Rick Steves Audio Europe™
How much does Rick Steves Audio Europe™ cost?
Prices are current as of 8 Sept 2026.
Rick Steves Audio Europe™ has no in-app products on record in the United States.
10+ alternatives to Rick Steves Audio Europe™
| Rick Steves Audio Europe™ |   Visit A City |   Ferryhopper |   POPGuide |   Welcome Pickups |   VoiceMap: Audio Tours & Guides |   Timeshifter |   Viking Voyager |   Rome2Rio: Travel Route Planner |   GPSmyCity: Walks in 1K+ Cities |   Palace of Versailles | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating / 5 | 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.8 | 4.4 | 4.8 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.6 | 4.6 | 4.0 | 3.2 |
| Reviews | 928 | 38K | 29K | 24K | 15K | 7.3K | 4.4K | 4.2K | 3.4K | 2.5K | 487 |
| Released | 2011 | 2015 | 2020 | 2016 | 2020 | 2014 | 2018 | 2017 | 2012 | 2011 | 2014 |
| Annual price | — | $49.99 | — | — | — | — | $24.99 | — | — | $14.99 | — |
| One-time price | — | — | — | — | — | $8.99 | $4.99 | — | — | $4.99 | — |
The going rate for each plan in United States, in its own currency, shaded from the cheapest price on the row to the dearest. Plans fewer than four in ten of the priced apps sell are left out.
Rick Steves Audio Europe™ reviews
4.5 out of 5, based on 928 reviews.
What people like
- Completely free high quality audio tours
- Works offline after downloading content at home
- Lets you explore at your own pace
- Rich history mixed with engaging humor
What they complain about
- Audio cuts out when screen locks
- Downloads are painfully slow and fail often
- Updates wipe your downloaded playlists without warning
- Drains battery if you keep screen on
The perfect guide
These guides are so great. They are a perfect balance of history, culture and humor. They’re honestly better than tour guides in some cases - more engaging , informative and allows you to go at your own pace to really absorb the information. We’re so grateful they exist and would love some more places to be covered!!!
Obnoxious
Why allow downloads if the app doesn’t work without a cell/WiFi signal? Idiotic.
Time to update the app
App needs updating! Sound volume is fading in/out when iPhone screen is closed. Meaning, you must leave the screen active and waste battery life in order to listen. Not ideal for a long day Without your battery dying
Audio cuts in & out constantly
The audio constantly cuts in & out. Makes the whole experience really bad.
Don’t pause it
If you pause the playback briefly, the app can’t resume easily. Either won’t PLAY at all, or sound cuts in and one. This is a longstanding issue
A must have audio tour app!
I used this application during my two week trip in Italy (Rome, Florence, Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Capri), and during a ten day trip in London and Paris and it was AMAZING. Group tours at museums and cities can be slow and boring. With this app, you can move at your pace, pause and start the audio at your leisure, and enjoy Rick’s wisdom and humor along the way. Buy yourself some nice Bluetooth headphones and enjoy your visits. Rick is a human treasure and he made traveling to Europe incredibly accessible and fun. I HIGHLY recommend this application.
iPhone choppy audio playback
I’m a big fan of Rick’s content, but this app keeps cutting in and out, making it all but unusable. I’m sitting in Syntagma Square in Athens trying to do a tour and it’s not working. Also didn’t work right in Rome in December.
Good with bugs
I’ve used their guided audio tours through several cities in Europe. I really like their app, but the UI is quite outdated. More frustrating is the audio bug that’s been around for at least a year. If you pause or resume outside the app, the audio goes in and out. You have to re enter the app and pause/unpause.
Apps functionality is horrible for a podcast app
Every audio app that is popular works functionally much better. While the content/podcasts are solid and the overall information is good, the actual app is the opposite. The apple version does not play consistently if the phone is locked, and causes cutouts/breaks of sound during the podcast every few seconds. The only way the audio would play uninterrupted was keeping the app open and pulled up. If any other app was pulled up, or the phone was locked, the podcasts go back to be choppy and almost unlistenable.
Informative, slightly weird
Rick and his guest try to be funny and entertain in some episodes and it comes off as pretty awkward and weird. In the Vatican tour episode they force you to skip a big portion of the museum for no reason. So you need to ignore some of their suggestions and/or lame jokes.
Can’t believe it’s free!
This is an amazing app that makes it so easy to follow along with your surroundings. My wife and I used it at the Acropolis and found it incredibly useful with great pacing!
Information
The interviews are lackluster and information outdated. Culture in most of these countries is dwindling.
Great audio tours, some issues with app
We used several of Rick’s audio tours for our first trip to Italy. His tours really brought to life the history of what we were seeing in famous places like the Colosseum and Roman Forum. We loved his tours of the Vatican Museum and Uffizi Gallery, letting us zeroed in on the art we shouldn’t miss. We did experience a few technical issues. The audio would sometimes cut-out. This especially happened if I paused the app. I would then have to stop, get out of app and get back in. Not great, but overall loved the tours-they added so much to the sights we were seeing! Thanks Rick!
