Free Chicago Walking Tours

Free Tours by Foot is pleased to present the best pay-what-you-like guided Chicago walking tours. 

These interesting and informative sightseeing city tours will take you through many of the Windy City’s most famous neighborhoods.

Everyone should be permitted to take a guided tour for a price they feel it was worth or what they could afford – even free!  

Pay-what-you-like tours are tours for every budget.  

 

 

CHICAGO WALKING TOURS

We provide a platform for local, freelance tour guides to lead walking tours as well as ghost and architecture tours at no upfront cost, so that you may enjoy a worry-free quality sightseeing experience.

Walking tours are our forte, and we offer a number of daily and weekly pay-what-you-like walking tours of Chicago as well as completely free self-guided options.

You could browse the tours that we have by clicking the links below, by scrolling our public calendar (also below) or it just might be best to go directly to our booking page. There’s no cost to book our walking tours. 

We have roughly 1000 reviews with a rating of 5 out of 5 stars and with 97% of reviewers rating us as very good or excellent. We are so well-reviewed, yet TripAdvisor seems to hide us from you (probably because they can’t sell our tours for commission).  Read the reviews for yourself.  

Our premiere Chicago walking tours are great day or night and serve as introductions to the city, Chicago history and cover the many of the main tourist attractions. 
 

 

Our Regularly Scheduled Tours

  • The Birth of the Skyscraper: Architecture Tour is a great way to discover and appreciate the incredible landscape of buildings in Chicago and it ends in Grant Park near famed Buckingham Fountain.
  • The Riverwalk and Chicago History Tour follows the path of the Chicago River and focuses on the history of Chicago, the Chicago Flag and the beautiful buildings that line the river.
  • Our Chicago Ghost Tour is for folks who love haunting history and creepy tales of the dark side of the White City.
  • On The Magnificent Mile Tour, you will discover fun Chicago facts like the history of deep dish pizza while exploring our most popular downtown area.

Weekly Tours

  • Our Gold Coast Tour meanders through the history of high society where you will be introduced to the glamorous residential neighborhood built around Lakeshore Drive.
  • Explore Lincoln Park on our Lincoln Park and Gangster Tour to appreciate a unique neighborhood scattered with hidden history including tales of Chicago Gangsters.
  • We also offer a West Loop tour which combines great storytelling for history buffs with great photo ops for those more in the “sightseeing” mood! 

Winter Tours

We offer tours year round, even in Chicago winter, but we take into account the need to be seasonably appropriate for walking tours. Check out our special Winter offers:

  • In the winter, we offer a Pedway Tour that explores the indoor tunnels and paths to discover Chicago architecture and arts in a warmer way.
  • There is also a Winter Loop option where we will spend about half of the time outdoors looking up at the skyscrapers and the other half will be spent inside exquisite public buildings and lobbies.
  • Our Winter Architecture Tour explores the unique landscape of buildings in the downtown area while also popping into many lovely lobbies for warmth!  This tour is abbreviated and adjusted for our Chicago winters.

En Español:

 

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CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE TOURS

Many of our pay-what-you-like walking tours are architecture tours or architectural points are a large part of them.

 

 

These tours include:

In addition to our walking tours, there are other walking tour companies that offer excellent architecture tours. Another popular option is to take an architectural boat cruise. There are even architectural tours by bus as well as Segway.

If you are on a budget or would just like to take things at your own pace, then consider one of our self-guided walks.

 

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CHICAGO TRAVEL TIPS

About the author

Chicago Tour guide Mel
Manager | Chicago & Los Angeles

Mel loves to be a tourist in her own city. With a background in performing arts, tourism, and photography, giving tours and being a story-teller comes naturally to her. She loves traveling, food, and theatre. Mel splits her time between Chicago and Los Angeles (#theatrelife) and leads tours and manages both cities!