Buggy or quad to Teide? The price gap is real, and so is the reason for it
Updated October 1, 2026 · 8 min read
The short answer: per head, the quad costs roughly half as much. If you hold a car driving licence and want to drive yourself, take the Quad Adventure Tour in Teide National Park — €80 per person, four hours, 4.8 stars from 1,659 reviews, making it the most-reviewed quad listing on the island. Sharing one machine between two is cheaper: €89.50 for the Teide National Park Day or Sunset Tour on Quads, around €44.75 per person. The buggy earns its price for one reason alone — it takes young children, strapped into a seat. Without a child, you pay roughly double in a buggy for the same landscape.
Check availability and prices for the Quad Adventure Tour
Five trips compared
| Trip | Duration | From | Rating | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quad Adventure Tour in Teide National Park | 4 hours | €80 per person | 4.8 (1,659) | couples and friends who both want to drive |
| QUAD excursion TEIDE volcano QUAD DOUBLE | 3 hours | €56.95 per person | 4.8 (313) | solo travellers and tight budgets |
| Teide National Park Day or Sunset Tour on Quads | 3 hours | €89.50 per group up to 2 | 4.4 (656) | a couple sharing one vehicle |
| Teide National Park Guided Buggy Tour | 3½ hours | €195 per group up to 2 | 4.6 (814) | anyone who wants the most-reviewed buggy and accepts tarmac |
| Morning or Sunset Teide Buggy Tour | 3 hours | €200 per group up to 2 | 4.8 (519) | families with young children |
They sit next to each other in every listing: open vehicle, three hours, volcanic landscape, day or sunset. One costs €56.95 and the other costs €195, and the pictures look almost the same. The difference is not the view — both go to roughly the same viewpoints on roughly the same roads. It is who can come with you, who has to hold a licence, and what you are actually paying per head.
First, the prices are not comparable as printed
Every buggy listing is priced per vehicle, labelled “per group up to 1” or “per group up to 2”. They run from €110 to €210:
- €110 for a three-hour tour from Puerto de la Cruz, single-seat
- €140 for a four-hour off-the-beaten-track tour in the south, up to two
- €160 for a three-hour guided Teide tour, day or sunset, up to two
- €195 for the most-reviewed buggy tour on the island, 3½ hours with 814 reviews
- €199 for the Masca valley and pirate village route
- €200 and €210 for the morning-or-sunset and the wine-tasting versions
Quads split both ways. Most are per person — €56.95, €60, €65, €75, €80, €82.80 — but several are per quad for two: €89.50, €100, €140, €160.
Do the division before you compare anything. That €195 buggy costs €97.50 per person for a couple. The €89.50 quad for two costs €44.75 per person. On a per-head basis a buggy is roughly twice the price of a quad for the same three hours in the same landscape.
Check availability and prices for the €56.95 double quad
If the quad side is where you are heading, the four questions that separate the quad listings from each other are set out in quad tours to Teide, and there is no point repeating them here.
The thing that actually justifies the buggy price
Children.
On a quad, a child is a passenger clinging to a driver on an open machine, and operators set their own limits on whether that is allowed at all. In a buggy, a child sits in a seat with a harness, and the operators say so explicitly:
The €195 Teide buggy tour states that drivers must be over 18 with a valid driving licence — temporary or provisional licences are not accepted — and that children may come as passengers provided they meet a minimum height of 120 cm for two-seater buggies, or a minimum age of three years for four-seater buggies. Under-18s must be accompanied by an adult.
The €200 morning-or-sunset tour sets its own figures: drivers at least 21 with a valid licence, and a minimum age of four for children, with the four-seat option mandatory and children seated in the back until age 14.
Two operators, two different sets of numbers, both stated plainly on their own pages. That is the pattern across this category, and it is why we do not publish a single “minimum age for buggies on Tenerife” — there isn’t one. What there is, is a figure per operator, on the booking page, for the option you select.
For a family of four, the arithmetic flips completely. A four-seater buggy at €200 carries two adults and two children for €200 total. Four quad seats do not exist at any price for a three-year-old.
Check availability and prices for the Morning or Sunset Buggy Tour
The licence question is where they genuinely differ
Both buggy tours above require a valid driving licence from the driver, and one of them rejects provisional licences by name. One also runs a driving test before departure and has you sign a driving contract, which it describes as compliance with Spanish traffic law and EU road safety rules.
That is a meaningful practical difference from the cheaper end of the quad market, where some operators state that no previous experience or driving licence is necessary. If nobody in your group holds a full licence, the buggy category is closed to you and the quad category may not be. If you do hold one, it changes nothing about the price.
Bring the physical licence. An app on a phone is not what the desk asked for.
“Off-road” is the word doing the most work
Here is the sentence that should change how you read this entire category. The €195 buggy tour — the most reviewed in this category — states in its own conditions: “The whole route is on paved roads.”
That is not a criticism of the tour. It is a well-run outing to spectacular places and 814 reviews say so. But if you booked a buggy over a coach because you pictured mud, ruts and dust, you may have paid a premium for a vehicle with no roof rather than for terrain.
Read each listing for what it claims about the surface, in its own words, and treat vague adventure language as decoration. Some tours genuinely include unpaved sections; one quad listing sells itself as “100% off-road” at €130 per person for 90 minutes, which is the honest end of the market and priced accordingly. Inside the national park itself, assume nothing about what any operator is permitted to drive on — that is theirs to state, and an unclear answer is an answer.
Two things that apply to both
Closed shoes are mandatory, stated outright by the €195 operator and normal across the category. Sandals at the meeting point is how people get turned away.
The cold at altitude is not a rumour. Sunset departures come back down an open vehicle in the dark from around 2,000 metres, and it catches people out in August as reliably as in February. Bring more layers than the coast suggests — this applies to everyone in the vehicle, and most of all to a child strapped into a seat who is not moving and cannot warm themselves up. If the cold is likely to be the problem, take the morning departure; it is the same landscape in better colour.
Our recommendation
For most people: the Quad Adventure Tour in Teide National Park at €80 per person. Four hours, 4.8 stars from 1,659 reviews — more than double the number behind the most-reviewed buggy tour, and everyone sits at their own handlebars. For two, that is €160 instead of €195 for the buggy, and you drive for an hour longer.
On a tight budget: the QUAD excursion TEIDE volcano QUAD DOUBLE at €56.95 per person, three hours, 4.8 stars from 313 reviews. That is the cheapest entry point per head. It only gets cheaper if two of you share one machine: the Teide National Park Day or Sunset Tour on Quads costs €89.50 for two, or €44.75 per person — but only 4.4 stars.
For families with young children: the Morning or Sunset Teide Buggy Tour at €200 per vehicle, 4.8 stars from 519 reviews. It is the only one of the five that takes a young child strapped into a seat — check the operator’s minimum age for your date before booking. For a family of four, it is also the best price per head in this entire article.
If none of those fits: anyone without a full driving licence does not get behind the wheel of a buggy — the quad listings that state no licence is required, or a passenger role, are what remain. Anyone chasing genuine off-road terrain is in the wrong place with the most-reviewed buggy: according to its own operator, the whole route is on tarmac. And anyone who really just wants to see the volcano should take neither — an open vehicle is an expensive, cold way to reach a viewpoint that a Teide tour with the cable car reaches more cheaply, with a roof, and higher up. The remaining listings are at buggy and quad tours.