Poor Execution
As others have said, the audio is choppy, frequently stopping when the phone screens goes dark. One must restart the app. The content is so-so. The directions at various sites are poor. One is easily lost trying to follow obscure directions. The narration is typical Rick Steves cynicism and snarkiness. Rick frequently and inappropriately imposes modern views on ancient subjects. As a Lutheran, Rick’s narration is liberally sprinkled with subtle or openly anti-Catholic statements.
Current app drains battery
Absolutely love this app for travelling in Europe. Unfortunately the latest app seems to drain your battery in background tasks.
Excellent information and FREE
Used it during my short stay in Athens. Followed the free city walk and Acropolis audio guide. Provides just right amount of information for someone who does not have deep knowledge about the ancient world. Highly recommended.
Terrible.
We tried to use the audio guides for the colosseum and roman forum etc. after seeing them recommended on several sites as good overview tours. I was very disappointed! The tours felt like they were more about making cheesy jokes than actually telling the history and significance of the structures and their details. It felt kind of disrespectful in a way. I learned more by listening to guides talking to their tour groups for about 20 seconds while they stood around us than during nearly the whole audio tour. Would not recommend. There is an official audio guide tour for the colosseum and possibly forum as well that comes with your ticket so that might be better—pay attention for info when you buy tickets. Unfortunately we couldn’t download the app on site due to connection issues so we couldn’t use the official tour and were left with Steve.
Good stories but app could use some work
Started the Munich tour today and it was quite interesting. But… after my iPhone 15 screen went to sleep, the audio would fade in and out and jump around. The tour became unusable unless I kept the phone awake/on, thus wearing out the battery. I abandoned it.
Such a hyped app but not up to expectations
Probably should not complain for a free app, but some improvements are definitely needed to make it useful. I had such a great expectation, because everywhere I read on the internet, people says great things about the guide, esp that it is way better than the one cost 8 euro at pompei park entrance. Even that is debatable, since I did get the official audio guide for a family member, they both have plus and minus’s. We decided to use the pompei guide from this app after a few mixed experiences with a few Roman tours. The only usefulness of Rick’s pompei guide is the route, but it did not mention it anywhere in the app. Being frustrated with directions after 45 minutes, I started to play with the app, found the book shaped button, that leads me to the tour route. After that, it became a bit easier to follow. The best audio guide I have used in the past is Gypsy. It is gps guided that made it so easy to use. I wish they have similar guides for European destinations.
Disappointed maps not zoom able
This seems like a great app that we wanted to use on our Rome visit this year but the maps are too small to see on iphone and not zoomable. A real shame as the audio is so informative. It is also very American!
Perfect for unplanned travel days!
This app was a godsend when my partner and I were in Rome. We had our original flights cancelled due to the CrowdStrike outage in July 2024 and had to push back our flights. So we missed our original plans for tours of the colosseum, the Vatican, and other landmarks. With this app we were able to get free audio tours of the landmarks and got to have an amazing experience at the sites and even just walking the streets of Rome. The guide was super specific and helped point out a ton of things we wouldn’t have noticed or understood the significance of. Highly recommend to anyone that’s traveling somewhere new!
doesn’t work any more
The app crashed when opening so I deleted and reinstalled it. Now it opens and I can download audio tours, but nothing plays. It stays paused and even when I hit play the timer doesn’t update and there’s no sound.
App not usable
Recently installed the app on my iPhone 13., latest iOS. The App starts out playing an audio tour just fine. But when you pause and then resume, the audio becomes either very choppy or the app simply hangs. Only way out I found is to force close the app and start again. This makes the app unusable, unfortunately. This is not just in my phone, but my wife had the same issue. Deleting and reinstalling the app didn’t help.
Great content, terrible app
Like always, the content from Rick is great. And it’s all free. However, the app was likely built 10+ years ago and has not undergone significant updates since then. It is buggy, antiquated, and the user experience is really poor. Hopefully there is some $ in the budget to improve it. Maybe Rick needs to include ads to generate revenue to pay for the update?
New Version
Requires re-downloading of playlists, just be aware of it...
Some bugs… but unparalleled
Rick‘s guides and tours on this app are in a league of their own. What you get for free here is better than most paid audio tour content you can find online and on other apps. There are occasional crashes, and bugs where the audio control stops working when the app is in the background for too long, but it’s well worth those hiccups. I used this on an over 2 month excursion to Europe and every time I visited a new city I was excited to hear what Rick (and his friends) could teach me about it
Disappointed.
I personally like Rick Steve’s travel guides, but this app is actually horrible. The UI is super frustrating and annoying. To access audio tours, you need to download in advance which is something that you should know before you travel since it takes so much data to download without wifi. For the audio, it kept glitching in and out. It would stop without being prompted and would not turn back on even when I manually clicked back in. This was the experience for my travel partner as well. Many of the audios are outdated. This is disappointing because when I go to a location intending to use Rick’s audio tour and it DOES NOT work or match, I have to waste more time finding a new audio tour to use. Very disappointing given my high expectations for Rick.
