Kaprun Lift Passes & Ski Area
The season here is longer than the ticket that covers it
Skiing in Kaprun runs from 10 October 2026 to 17 May 2027. The Ski ALPIN CARD, which is the pass everybody means when they say “the Kaprun lift pass”, does not run for anything like that long. Its own price bands begin in late November and finish in early April. There is a month of glacier skiing at the front of the season and six weeks at the back that the card simply does not cover.
That is the thing worth knowing before you book, and it catches people out in both directions. Book the third week of October and you are not buying an ALPIN CARD, because there is not one to buy yet — you are buying the Kitzsteinhorn's own glacier ticket, and it only opens one mountain. Book late April and it is the same story at the other end. Book any week between, and the card is the only sensible purchase and there is nothing to decide except how many days to put on it.
Everywhere else this page is about what those days get you: a glacier that tops out at 3,029m, a small mountain above the village that is better for learning than anything on the other side of the valley, four terrain parks and a superpipe, five signposted freeride routes, and a second resort at Zell am See that you reach on a bus rather than a lift.
Skip to the prices
Read the two altitudes together and the resort explains itself. The village and the bottom of the ski area sit in the valley; the top of it is a glacier well over two kilometres higher. Almost everything people find surprising about Kaprun — the October opening, the empty pistes in a warm January, the bus down to Zell am See for a night out — comes out of that gap.
Four tickets are sold in this village, and your dates pick one
Most resorts sell one pass and a couple of narrower versions of it. Kaprun sells four genuinely different things, and for once the choice is not about ability or budget. It is about the week you have booked.
- Ski ALPIN CARD — the one almost everybody buysThe alliance ticket, and the only pass in the tables below. It opens the Kitzsteinhorn, the Maiskogel and the Lechnerberg here in Kaprun, the Schmitten above Zell am See, and the whole Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn circuit over the hill. If your week falls inside its bands — and most weeks do — this is the ticket and there is nothing else to weigh up.
- The Kitzsteinhorn glacier pass — for the October and spring weeksBefore the ALPIN CARD's first band opens and after its last one closes, the lift company sells a ticket for its own mountains only. It is the reason you can ski here in autumn at all. It buys one ski area rather than three, so a week on it is a different holiday from a week on the card — the pistes are all above the tree line and there is no Zell am See and no Saalbach on it.
- The Maiskogel day pass — the one nobody mentionsA separate, cheaper day ticket covering the Maiskogel and the Lechnerberg and nothing else. If somebody in the party is on their first skis, or is having a quiet day, or is a parent standing at the bottom of a nursery slope for six hours, this is the honest buy and it is not the one you will be sold. Sold in full-day, half-day and afternoon forms.
- The SuperSkiCard — if you have a car and a fortnightA regional pass covering the Kitzsteinhorn along with a long list of other Salzburg, Tyrolean, Styrian and Carinthian areas. It costs more per day than the ALPIN CARD and it is the wrong buy for a normal ski week here. It becomes the right one if you are touring the region by car rather than staying put, which is a real way to spend a fortnight in this valley.
Kaprun lift pass prices for the 2026/27 season
Adult rates for the Ski ALPIN CARD, in all three forms it is sold in. A single day in the busy weeks is €82, six days is €440 and seven is €489 — so the per-day rate falls the longer you buy, and it falls again if your week lands in a quieter band.
| Duration | Ski ALPIN CARD | ALPIN CARD low season | ALPIN CARD flexi |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 day | €82 | €74 | — |
| 2 days | €161 | €145 | — |
| 3 days | €240 | €216 | — |
| 4 days | €316 | €284.50 | — |
| 5 days | €381 | €343 | — |
| 6 daysmost popular | €440 | €396 | — |
| 7 days | €489 | €440 | — |
| 8 days | €525 | €472.50 | — |
| 9 days | €551 | €496 | — |
| 10 days | €577 | €519.50 | — |
| 14 days | €692 | €623 | — |
| 5 in 7 days | — | — | €400 |
| 10 in 14 days | — | — | €636 |
We earn nothing on any of this. The lift company sets the price, sells it itself, and there is no version of a Kaprun lift pass that is cheaper for having come through us — so nothing on this page has a reason to steer you at one ticket over another. Equipment is the other way round: we hold the contract with Bründl Sports here directly, so booking your Kaprun ski hire before you travel costs less than walking up to the same counter on the first morning.
The three bands, and which weeks fall in which
The same six days costs noticeably less either side of the busy block, and the dates are published rather than guessed at. If your week can move, this is where the money is — not in where you buy the card.
- The busy blockPeak season, 19 Dec 2026 to 12 Mar 2027. Christmas, New Year, the whole of January and February and the first half of March — every school holiday and the best of the snow down at village level. The upper table is what you pay, and six days is €440.
