Where to Stay in Yellowstone: 6 Types of Lodging Compared

Yellowstone has nine lodges and 11 campgrounds inside the park, and they sell out months ahead, so the first decision is not which one but whether you are staying inside the boundary at all. Inside means less driving and more time in the park; outside means more choice, later availability and a longer commute every morning. Campground reservations open on a rolling six-month basis, and park lodges take bookings up to 366 days ahead. Entry costs $35 per private vehicle for seven days, with an additional $100 per person for non-US residents. This guide compares the six kinds of accommodation, names what is actually in each one, and says which suits which trip.

Before you book: fees, seasons and how far ahead

Yellowstone, in the United States, is the world’s first national park, opened on 1 March 1872, and it covers roughly 2.2 million acres across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Its scale is the reason accommodation is a planning problem rather than a shopping decision: driving between two entrances takes several hours.

What it costs to get in

A standard seven-day entrance pass is $35 for a private vehicle, $30 for a motorcycle and $20 per person on foot or by bicycle. Two 2026 changes matter.

• Non-US residents aged 16 and over pay an extra $100 per person on top of the standard pass, unless they enter on an annual pass.
• The America the Beautiful annual pass, which covers entry to every federal recreation site, is $80 for US residents and $250 for non-residents. A Yellowstone-only annual pass is a separate product.

Vehicle reservations are not required to enter Yellowstone, though buying the pass online before you arrive saves time at the gate. If you enter or leave through the South Entrance you pass through Grand Teton National Park, which charges its own separate fee.

When the roads are open

Most of Yellowstone closes to ordinary vehicles from early November to late April. Only the road from the North Entrance at Gardiner through to Cooke City via Tower Junction stays open year-round. The projected 2026 dates are below, and every one of them is weather-dependent.

Between mid-December and mid-March, the interior roads reopen to commercially guided snowmobiles and snowcoaches only. If you are planning a winter trip, that is the access model, and it changes where you can stay entirely.

How far ahead to book

Book as early as you can, and know that the two systems work differently.

• Campgrounds open on a rolling basis: you can reserve a site exactly six months before the date of your stay. Most fill quickly.
• Park lodges take reservations up to 366 days in advance through Yellowstone National Park Lodges, the park’s concessionaire.
• Cancellations appear, often a few weeks out, so a trip without a booking inside the park is not hopeless. Check repeatedly.

Inside or outside the park?

Stay inside the park if you can get a booking, because the driving distances are the thing that eats a Yellowstone trip. Yellowstone is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, and traffic slows further whenever an animal appears near the road.

Staying outside means choosing an entrance, and each one puts you near different things.

• West Entrance, near West Yellowstone, closest to the geyser basins and the best served for hotels and restaurants.
• North and Northeast Entrances, near Gardiner and Cooke City, best for wildlife watching in the Lamar Valley and the only year-round road access.
• East Entrance, near Cody, closest to Yellowstone Lake and the falls.
• South Entrance, next to Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole.

Where to stay in Yellowstone: 6 types of lodging compared

There are six ways to sleep in or near Yellowstone, listed here from most comfortable to least.

1. Hotels and lodges inside Yellowstone

There are nine lodging properties inside Yellowstone, all run by Yellowstone National Park Lodges, the park’s authorised concessionaire, which handles every reservation. They are the most comfortable beds inside the boundary and the hardest to get.

