Free things to do with kids in San Francisco

Pier 39 Sea Lions

Fisherman's Wharf

The sea lions arrived on K-Dock, on the west side of Pier 39, after the 1989 earthquake and never left. You hear them before you see them, and the smell arrives about the same time. Toddlers can watch through the railing without being lifted, which matters more than it sounds after an hour of carrying.

Numbers swing with the season. The record was over 2,100 in the spring of 2024, but most of them swim south to the Channel Islands to breed in early summer, so a June or July visit can be a dock with a handful of animals on it. Upstairs, the Sea Lion Center run by Aquarium of the Bay is also free, and warm.

Tell them before you arrive that feeding the sea lions is against federal law. The fish stalls are on the way.

Free entry

Yes

Musée Mécanique

Fisherman's Wharf

More than 300 coin-operated machines in a shed on Pier 45: fortune tellers, strength testers, hand-cranked peep shows, player pianos, tiny mechanical dioramas, and then pinball and video games at the back. Laffing Sal, the six-foot cackling woman rescued from the old Playland at the Beach, stands by the door. She frightens some toddlers and thrills most six-year-olds.

Walking in is free. Leaving without spending is not a thing that happens. Most machines take 25 to 50 cents a go, there are change machines inside, and a ten-dollar bill of quarters goes quickly. Decide the budget on the pavement, not in front of the fortune teller. Many of the old cabinets are tall, so small children need lifting to see in.

It stays open into the early evening, which makes it the rescue for a foggy wharf afternoon.

Free entry

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

National Maritime Museum

Fisherman's Wharf

A 1930s bathhouse built to look like an ocean liner, on the sand at Aquatic Park. The ship models are fine; the thing children actually look at is the murals and tile work inside, a whole underwater dream world painted in the WPA years. Outside, the open-water swimmers go into the cove all year, which is its own entertainment.

It is small. The Maritime Visitor Center a block away on Jefferson Street is also free and has a huge lighthouse lens that is worth 20 minutes when the fog is in. Do not promise a boat: the historic ships from Hyde Street Pier are at Mare Island while the pier is renovated.

Free entry

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Cable Car Museum

Nob Hill

This is the one to do if you only do one indoor thing. It is not a museum about the cable cars so much as the working powerhouse for them: the enormous wheels turning in the pit are pulling the actual cables under the streets outside, right now. Downstairs you can watch the cables come into the building. Machine-minded children stay a long time.

It is loud, there is no food, and everything beyond the machinery is reading. Toddlers are usually done in 15 minutes; five- to ten-year-olds last longer. Step-free entry is up a ramp on the Washington Street side, with an elevator between floors.

The Powell lines stop outside, so ride up and walk in; the ride is the part you pay for.

Free entry

Yes

Restroom

Yes

Changing table

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory

Chinatown

One narrow room on Ross Alley, between Jackson and Washington, where cookies have been folded by hand off a hot griddle since 1962. Children usually get handed a flat, unfolded one still warm, and that is the bit they remember.

The visit takes about three minutes, the queue sometimes longer. Photos cost 50 cents, it is cash only, and almost everyone walks out with a bag. The alley is tight, so fold the stroller or wear the baby. Portsmouth Square playground is two blocks away for the energy the cookies produce.

Free entry

Yes

San Francisco Railway Museum

Embarcadero

One room across from the Ferry Building, at the F-line stop, and the reason to go is a full-size replica of the motorman's platform of a 1911 streetcar that children can stand at and operate. Ten or fifteen minutes, then out.

It works as the start of something rather than the whole thing: ride an F-line vintage streetcar up the Embarcadero (paid fare), wander the Ferry Building, and let them loose at the Waterfront Playground in Sue Bierman Park, two minutes' walk away. It opens in the afternoons only, so it is not a morning plan.

Free entry

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Salesforce Park

SoMa

A park on the roof of the Salesforce Transit Center (the bus station, not the tower), about four blocks long with a half-mile loop path. For small children the free glass gondola up from Mission and Fremont is half the outing; you ride standing, and it is over too soon.

Up top, the bus fountain has 247 small jets that fire as buses move underneath, and children will stand and wait for it with real patience. The play area has rope climbing on soft ground. There are no dogs allowed, so the lawn is clean enough for a crawling baby. Over-eights will find the play area small.

The gondola keeps shorter hours than the park, so go up by it early and save the walk for the way down.

Restroom

Yes

Ages

All ages

Yerba Buena Gardens Children's Garden

SoMa

On the roof of Moscone Center, at Fourth and Howard: tall metal slides, a 25-foot tube slide, a hedge maze, a stream, sand and a climbing wall. It is the best free playground downtown, by some distance.

The catch is the view. From the slides a child can see the 1906 carousel, the ice rink, the bowling alley and the Children's Creativity Museum, and every one of them costs money. Decide on the way in whether the carousel is happening. In summer the Children's Garden Series puts on free outdoor shows.

The metal slides are fast when it is dry and hot on the rare warm day.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Ages

All ages

Presidio Tunnel Tops

Presidio

The Outpost is the reason to come: two acres of logs, boulders, hill slides and a giant bird's nest, with the bridge behind it. It is the best playground in the city for the two-to-twelve spread, because the big ones can climb high while the small ones run the channels. Those water channels, modelled on the Presidio's old creeks, will get everyone wet; bring a change of clothes even on a grey day.