- The two quiet windows27 Nov-18 Dec 2026 and 13 Mar-4 Apr 2027. One at each end of the card's life, priced identically to each other. Six days drops to €396, which is a real difference for a family of four before anybody has eaten anything — and the glacier does not care which week it is.
- The flexible card, for a week with a rest day in itFive days inside seven is €400, and ten inside a fortnight is €636. This matters more here than in most resorts, because a straight multi-day pass has to be used on consecutive days — there is no pausing it. If somebody in the party already plans a day at the spa, or the forecast has one bad day in it, price the flexible card first.
- And then there are the weeks with no band at allLook at the dates in the two items above and then at the season: skiing runs 10 October 2026 to 17 May 2027, which is weeks longer at both ends than the card's own calendar. Those weeks are not un-skiable and they are not a mistake in our record. They are glacier weeks, sold on the Kitzsteinhorn's own ticket, and they are the cheapest lift-served skiing this valley offers.
Buying it without losing your first morning
Buying is simple. There are four or five details around it that are not, and every one of them is easier to deal with at home than at a window with a queue behind you.
- Four places sell it, and they are not all where you would expectThe lift company lists a desk at the Gletscherjet 1 and Panoramabahn valley station out at the Kitzsteinhorn, one at the Kaprun Center in the village, an InfoService desk at the Alpincenter up on the mountain, and the Kaprun office. The one in the village is the useful one: buy the evening before and your first morning starts at a lift instead of a counter.
- Your pass starts working the afternoon before you skiMulti-day and day passes are valid from partway through the afternoon of the previous day. That is more useful than it sounds on an arrival day — if the transfer from Salzburg gets you in at a sensible hour, the pass you bought for tomorrow will already carry you up for a look, and it costs nothing extra.
- Long passes need a photograph, and reduced rates need proof of agePasses beyond about a week carry a photo requirement, and every child, youth or senior band is checked at the window. A passport or an ID card settles it in a second; a birthday argued verbally does not. This is also why we publish no reduced prices — the bands are defined by birth year and they move every season.
- Ask about the family schemes rather than assuming there are noneThe lift company runs a free card for the youngest children with an adult, a cut-price Saturday day ticket for children and teenagers, and a family offer over the Easter weeks in some seasons. None of it is on our tariff and all of it changes, so we will not print figures or dates — but if you are travelling with children it is worth two minutes on the operator's own page before you buy four full tickets.
Skiing the glacier, and what the altitude is really for
The Kitzsteinhorn is why the resort exists in the form it does, and it is worth being clear about what it is good at. It is not a big mountain. It is a certain one.
- The altitude buys you certainty, not varietySkiing from October to May at 3,029m is about as close to a guarantee as the Alps offer, and it is the single reason we score this resort five out of five for snow. What it does not buy is mileage. 62km across the whole area is two or three days of new ground rather than six, and the runs off the top are wide and open rather than interesting.
- The top is a plateau, and there is no tree line to fall back onThis is the honest trade for the snow. When the cloud comes in on a glacier there is nothing to give you contrast — no trees, no rocks, no edges — and a flat-light day up there is genuinely unpleasant rather than merely dull. Plan the glacier for the clear morning rather than saving it for the end of the week.
- The Black Mamba, and what counts as steep hereThe mountain's serious piste is the Black Mamba, and it is a proper one. Beyond it, the Maurer lift serves the best of the harder groomed skiing. We score Kaprun three out of five for advanced skiing and the marked pistes are the reason for the three — what lifts the score at all is the terrain off them, which is the section below.
- Ski touring is a real thing here, not a curiosityThe lift company opens marked touring routes from the Langwied — Eisbrecher and Schneekönigin — from autumn, with snow cover. If you skin, this is one of the earliest secure training grounds in the Alps, and it explains a chunk of the traffic on the glacier in October when the rest of Austria is still green.
Two smaller mountains that do more work than they look like
Most resorts have a nursery slope you tolerate for three days. Kaprun has two lower mountains that are a genuine part of the offer, and on a resort whose headline is a glacier that is easy to miss.
- The Maiskogel is a beginner's mountain, not a beginner's fieldLong, gentle and reached from the middle of the village, and it is the reason we score Kaprun four out of five for beginners while scoring its neighbour across the valley lower. A first-week skier here gets proper runs at a grade they can hold, rather than a rope tow and a view of somewhere better.
- The Lechnerberg is in the village itselfTwo button lifts, two easy blue pistes and a children's area run by the Kaprun ski schools, in the centre of town. It is on the ALPIN CARD, and it is the answer to the question every parent of a five-year-old asks, which is what happens on the afternoon when the child has had enough of the mountain.
