Free to read, and built to stay that way.
QuickPass is a free, volunteer-run guide. There is no subscription, no membership fee, no paid tier and no paywall on any note. Nobody pays to read the guide, and nobody pays us to write it — not a tour operator, not a hotel, not an advertising network. This page explains, in plain terms, how the project keeps running without any of that, where the small running fund comes from, where it goes, and why we have chosen to keep everything free rather than charge for it.
We write this page because "free" on the internet usually has a catch — your data is sold, your attention is the product, or the "free" content is quietly steering you toward whatever pays a commission. QuickPass has none of those catches, and the only way to prove that is to be open about the money. The whole budget is small enough to explain in a few paragraphs, which is itself the point: a project this size cannot afford a hidden agenda.
All free. Choose whichever suits you.
There are no paid levels. The three options below are simply the three ways people use QuickPass — they all cost nothing, none requires an account beyond an email for the optional update note, and you can move between them freely.
Just read
- All 106 notes, free to read on any device
- Every section, every ticket breakdown, every side-door tip
- No account, no sign-up, no email required
- No advertising and no tracking beyond basic server logs
- Re-walk dates shown on every note so you know how fresh it is
Get the update note
- Everything in "just read"
- A short monthly email — only the notes that changed that month
- A seasonal heads-up before the dust-storm and peak-heat windows
- Closure and ticket-change alerts for the major sites
- One email a month at most — we do not pad it, and one click unsubscribes
Help keep it going
- A one-off donation toward the running fund (entirely optional)
- Send a correction or a fresh observation from a recent visit
- Volunteer to re-walk a site if you live in or near Egypt
- Translate a core note into another language
- No donor gets different access — the guide is the same for everyone
Where the running fund comes from
The QuickPass running fund is small and deliberately so. It comes from three sources, in roughly this order of size. First, the founders' own contributions in the early years — for the first two years the project was simply paid for out of pocket by the people running it, because it was cheap to run and they wanted it to exist. Second, optional reader donations, which since 2025 have covered the bulk of the modest annual cost. Third, a small cultural micro-grant from a Cairo heritage foundation in 2024, used specifically to fund the volunteer travel needed to re-walk the Luxor and Aswan sites that the Cairo group could not reach often enough.
What the fund does not include is the part worth stating plainly. There is no advertising revenue, because the site carries no advertising. There is no affiliate commission, because there are no affiliate links anywhere in the guide. There is no sponsorship, because we accept none. There is no data revenue, because we do not sell, share or monetise reader data in any form — see the privacy page for exactly what little we collect and why. The entire budget is reader-and-founder funded, and it is small enough that no outside party could buy influence over the notes even if we let them.
Where the fund goes
The running fund covers four things, none of them salaries. The volunteers are unpaid; that is a deliberate design choice, because the moment anyone draws a salary the project needs reliable revenue, and reliable revenue in travel publishing is exactly the thing that corrupts the independence. So the fund covers: the website hosting and the domain (a few hundred dollars a year); the volunteers' travel costs to re-walk sites in Luxor and Aswan (the single biggest line, because the trains and the site tickets add up across a year of re-walks); the modest rent on the small shared Downtown room we use as a desk and a meeting point; and the occasional cost of replacing camera or recording equipment used to photograph the notes.
We keep the accounts as a registered non-profit cultural association (registration 503-271-948), which means the running fund is held transparently and separately from anyone's personal money. A reader who donates is donating to the association, not to an individual, and the association exists precisely so that the small amounts of money involved are handled cleanly. We are happy to share a plain summary of the annual budget with anyone who asks through the ask the desk page — there is nothing in it we would not want a reader to see.
Why not just charge a small fee?
This is the question we are asked most, and the answer is on the about page in full, but the short version belongs here too. The moment QuickPass charges for access, it acquires customers, and customers have to be kept happy. Over time that pressure softens the hard verdicts — the "this supplement is not worth it" and "this site is unpleasant in August" notes that are the whole reason the guide is useful. A free guide written by people with no financial stake in your choices can afford to be blunt. A paid guide cannot, not for long. We would rather stay small and free and blunt than grow into something polished and compromised.
It is also, frankly, a matter of who the guide is for. A paywall would lock out exactly the readers who most need free, honest information — students, budget travellers, people for whom an Egypt trip is a once-in-a-lifetime stretch. Those are the people we started the guide for. Keeping it free keeps it theirs.
If you would like to help
The single most valuable thing a reader can give us is not money — it is information. If you have just visited a site and something has changed (a new ticket price, a closed tomb, a moved entrance, a restaurant that has shut), write to the desk and we will update the note, crediting you by name or keeping you anonymous, whichever you prefer. That kind of on-the-ground correction is worth more to the guide's accuracy than any donation. Beyond that, if you live in or near Egypt and would like to re-walk sites as a volunteer, or if you would like to make an optional one-off contribution to the running fund, the ask the desk page is the way to reach us. No contributor and no volunteer gets different access to the guide — there is only one version, and it is free for everyone.
Questions about the money
Is there any catch to it being free?
No. No advertising, no affiliate links, no sponsored notes, no data selling, no paywall and no paid tier. The catch that usually hides behind "free" — your attention or your data being the product — does not apply here. We collect almost nothing (see the privacy page) and we monetise none of it. The guide is funded by founders and optional reader donations, full stop.
Do donors get extra content or faster answers?
No. There is exactly one version of the guide and everyone sees it. Donors do not get extra notes, earlier access, faster replies or any special treatment. A donation supports the running fund; it does not buy anything, because there is nothing to buy. We are deliberate about this — the moment donors got something extra, we would have created a paid tier by the back door.
Can my company sponsor the guide?
No, and thank you for asking rather than assuming. We do not accept sponsorship from any business, including tourism businesses, airlines, hotels, banks or technology companies. Accepting sponsorship would create exactly the conflict of interest the project exists to avoid. If your company wants to support Egyptian heritage, there are excellent museums and conservation funds that genuinely need the money more than we do.
How do I donate, and is it required?
It is entirely optional and most readers never donate, which is completely fine — the guide is free and meant to be used freely. If you do want to contribute to the running fund, write to the desk through the ask the desk page and we will send the details for a one-off contribution to the association. We do not run a recurring-donation programme because we do not want anyone signed up to a payment they forget about.
Will it always be free?
That is the intention, and it has held for six years. If the running fund ever became unsustainable, we would say so plainly on this page and ask readers for help before we ever considered compromising the independence — and if we genuinely could not keep it free and honest, we would rather wind the project down cleanly than turn it into something it was never meant to be. So far the small budget has been comfortably covered, and we expect it to stay that way.
Nothing to buy. Just read the guide.
Start with the section that matches your trip. If you want the short monthly update note, ask to be added — it is free too, and one click unsubscribes.
Open the guide