The Field Station next door is a free hands-on nature room, and there are family restrooms right by the playground. On summer weekends food trucks set up on the lawn.

The hidden cost is parking, which is paid in every Presidio lot. The free PresidiGo shuttle runs from downtown and avoids it.

Free entry

Yes

Reservations

No

Restroom

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

All ages

Fort Point

Presidio

A Civil War brick fort sitting directly under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge, so the traffic roars overhead the whole time you are inside. There are cannons, echoing rooms children can shout in, and spiral granite stairs up to the roof, where the wind will take your hat. Rangers give free history talks at weekends.

Only the ground floor and the theatre are step-free; everything above is stairs, so leave the stroller at the bottom. The interior is closed on some weekdays even though the grounds are open daily, and parking is limited. The seawall gets splashed, and the surfers below are half the show.

Free entry

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

San Francisco Fire Department Museum

Presidio Heights

A room next to a working firehouse on Presidio Avenue, full of hand-pulled and horse-drawn engines, brass helmets and photographs of 1906. It is volunteer-run, the hours are short and not always kept, and 20 minutes covers it.

So why is it here? Because for a three-year-old who talks only about fire trucks, it is the best 20 minutes in the city, and it costs nothing. Donations are welcome.

Free entry

Yes

Koret Children's Quarter

Golden Gate Park

Thought to be the first public playground in the country, opened in 1888 at the east end of the park. The old concrete slides are the classic, and they work the same way as the ones on Seward Street: bring a piece of cardboard. There is a wave-shaped climbing wall and plenty of rope.

The catch is the 1914 carousel next door, which is about a dollar a ride for children, free for under-fives with a paying adult, and runs to hours that depend on the weather. Parking is east of Bowling Green Drive by the lawn bowling club, not beside the carousel. If legs are still working, walk on to Stow Lake.

Restroom

Yes

Fenced

No

Swings

Yes

Picnic tables

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

All ages

Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park

The free parts worth crossing the park for are at the west end. Bison have lived in a paddock off JFK Drive since the 1890s, and you watch them through the fence. Just east, at Spreckels Lake, the model yacht club sails radio-controlled boats at weekends, as it has since 1898; the loop is flat and under half a mile.

Stow Lake is the other one: walk the loop, cross the stone bridge, climb Strawberry Hill to the waterfall. The pedal boats are paid, and visible. Much of JFK Drive is closed to cars, so this is the place for scooters and balance bikes.

Free entry

Yes

Lands End and the Sutro Baths

Outer Richmond

Start at the Lands End Lookout for the restrooms and the café, then walk down to the Sutro Baths ruins, the concrete bones of an 1890s swimming palace that children climb around as if it were built for them. Past the ruins a short sea cave opens onto crashing waves; go at low tide only, and hold hands, because the rocks are slick.

The coastal trail heads east towards the Mile Rock overlook. The first stretch from Merrie Way is step-free; later sections have stairs, and the cliffs are unfenced in places, so small children go in the carrier. Parking is free at Merrie Way and the Lookout, and it fills at weekends.

Free entry

Yes

Restroom

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Helen Diller Playground, Dolores Park

Mission

The 45-foot super slide drops nearly 30 feet down the hill between boulders, and it is the slide San Francisco children ask for by name. Around it are separate areas for two-to-fives and five-to-twelves, a sand and water garden with a raised sand table, a shipwrecked boat and a sound garden.

Dolores Park is usually sunnier than the rest of the city, which means afternoons are busy and the lawn above can turn into a party at weekends. The restrooms are a walk from the playground. The accessible path comes in from the Dolores Street side. Bi-Rite Creamery is a block away on 18th Street, and that is where the money goes.

Restroom

Yes

Fenced

No

Shade

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Picnic tables

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

All ages

Randall Museum

Corona Heights

A city-run museum on the side of Corona Heights with more than a hundred live animals that cannot go back to the wild: snakes, lizards, raccoons, a tarantula. Toddlers go straight to the small moving train layout with Bay Area landmarks on it. On Saturdays the model railroad club runs its big layout for the public, and that is the day to come if trains are the point.

It has a free car park, which fills on Saturdays, and the aquarium corner is underwhelming. Saturday drop-in art classes cost extra. Outside, the Corona Heights trail is a short, steep scramble to a rocky top with the whole city below it; good legs only.

Free entry

Yes

Restroom

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

All ages

Seward Street Slides

Castro

Two long, steep concrete slides set into a hillside in 1973, designed by a 14-year-old who won a competition the sculptor Ruth Asawa ran. You sit on a flattened piece of cardboard and go much faster than you expected. Bring your own cardboard; there is sometimes a pile at the top, but not reliably.

Wear trousers, expect a scraped elbow, and leave the toddler on your lap or at the bottom: the sweet spot is roughly five to twelve. The sign says adults must be accompanied by children, which is the right way round. It is a half-hour stop, not an afternoon, and the surrounding streets are steep for parking.

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

All ages

Heron's Head Park

Bayview

The city's biggest nature play area, and not a plastic slide in it: logs, stumps and boulders to climb, a rope bridge, a tree cave and lookouts. More than a hundred local children had a say in the design, and it won a UNICEF award for it.

After the climbing, walk the flat spit out into the bay through the restored salt marsh, where the shorebirds are. The EcoCenter next door runs ecology workshops. The surroundings are industrial and it is out of the way without a car, which is also why you will have it nearly to yourselves.

Restroom

Yes

Picnic tables

Yes

Ages

All ages