- They have their own ticket, and it is much cheaperThe Maiskogel day pass covers the Maiskogel and the Lechnerberg together, in full-day, half-day and afternoon versions. If one adult in the party is not going up the glacier, this is the ticket for them — and nobody at the window will suggest it, because the ALPIN CARD is what the resort sells.
- And the ski bus, which is free and changes the mathsWithin the town of Kaprun the ski buses are free for everyone, pass or no pass, and the run between Zell am See and Kaprun is free with a valid Ski ALPIN CARD during lift operating hours. So the Schmitten is genuinely on your ticket without a car — and equally, a Zell am See bed is a workable base for skiing here. We publish no times or frequencies, because they are set season by season.
Four parks and a superpipe, and who they are for
This is the part of Kaprun that is genuinely a reason to come rather than a box ticked, and it is the reason we score the resort four out of five for parks. It is also the part that opens first and closes last.
- They open in sequence, and the sequence is the pointThe Glacier Park on the plateau is built first, in autumn, when nowhere else in the country has features on the ground. The Easy Park follows in December, the Central Park after it, and the South Central Park later in the winter. A rider who arrives in October and a rider who arrives in February are looking at two different set-ups on the same mountain.
- The superpipe is the real oneThe Kitzsteinhorn's pipe is built to competition dimensions and shaped by a crew that does this for a living, and the lift company hosts international freestyle competition on it — the World Rookie Tour Finals and the Austrian & German Masters among them. Very few pipes in the Alps are maintained at all any more, which is most of why this one matters.
- And there is a park for a nervous first goThe Easy Park is exactly what it says: beginner lines with tubes, boxes and small rails, set up so a first attempt at a feature is not also a first attempt at a five-metre kicker. There is a children's park on the Maiskogel as well, which is a gentler place to start again.
- What this means for bookingIf freestyle is the point of your trip, this is one of the few resorts in the Alps where the answer is straightforwardly yes, and where an October or a late-April week is a serious proposition rather than a compromise. If it is one thing among several, note that the parks are all up on the glacier — the rider in your party is committing to the same gondola chain every morning as everybody else.
The five freeride routes, and the rules that come with them
The marked freeride routes are the best skiing on this pass for a strong skier, and they are the reason the advanced score is not lower. They are also the part of the mountain where the resort takes the most trouble to tell you what you are getting into.
The lift company signposts five routes off the glacier, numbered and named: X1 Ice Age, X2 Westside Story, X3 Left Wing, X4 Jump Run and X5 Pipe Line. They sit close to the lifts, which is what makes them lappable rather than an expedition, and they cover a spread of terrain rather than all being the same pitch. They are open terrain: marked, but not pisted, and not patrolled the way a piste is.
What is unusual is the structure around them. There is a Freeride Info Base beside the Alpincenter carrying the day's avalanche warning and a transceiver checkpoint, and an Info Point at the entry to every one of the five setting out that route's terrain, its difficulty and its danger spots. There is a search-and-rescue training field at the Alpincenter, and the operator runs guided freeride days through the season. Very few resorts do this much, and it is worth using rather than walking past.
Both counters sit on the same chain of lifts
Nobody saves money by booking a lift pass early, which is why this page carries no offer on one. Equipment is the opposite case: we hold the contract with Bründl Sports in Kaprun ourselves, so booking through us costs less than walking up to the same counter on your first morning.
- Two Bründl shops — one at the valley station in the village, one high on the Kitzsteinhorn at the Alpincenter.
- Pick by where your morning starts, not by price. The village shop is the one you can walk to; the mountain one is where you already are if you are staying up for a second day of glacier skiing.
- A deposit today, the balance at the counter — with your sizes on the system before you land.
A glacier is hard on edges and hard on wax. It is worth telling the shop where you are actually skiing.
See both Kaprun shops →
The run count we cannot give you
Most ski pages open with a number of runs broken down by colour. This one does not, and the reason is worth two paragraphs because it tells you how the rest of the page was put together.
We hold no run count for Kaprun and we are not going to invent one. Our resort record carries the piste kilometres, the lift count and the altitudes from the operator, and every figure on this page is rendered out of it rather than typed into the copy — so when the tariff or the season moves, one entry changes and every page follows. What the record does not carry is a breakdown of runs by colour, because the operator does not publish one. The comparison sites do publish figures, and they disagree with each other, which makes choosing between them a coin toss dressed up as research. A colour chart built on a coin toss is worse than no chart, so there is not one here.
The same discipline applies to everything else on this page that is not in our record. The park names, the freeride routes, the ticket desks and the four ticket types were read off the lift company's own site in September 2026, not off an aggregator and not from memory. Where the operator publishes a number that changes with the season — opening times, bus frequencies, child bands, pipe dimensions — we have named the thing and sent you to them for the figure, rather than freezing this winter's version into a page that will still be here in three years.
