Waterfalls in the United States: what it takes to see each one

The 56 listings behind these waterfalls in the United States run from under 30 to more than 500 EUR, and the spread has little to do with how good the waterfall is. The cheapest, under 30 EUR, is an audio app for driving yourself around Kauai. The dearest, above 500 EUR, is a Portland city tour with a half day in the Columbia River Gorge, and, like every other price on the page, it is per person. In between sit three places, Kauai, Maui and the Gorge, and a country whose waterfalls differ less by height than by what it takes to see them: regulated water, a snowmelt season, a permit, a storm. This page compares American waterfalls that way, including the ones we sell nothing for, and sends you to a page of tours for each of the three places where we do.

Niagara, the other waterfall every American knows, has its own tour pages, and they sit under Canada on this site because the falls straddle the border. Start at Niagara Falls or go straight to the American side tours. Nothing about Niagara is repeated here beyond a paragraph, so the rest of this page is about the places with no Canadian twin: three islands and a gorge that sell tours, and a handful of famous falls that sell none. If you only have time for one section, read the table of eight waterfalls and the paragraph on permits and closures that follows it, because those are where a booking goes wrong, and every date in them is the one we read on 22 October 2026.