What the main ones are like, by area:

• Old Faithful Inn is the famous one, a 1904 log hotel beside the geyser. Its lobby is the architectural set piece of the park, and some rooms and the deck look out at Old Faithful itself.
• Lake Yellowstone Hotel and Cabins, on the northern shore of Yellowstone Lake, is a National Historic Landmark and the oldest operating hotel in the park. Rooms and suites have private bathrooms, some with lake views and lift access, and adjacent cabins are simpler. There is a full-service restaurant, a deli and a shop. No wi-fi.
• Lake Lodge Cabins, behind the main lodge on the same shore, is the cheaper option in Lake Village: 186 cabins in Pioneer, Frontier and Western grades, all with private bathrooms and basic comforts. The lodge has a restaurant, a bar and rocking chairs facing the lake. Typically early June to early October.
• Canyon Lodge and Cabins, near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, is the largest, with more than 500 rooms and cabins ranging from modern lodge rooms and suites to rustic cabins. Wi-fi is available to guests. Typically mid-May to late October.
• Grant Village Lodge, on the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake, is six two-storey buildings of 50 rooms each, with a full-service restaurant and a gift shop. It is the closest park lodging to Grand Teton. No wi-fi, no lift. Typically late May to early October.
• Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and Cabins, near the North Entrance, is the one that stays open through winter, with a short closure in March and April. Rooms and cabins range up to cabins with private hot tubs, and guests get wi-fi. It has a restaurant, the Map Room Bar, a shop and a winter ski shop, and the Albright Visitor Center is walkable.
• Roosevelt Lodge Cabins, near Tower Fall, are 1920s cabins near a site Theodore Roosevelt camped at. Frontier cabins have bathrooms; Roughrider cabins have wood-burning stoves and use a shared bathhouse. Horse riding and the Old West Dinner Cookout run from here, and the season is short.

Almost nothing inside the park has air conditioning or a television, and wi-fi is the exception rather than the rule.

Pros: comfortable, well placed, no tent to put up, food on site, short drives to trailheads. Cons: expensive, booked out months ahead, seasonal, and you drive back to the same building every night.

2. Cabins in Yellowstone

Park cabins are the middle option: you still get a bed and, in most grades, a private bathroom, but you are closer to the ground and usually cheaper than a hotel room. The cabin grades run from Pioneer, the simplest, through Frontier to Western, and the difference is size, furnishing and whether there is a bathroom at all.

The three cabin clusters are at Lake Lodge, Canyon Village and Roosevelt Lodge, with cabins also attached to the Lake Yellowstone and Mammoth hotels. Some cabins accept pets; most do not, so check at the time of booking.

Pros: closer to the scenery, more of a camping feel, a comfortable bed, generally cheaper than the hotels. Cons: they book up as fast as the hotels, most are summer-only, and the cheapest grades share bathhouses.

3. RV camping

RV camping is the way to see the most of Yellowstone for the least driving, because you can move between campgrounds across the park instead of returning to one base every night. There are 11 campgrounds with over 2,000 sites, and all of them require a reservation in advance apart from Mammoth, which is first-come, first-served from 15 October to 1 April.

Five campgrounds are booked through Yellowstone National Park Lodges.

Six more are booked through Recreation.gov.

Three things are worth knowing before you book a site.

1. Fishing Bridge RV Park is the only campground with water, sewer and electrical hook-ups, at 50-amp service, and it takes hard-sided vehicles only. No tents and no tent-trailers, because grizzly bears use the area.
2. Pebble Creek Campground has been closed since the 2022 floods and remains closed for flood recovery work. Any guide still listing it as an option is out of date.
3. Every campground has a maximum vehicle length, ranging from about 25 to 60 feet depending on the site. Check yours before you book, particularly at Slough Creek, which is at the end of a dirt road, and Tower Fall, which has a hairpin bend on the approach.

Group sites are available at Bridge Bay, Grant Village and Madison, priced from $165 to $475 a night by group size.

Renting an RV rather than buying one is the normal route for a visiting traveller, and it is far cheaper. If you have never travelled in one, our campervan review covers what it is actually like to live and sleep in one for a week.

Pros: cheaper than hotels or cabins, you move across the park instead of backtracking, your own shower and kitchen. Cons: a large rig is stressful on hilly park roads, campgrounds book out in peak season, and only one campground has hook-ups.

One thing to plan for: if you are in a motorhome, tow a car or bring a second vehicle. Park roads are long and hilly, and driving a big rig round them all day is not the way to see Yellowstone.

