Best free things to do in NYC

Free and cheap tickets to NYC's best museums? It's possible! One of the benefits of living in or visiting New York City is all the incredible cultural institutions and museums are at your beck-and-call like The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, MoMA or the Guggenheim.

Luckily, most museums offer free hours or days and pay-what-you-wish admission. You just have to know where and when they are. We’ve got the info you need in our guide to all the free museum days and cheap admission in NYC you should know about.

New York City is full of free outdoor art that you don't even have to go to a museum to see. Sculptures, murals and photographs can be found in its parks, sidewalks and on its buildings!

Locations such as the High Line, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens and other NYC locales all have a wide variety of pieces awaiting you, from massive sculptures to eye-popping murals and graffiti. Best of all, it costs you nothing to pay a visit.

One of New York City’s hottest attractions, Little Island greets visitors and locals who flock to see Manhattan’s gorgeous “floating” greenspace. The park is filled with open lawns, colorful foliage, cool installations and even a secret garden.

The park opens at 6am daily (closing times differ throughout the year), and it's totally free to enter. You will need a ticket for special performances in The Amph.

Hundreds of items have been pulled from the New York Public Library's expansive and centuries-spanning archive to be put on display—many of them for the first time—in a permanent exhibition called "The Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures."

Inside the NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and its beautiful Gottesman Hall, are more than 250 unique and rare items culled from its research centers including the only surviving letter from Christoper Columbus announcing his "discovery" of the Americas to King Ferdinand’s court and the first Gutenberg Bible brought over to the Americas.

Every Sunday at 11 am, rain or shine, expert guides are ready and waiting to offer you a historical tour of the Flatiron-Nomad neighborhoods. On these fascinating walking tours, take a stroll through this iconic area while taking in the architectural gems and even learning some scandalous tidbits.

It's totally free; no need to RSVP. Just meet your guide at the tip of the Flatiron Building on 23rd Street just east of 5th Avenue.

It's one thing to read about Brooklyn and yet another thing to visit the landmarks that have turned it into the stuff of literary legend.

An audio tour by the Brooklyn Public Library explores the lives of the characters and authors that call the borough home in fiction and in real life. From Patti Smith to Biggie Smalls, Howard Zinn to Tanwi Nandini Islam, the guide covers a total of 16 writers over eight miles of Brooklyn. You can also expect to stop at important public libraries the likes of Washington Irving and Clinton Hill, which played an important role in the lives of the featured authors.

Expect the entire tour, which can virtually start off from anywhere in Brooklyn, to take at least two hours to complete, depending on how many stops you wish to make along the way.

You don't have to shell out cash or order two drinks at these free comedy shows in NYC. The city has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to comedy—on any given night, you can hit up some of NYC’s best comedy clubs to see sets from the city’s best-rising comedians, along with well-established names—but you can also find hella funny sets around the city for nothing!

Check out our rundown of free shows in town, which will satisfy die-hard fans of comedy podcasts and even clue you in budding comics in on the best open-mic nights in town.

If you crave an escape from the city that won’t land you in debt, head to the ever-changing urban oasis of Governors Island, NY which combines park, adult playground and outdoor art space into a single lovely haven for adventure. Governors Island has officially become a year-round destination for the public to roam. Yes, even in the winter.

Heads up that getting there will cost you a few bucks. It costs $4 to cruise to the car-free paradise on a ferry, but there are a few opportunities to get a free ride, like taking an early ferry or if you qualify for special discounts. 

New Yorkers love to take in films on the nicest rooftops, on the best beaches, and in our city's greatest parks (preferably with a drink or popcorn in hand). Luckily, NYC has no shortage of places to catch outdoor movie screenings you can attend in the warmer months and most of them are free. Check out our list of outdoor movies and head out for a film.

New York City's beloved institution Shakespeare in the Park will return this summer with a new production of Hamlet. The series has offered free outdoor stagings of Shakespeare plays at Central Park's open-air Delacorte Theater since 1962. 