Excellent content … but …
The menus in the area of My Playlists jump up and down the screen. Something happened to the flow of sorting them.
Great travel advise for white men only
The problem with everything produced by "Rick Steves" is that its only for men. Why not approach a bunch of local dudes playing some game together, and interact with them? Why not get lost in a strange city and see something "no tourists see"? YOU KNOW WHY, YOU PRIVILEGED OLD WHITE CHRISTIAN MAN".
Downloading issues
Rick rocks and the content and app is great but the problem is that the app is horrible at downloading the tours and audio. Repeated failed downloads. And you have to keep the app open if you want any hope of actually downloading content. I only use podcasts now
Pleasantly surprised
I was in the midst away from the US for a year and was on a train from Poland to Germany when a man and his family mentioned they were using this app as a tour guide. After that I found it greatly helpful. Rome was especially great, but Paris and London were great as well. I used to just listen to whatever app the tour site lists, but I’m glad I found this one. Thank you Rick.
Navigation directions within the Louvre is terrible
The title says it all. Very frustrating to use.
A great addition to the guide book
Just came back from a great visit in Rome. I don't want to be holding a guide book while I explore these historical sites so my strategy was to used this as an addition to the guide book. I read the guide books the night before a visit and use the app when on site. I used it for Ostia Antica, the Pantheon and the Collosseum.
Pompeii Audio Tour, don’t Naples City audio tour, a do.
Took the Naples City Tour it was great, next day at Pompeii passed on the guided tour at the site on the basis of my experience the previous day. What a mistake. Super short, and with lots of the sites covered in the audio tour closed, just went around in circles with no additional guidance. Disappointed, will have to come back someday. That’s what I get for trying to save a buck!!!
Most amazing app
No where else can you find this amount of free guides. Absolute cinema
Poor experience
The audio guides are amazing but they constantly freeze / audio constantly cuts out. I have to close the app and restart it to fix it.
Not exhaustive of all countries but it's a good start
I've downloaded a few recordings, it's got some useful info for cities and the some countries customs etc...and of course it's free, quite entertaining and I love the interview with Bill Bryson! Thanks
Regretting updating :(
Was excited to see an update for this app but on updating - all my downloaded playlist was wiped without warning. It was so painful downloading this the first time around and now with the update doubly so - no more multiple or select all downloads - I have to do them one by one :( 2 stars for content but I'm deleting the app and moving to podcasts. I'm lucky I'm still home and can reorganise - for travellers already on the road - updating will wipe all your downloaded talks.
Rome and beyond
Great tour of the colosseum in Rome. Step by step guide to the places they are talking about and useful for whatever access level you get to the colosseum.
Anti-Catholic Remarks
I don’t understand why Rick Steves has to ruin such a potentially great product with his anti-Catholic commitments.
Too slow to be useful
This would be an excellent resource if it were not so terribly slow. The audio guides are great, but take forever to download - especially over wifi in Europe, where I suspect a lot of downloading occurs. I also have noticed some random crashing. I'd like to see this work in the background for downloading too. I'd happily pay for higher speed downloads, but alas my time in Europe is almost up.
It’s like have Rick Steves with You
The app has been wonderful guiding me and my wife on great tours around France. We each had one ear bud so we can listen at the same time. It was extremely helpful navigating the crowds at the Louvre and Versailles. Each guide also has relevant maps and info which was helpful. I downloaded everything to my phone before ever leaving home so I could go to my playlist even if I didn’t have reception and play the audio.
One star
I’m giving one star only because it constantly runs on my iPhone… it keeps popping open no matter how I try to shut it off..I finally deleted because it was using up my battery
Too slow!!
If you can actually get the walking tours to download, then this app is great, and they are a great alternative to paying for audio guides. However, it takes at least an hour for one track to download, and the app has to remain open the whole time, or it stops downloading. You can't even let your phone go to sleep. I also had a lot of problems with just getting tracks to download. Numerous times they just "failed" or the app would crash when I opened them.
Rick Steves Audio Europe™ FAQ
- Is Rick Steves Audio Europe™ free?
- Yes. The app is free, in all 174 countries it sells in, and it sells nothing inside it.
- Does Rick Steves Audio Europe™ have a free trial?
- No. None of its offers (US) come with a free trial.
- What are the best alternatives to Rick Steves Audio Europe™?
- Visit A City (4.8 from 38,046 reviews, premium from $4.99), Ferryhopper (4.8 from 29,307 reviews) and POPGuide (4.4 from 24,027 reviews).
Rick Steves Audio Europe™ download
Last updated 8 months ago.
Rick Steves Audio Europe™ sells in 174 countries. It was released 15 years and 8 months ago, on 21 Jan 2011. It holds a 4.5 rating from 928 reviews.
Supports 1 language: English.
How much does Rick Steves Audio Europe™ make?
Third-party estimates for the last 30 days, worldwide — not the store's own figures, which Apple publishes for nobody.