4. Tent camping

Tent camping is the cheapest way to sleep inside Yellowstone and the closest to the landscape you came for. Every campground listed above accepts tents except Fishing Bridge RV Park, which is hard-sided vehicles only because of the grizzlies. Sites at the Recreation.gov campgrounds start at $20 a night.

Two rules are not negotiable. No car camping is permitted anywhere in Yellowstone outside a designated campground site you are registered in, which rules out pullouts, picnic areas and parking lots. And food storage is a legal requirement, not advice: many campgrounds have food storage lockers, and what you leave out attracts animals you do not want.

If you have flown in without gear, outfitters in the gateway towns rent tents and camping equipment. For something between a tent and a cabin, our guide to glamping covers what the comfortable end of camping actually involves.

Pros: the cheapest option inside the park, you can move between campgrounds, and you are outside from the moment you wake up. Cons: you sleep on the ground, shared toilets and showers, wildlife encounters are genuinely possible, and nights at 2,000 m (6,562 ft) and above get cold even in summer.

One thing to plan for: bring an insulated sleeping mat rather than a thin one. Most Yellowstone campgrounds sit between roughly 1,890 m (6,200 ft) and 2,400 m (7,874 ft), and the ground takes the heat out of a summer night faster than people expect.

5. Holiday rentals near Yellowstone

Holiday rentals are the option for groups and for anyone who wants a kitchen, and they are all outside the park, because there are no private rental homes inside the boundary. What they buy you is space, privacy and self-catering, in exchange for a drive to the entrance every morning.

Look at the gateway areas rather than at the park: the corridors near West Yellowstone, Gardiner, Cody and Island Park all have rental cabins and houses, and the further out you go the cheaper and the longer the drive.

If you book a whole home for a Yellowstone trip, Vrbo lists entire properties only, which is the right shape for a group that wants a kitchen and several bedrooms. We earn a small commission and your price is unchanged.

Pros: a wide range of properties, kitchens, more space and privacy than a hotel, often cheaper per person for a group. Cons: no consistent standard, no rental inside the park, and a poorly located one adds an hour of driving to every day.

One thing to plan for: check the actual driving time to the entrance you will use, not the distance. A property 40 km (24.9 mi) from a gate on a mountain road is not a 25-minute drive.

6. Hotels outside the park

Hotels outside Yellowstone are the answer for a late booking, and they are generally cheaper than the park lodges. They are also the only realistic option in peak summer if you did not book months ahead.

Choose by entrance rather than by town name, because the entrance determines your daily drive. West Yellowstone has by far the most rooms and the most restaurants, Gardiner is the year-round option at the North Entrance, Cody serves the East Entrance, and Jackson sits below the South Entrance beyond Grand Teton.

For hotels in the gateway towns, Trip.com covers the West Yellowstone, Gardiner and Jackson corridors and is a reasonable way to compare what is left when the park lodges have sold out.

Pros: available at short notice, cheaper than inside the park, in towns with restaurants and shops. Cons: you spend a lot of the day driving, and you miss the early-morning and late-evening hours inside the park, which are the best ones for wildlife.

One thing to plan for: book something with free cancellation. Park lodge and campground cancellations surface a few weeks out, and a flexible outside booking lets you take one without losing money.

How to plan a Yellowstone trip: 7 practical tips

Seven things make the difference between a good Yellowstone trip and a week of driving, ordered by how much time each one saves.

1. Split your stay between the north and south loops

Book two bases rather than one, because Yellowstone’s road network is a figure of eight and crossing it twice a day wastes hours. Spend half the trip near the north loop and half near the south, and you cut the daily driving roughly in half.

2. Stay inside the park if you can get in

Staying inside removes the commute at both ends of the day, which is when the park is quietest and the animals are most active. It is not always possible, and an outside booking with a short drive to your chosen entrance beats a bad inside booking at the wrong end of the park.