And the judgements are ours, marked as ours. The scores quoted above — five for snow, four for beginners, four for parks, three for advanced, three for intermediates — come from our own eight-category rating of the resort, each written up with the reasoning behind it. Neither of us has worked a season in Kaprun. Between us there is over a decade in resort with Crystal Ski, TUI and Neilson, both finishing as Area Managers, but that was Söll, Mayrhofen and Kitzbühel on the Austrian side. We would rather say so than write this page as though we had skied the Black Mamba last Tuesday.
What to sort next
The pass is the expensive decision and it is now made. These four are the ones that decide whether the week around it runs smoothly.
See the whole thing before you buy it
The Kitzsteinhorn, the Maiskogel and the Lechnerberg on one zoomable sheet, including the lift chain out of the village and the run back down it.
Where to sleep for a first-lift start
Kaprun or Zell am See, and which corner of a very small village puts you closest to the gondola that starts your day.
When the weather takes a day off you
The thermal spa next door, the ice, the winter walking and 23km of cross-country track for anybody not on the lifts.
Getting here before the lifts turn
Salzburg is 1h10-1h30 away and we run the transfer ourselves.
Buying a Kaprun lift pass: what people ask
What lift pass do I need for Kaprun?
For almost any week between late November and early April, the Ski ALPIN CARD — it is the only pass sold across the whole area and it covers the Kitzsteinhorn, the Maiskogel and the Lechnerberg here, the Schmitten at Zell am See and the Saalbach circuit. Outside those dates the card is not on sale and you buy the Kitzsteinhorn's own glacier ticket instead.
How much is a Kaprun lift pass?
A single adult day in the busy block is €82, six days is €440 and seven is €489. In the two quieter windows six days drops to €396. The full tables are on this page and they are 2026/27 adult rates from our own resort record.
Can I ski in Kaprun in October?
Yes — that is the point of the place. Skiing starts on the glacier on 10 October 2026, snow permitting, and runs to 17 May 2027. What you cannot do in October is buy an ALPIN CARD, because its first band has not opened. You buy the Kitzsteinhorn's own ticket, which covers the glacier and the Maiskogel and neither of the other two ski areas.
How much is a child lift pass in Kaprun?
We do not publish one, deliberately. Children, youths and older skiers all pay reduced rates on proof of age, but our resort record holds adult prices only, and the reduced bands are defined by birth year and reset every season. We would rather send you to the lift company's live tariff than print a figure we cannot stand behind. Take a passport or an ID card to the window for anybody claiming a reduced rate, because it is checked.
Does the Kaprun lift pass include Zell am See?
Yes. The Ski ALPIN CARD covers the Schmitten above Zell am See as well as the Kitzsteinhorn and the Maiskogel here, and it reaches over into the Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn area too. What it does not include is a lift between Kaprun and Zell am See — they are separate mountains with a valley between them, and you travel by ski bus or car.
Is the ski bus free in Kaprun?
Within the town of Kaprun the ski buses are free for everyone, whether or not you hold a ski pass. The service between Zell am See and Kaprun is free with a valid Ski ALPIN CARD during lift operating hours. We do not publish times or frequencies because they are set season by season — check the lift company's own ski bus page before you plan a morning around one.
Is there a cheaper lift pass for beginners in Kaprun?
Yes, and it is easy to miss. The Maiskogel day pass covers the Maiskogel and the Lechnerberg only, in full-day, half-day and afternoon versions, and it costs a good deal less than the full card. If somebody in the party is on their first skis, or is not going up the glacier at all, that is the honest ticket for them.
Can I buy a half-day lift pass in Kaprun?
Yes. The afternoon ALPIN CARD covers the whole area from late morning and costs €70 in the busy block or €63 in the quieter weeks. It is the sensible buy on an arrival day. Worth knowing separately: a day or multi-day pass is already valid from partway through the afternoon before you ski.
Is there a flexi or non-consecutive lift pass?
Yes, and here it matters more than usual, because a straight multi-day pass must be used on consecutive days and cannot be paused. Five days inside a seven-day window is €400 and ten inside a fortnight is €636, with the days taken whenever you like.
How big is the Kaprun ski area?
62km of piste served by 24 lifts, running from 768m in the valley to 3,029m on the glacier. We do not publish a breakdown of runs by colour: the operator does not publish one, the comparison sites disagree with each other, and we would rather leave the number out than pick one.
Tell us what you actually paid
Lift companies move tariffs and shift band dates, and a page carrying last winter's numbers is worse than no page at all. If what you paid does not match what you read here, or a band has moved, tell us — every submission is read and checked before anything changes.
Sizes on the system before you land
The card will be waiting at the window and there is nothing to gain by rushing it. The skis are the other way round: two Bründl counters, booked through us, and your boots fitted from a sheet rather than from a queue.
Book your Kaprun ski hire →