Usually, Shakespeare in the Park presents two productions each summer. Its 61th season contains only one, but it's a doozy: Shakespeare's talky tragedy of revenge deferred, where a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat. Ato Blankson-Wood (Slave Play) will play the Melancholy Dane in a modern-dress staging directed by Kenny Leon, whose long and distinguished résumé includes Shakespeare in the Park's terrific 2019 version of Much Ado About Nothing. 

The production is scheduled to run for nine weeks, from June 8 through August 6.

This Queens County treasure is well worth the bus trek or car ride. As the city’s longest continually farmed site in the city (it’s been in operation since 1697), the 47 acres feels like an entirely different world compared to Manhattan. Feed and pet the barnyard animals, including sheep, ponies and goats, hop aboard a hayride and come back during the fall harvest season when you can go pumpkin picking and attempt to find your way through the Amazing Maize Maze (yes, that’s a corn maze). 

Admission is free except on special ticketed event days. Don’t miss the store on your way out for fresh fruits and veggies grown on the premises.

Filled with Victorian mausoleums, cherubs and gargoyles, Green-Wood is the resting place of some half-million New Yorkers, among them Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein and Boss Tweed. There’s more to do here than grave-spot: Check out the massive Gothic arch at the main entrance or climb to the top of Battle Hill, one of the highest points in Kings County and a pivotal spot during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776.

Founded in 1971 and featuring more than 1,000 works, this multicultural art museum shines a spotlight on 20th- and 21st-century artists who are either Bronx-based or of African, Asian or Latino ancestry. The museum sporadically offers family programming. It's always free to attend.

In the westernmost stretches of Chelsea, dozens of free-admission galleries showcase groundbreaking paintings, prints, installations and sculptures. It's a great way to get an introduction to the city's gallery hopping scene. Pro tip: while the shows frequently change, we recommend starting out with Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner and Pace Gallery.

The 1.45 mile-long park, which first opened in 2009, was originally created entirely on an abandoned elevated train track, snaking above the otherwise industrial West Side neighborhoods. Today millions clamor for the dazzling views of the Hudson River and the downtown skyline. The park hosts free star-gazing events, lively cultural happenings like Latin dance nights and rotating works of sculpture and art throughout the year.

Take in the great outdoors while appreciating awe-inspiring large-scale sculptures and installations at this 4.5-acre public space. Built over an old landfill, today the park offers beautiful, lush green lawns overlooking the East River and boasts a reputation as a premiere outdoor location for artists to create site-specific wonders.

Overseen by fashion historian Valerie Steele, the Museum at FIT showcases selections from the institute's permanent collection, as well as temporary exhibitions focusing on individual designers and fashion's role in society. FIT owns one of the largest and most impressive collections of clothing, textiles and accessories in the world, including some 50,000 costumes and fabrics dating from the 5th century to the present. 

The Jewish Museum, housed in the 1908 Warburg Mansion, showcases temporary exhibitions of contemporary and modern art and also maintains a substantial collection of artworks of art and Judaica.

The Jewish Museum is free on Shabbat during regular hours. There is a permanent exhibit specifically for children, as well as a restaurant that includes an Uptown outpost of Russ & Daughters, the iconic Lower East Side purveyors of Kosher delicacies like lox, sable and whitefish.

This Madison Avenue institution began as the private library of financier J. Pierpont Morgan and is his artistic gift to the city.

Building on the collection Morgan amassed in his lifetime, the museum houses first-rate works on paper, including drawings by Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Picasso; three Gutenberg Bibles; a copy of Frankenstein annotated by Mary Shelley; manuscripts by Dickens, Poe, Twain, Steinbeck and Wilde; sheet music handwritten by Beethoven and Mozart; and an original edition of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that’s displayed every yuletide. Here's the full list of special exhibitions coming to The Morgan in 2023.  

The museum is free to visit on Fridays, 5-7pm. Reservations are required available one week in advance.