3. Book as early as the system allows

Set a reminder for six months before your campground dates and up to 366 days ahead for the lodges. Those are the moments the inventory appears, and the good sites go the same day.

4. Consider the shoulder season

Late May and early June, and September, give you the park with meaningfully fewer people. Note the trade-off: Dunraven Pass and the Beartooth Highway do not open until late May and close in mid-October, so the earliest and latest weeks cost you access to the high passes.

5. Reserve dinner when you reserve the room

Restaurants inside the park fill as completely as the lodges do, so book the table at the same time as the bed. In peak season, turning up hungry at 7 p.m. at Old Faithful is not a plan.

6. Expect very little connectivity

Yellowstone’s lodgings mostly have no televisions, mobile coverage is patchy to non-existent across much of the park, and wi-fi exists at only some properties. Download your maps before you arrive and tell people at home you will be out of contact.

7. Check road status on the day you travel

Check the park’s road status map before every driving day, because closures are routine and detours here are measured in hours, not minutes. Construction delays are scheduled across the 2026 season, including up to 30-minute waits on the Northeast Entrance Road and parkwide chip sealing, and weather closes high passes at short notice.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to enter Yellowstone?

$35 for a private vehicle for seven days, $30 for a motorcycle, or $20 per person arriving on foot or by bicycle. Non-US residents aged 16 and over pay an additional $100 per person unless they hold an annual pass.

How far in advance should I book Yellowstone accommodation?

Campground reservations open exactly six months before your stay date, and park lodges take bookings up to 366 days ahead. Both sell out, so book at the moment the window opens rather than when you are ready.

Are there Airbnbs or holiday rentals inside Yellowstone?

No. There are no private rental homes inside the park boundary. Every holiday rental is outside one of the entrances, in places such as West Yellowstone, Gardiner, Cody and Island Park.

Which Yellowstone campground has hook-ups?

Only Fishing Bridge RV Park, which has water, sewer and 50-amp electrical hook-ups. It takes hard-sided vehicles only, with no tents or tent-trailers, because grizzly bears use the area.

Can you camp in a car park or a pullout in Yellowstone?

No. Overnight parking and car camping are prohibited anywhere other than a designated campground site you are registered in. This includes pullouts, picnic areas and parking lots.

Is Yellowstone open in winter?

Partly. The road from the North Entrance to Cooke City stays open all year, and the interior reopens from mid-December to mid-March to commercially guided snowmobiles and snowcoaches only. Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel is the main winter lodging, with a short closure in March and April.

Do I need a vehicle reservation for Yellowstone?

No. Yellowstone does not require timed vehicle reservations, unlike some other national parks. You still need an entrance pass, and buying it online before you arrive saves queuing.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Five things came out of checking this page against the park’s current information, and each one contradicts something a lot of older guides still say.

1. Non-US residents now pay $100 per person on top of the vehicle fee. A family of four from Europe arriving in one car pays $35 plus $400, not $35. Buying an America the Beautiful non-resident annual pass at $250 is cheaper than the surcharge for three or more adults and covers every federal site on the trip.
2. Campgrounds open six months ahead on a rolling basis, not a year ahead on a fixed date. Older guides still describe a 1 May release for the following year. Set a reminder for the exact date six months before your first night.
3. Pebble Creek Campground is still closed from the 2022 floods, with no reopening date. It appears in most lists of Yellowstone campgrounds and it is not bookable.
4. Dunraven Pass and the Beartooth Highway open last and close first, 22 May to 12 October in 2026. If Tower Fall to Canyon is part of your route, an early June or early October trip may not have it.
5. There are 11 campgrounds, not 12. The park’s own count is 11 with over 2,000 sites, and the discrepancy in older guides is Pebble Creek still being counted.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and this Yellowstone guide grew out of a collaboration with RV travellers who camped their way around the park. The team covers the United States for independent travellers, including the lodges, campgrounds, holiday rentals and gateway-town hotels worth booking, and updates this page when park fees, campground seasons and road dates change.