Edinburgh is an expensive city to live in and a remarkably cheap one to spend time in.
Scotland funds free entry to its national collections, so the National Museum of Scotland and five National Galleries sites cost you nothing. You can walk into the Scottish Parliament for free and watch it work. There's an extinct volcano in the middle of the city you can climb in an afternoon.
And there's one thing that beats all of it: if you're 21 or under and live in Scotland, buses across the entire country are free. Not discounted. Free. More on that below, because it changes what a weekend can look like.
Here's what's actually free, and a couple of things to check before you set off.
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Free museums and galleries in Edinburgh
1. National Museum of Scotland
Chambers Street, in the middle of the university's Old College patch, so most Edinburgh students walk past it regularly without going in.
Free entry, open daily 10am to 5pm. It's a genuinely enormous collection — Scottish history, natural history, science and technology, world cultures — in a building that's half Victorian grand hall and half modern sandstone.
One caveat: general admission is free, but some special exhibitions are ticketed. Check what's on before you plan around a particular show.
2. The National Galleries of Scotland — five sites, all free
This is the bit students underuse. Scotland's national art collection is spread across five Edinburgh venues, and general admission to all of them is free, daily 10am to 5pm:
The National — on the Mound between Princes Street and the Old Town. The main collection.
Modern One and Modern Two — out at Belford Road in Dean Village, a lovely walk along the Water of Leith. The grounds are open too.
The Portrait Gallery — Queen Street, and the building itself is worth it.
The Royal Scottish Academy — next door to The National, hosting special exhibitions.
And note that special exhibitions are separately ticketed, currently in the £3.50 to £14 range. The permanent collections are the free part.
Free hills, parks and views
Edinburgh's best free asset is its landscape, and you don't need to leave the city for any of it.
Arthur's Seat is the one to do first — an extinct volcano in Holyrood Park, right at the bottom of the Royal Mile. It's a proper walk rather than a stroll, and the view from the top covers the whole city, the Firth of Forth and out to Fife. Free, obviously, and open whenever you are.
Calton Hill is the lazy alternative and arguably the better photograph: fifteen minutes up from Princes Street, with the unfinished National Monument and views straight down Princes Street to the castle.
The Meadows is the student park — a broad flat green south of the Old Town, ringed by the Southside and Marchmont flats where half the student population lives. In summer it's essentially an outdoor common room.
Princes Street Gardens sits in the valley below the castle, between the Old and New Towns, and is free to walk through.
The Water of Leith Walkway runs from the west of the city down to Leith and passes Modern One and Modern Two, so you can combine a free gallery with a free riverside walk.
Free buses if you're under 22
This is the single biggest saving available to a student in Scotland and it's worth being precise about.
Under Scotland's Young Persons' Free Bus Travel Scheme, everyone aged 5 to 21 who lives in Scotland travels free on the bus — and not just in Edinburgh. The card covers nearly all local registered and long-distance scheduled bus services across the whole of Scotland, and travel extends as far as Carlisle and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
You need to apply for a National Entitlement Card (NEC) or a Young Scot NEC first. If you're 16 or over you apply yourself.
What that means in practice: day trips are free. Glasgow, Stirling, the coast, the Borders — the bus costs you nothing. If you've just moved to Scotland to study and you're 21 or under, applying for this card should be in your first week.
The honest caveats:
It's ages 5 to 21. The day you turn 22 it stops, so a lot of second and third years and most postgraduates don't get it.
You must live in Scotland — which you will if you've moved here to study, but it's a residency test, not a student one.
It excludes premium-fare night buses, tours and excursions, and group hire.
The card is non-transferable. Lending it to a mate can get it suspended.
The Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe runs through August, and if you're arriving for the start of term you'll catch the tail of it or miss it by days depending on the year.
The thing nobody tells you before their first Fringe: a very large amount of it is free. There are established free-entry strands where performers work for donations rather than ticket sales — you walk in, watch, and put money in a bucket at the end if it was any good. That's not a lesser version of the Fringe; plenty of well-known acts came up through it.
The Royal Mile also becomes a continuous free street-performance venue for the month, which costs nothing to wander.
Top tips
If you're 21 or under, apply for a National Entitlement Card in your first week. Free buses across all of Scotland is the best student deal in the country, and it stops the day you turn 22.
The National Museum of Scotland and all five National Galleries sites are free, daily 10am to 5pm. Special exhibitions are the charged bit.
Check the National Galleries site before you travel. Industrial action has closed venues at short notice, and the Portrait Gallery's upper floors are shut.
Book a free Parliament tour rather than just wandering in — it's 45 minutes and costs nothing.
Do Calton Hill if you've got twenty minutes, Arthur's Seat if you've got an afternoon.
Walk the Water of Leith to Modern One and Two and you've got a free gallery at the end of a free walk.
At the Fringe, look for the free strands first. You can fill a day without a ticket.
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