranking, all 29 parks cheapest to most expensive with every component broken out and every judgment call documented, lives on the Safari Fee Index. For what a real trip costs once lodging, food and activities are added on top of these fees, each park in our network has its own costs page with that fuller number.