Open to read, and built to stay that way.
Quick4Pass is a free, volunteer-maintained open knowledge base. There is no subscription, no membership fee, no paid tier and no paywall on any guide. Nobody pays to read the base, and nobody pays us to maintain 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 fund comes from, where it goes, and why we keep everything open rather than charging 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. Quick4Pass has none of those catches, and the only way to prove it is to be open about the money. The whole budget is small enough to explain in a few paragraphs, which is itself the point.
All free. Choose whichever fits.
There are no paid levels. The three below are simply the three ways people use Quick4Pass — 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 124 guides, open 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
- Maintenance dates on every guide so you see how fresh it is
Get the update note
- Everything in "just read"
- A short monthly email — only the guides 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; one click unsubscribes
Help keep it open
- A one-off donation toward the running fund (entirely optional)
- Send a correction or a fresh observation from a recent visit
- Volunteer to maintain a guide if you live in or near Egypt
- Translate a core guide into another language
- No contributor gets different access — the base is the same for everyone
Where the running fund comes from
The Quick4Pass 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, because it was cheap to run and we wanted it to exist. Second, optional reader donations, which since 2024 have covered the bulk of the modest annual cost. Third, a small cultural micro-grant from a Cairo heritage foundation in 2023, used specifically to fund the volunteer travel needed to maintain the Luxor and Aswan guides 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 base carries no advertising. There is no affiliate commission, because there are no affiliate links anywhere in the base. 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. The entire budget is reader-and-founder funded, and it is small enough that no outside party could buy influence over the guides even if we let them.
Where the fund goes
The fund covers four things, none of them salaries. The volunteers are unpaid; that is deliberate, because the moment anyone draws a salary the project needs reliable revenue, and reliable revenue in travel publishing is exactly what corrupts the independence. So the fund covers: the website hosting and the domain; the volunteers' travel costs to maintain the Luxor and Aswan guides (the biggest line, because the trains and site tickets add up across a year); the modest rent on the small Garden City room we use as a base; and the occasional cost of replacing the camera or recording gear used to photograph the guides.
We keep the accounts as a registered non-profit cultural association (registration 836-194-572), so the fund is held transparently and separately from anyone's personal money. A reader who donates is donating to the association, not to an individual. We are happy to share a plain summary of the annual budget with anyone who asks through the write-in 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 hear most, and the full answer is on the about page, but the short version belongs here too. The moment Quick4Pass 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 base is useful. A free base written by people with no financial stake in your choices can afford to be blunt. A paid one cannot, not for long. We would rather stay small and free and blunt than grow into something polished and compromised.
It is also a matter of who the base 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 base for. Keeping it open keeps it theirs.
If you would like to help
The 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 in and we will update the guide, crediting you by name or keeping you anonymous. That kind of on-the-ground correction is worth more to the base's accuracy than any donation. Beyond that, if you live in or near Egypt and would like to maintain guides as a volunteer, or to make an optional one-off contribution to the fund, the write-in page is the way to reach us. No contributor and no volunteer gets different access — there is one version of the base, open to everyone.
Questions about the money
Is there any catch to it being free?
No. No advertising, no affiliate links, no sponsored guides, 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.
Do donors get extra content or faster answers?
No. There is exactly one version of the base and everyone sees it. Donors do not get extra guides, earlier access, faster replies or any special treatment. A donation supports the fund; it does not buy anything, because there is nothing to buy.
Can my company sponsor the base?
No, and thank you for asking rather than assuming. We accept sponsorship from no business, including tourism businesses, airlines, hotels, banks or technology companies. Accepting it would create exactly the conflict of interest the project exists to avoid. If your company wants to support Egyptian heritage, there are museums and conservation funds that 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 base is free and meant to be used freely. If you do want to contribute to the fund, write in 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 open?
That is the intention, and it has held since 2021. If the fund ever became unsustainable, we would say so plainly here and ask readers for help before ever 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.
Nothing to buy. Just read the base.
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 base