Your Next Tours

How many receivers does a 40-person tour need? Possibly none

Written by YNT Editorial

4 min readLast updated: Sep 29, 2026

Summarize with AI:ChatGPTClaudePerplexityGrokGoogle AI Mode

If you are asking how many receivers a 40-person tour needs, the honest answer is that it depends on whether you are handing out receivers at all. On our first open-air field test we ran a roughly 40-person tour and handed out none, because every participant was already carrying a device capable of receiving audio.

That changes what you have to count. Not units, and not people.

What happened on a 40-person tour with no receivers?

The tour was organised by someone else and we were guests on it. Participants joined by scanning a QR code and listened through their own phones on a local WiFi network, with no internet at the site at all.

The practical effect was not that we saved on rental. It was that the group stopped crowding towards the guide. Once everyone could hear in their own ear, people stood where they could see rather than where they could hear, and the usable group radius went from a few metres to the width of the area.

So what is the actual ceiling?

Your portable router, not a receiver count. The app sets no fixed listener limit on the local network; the limit is how many clients your router will hold and how well it covers the area you are standing in.

The largest number of simultaneous listeners we have measured in a production session is 29. It comes from a 36-person city tour in Ankara in September 2026, and it is a measurement, not a limit.

What you checkRenting receiversListening on own phones
Unit countOrdered in advance, fixedNot applicable
Late group changeRe-order or go shortNo effect
DistributionEvery stop, both directionsNone
ChargingYours, overnight, all unitsParticipant's own phone
HygieneCovers or cleaning per groupOwn headphones
Real constraintMinimum order quantityRouter coverage

What should you count instead?

Three things, in this order.

  1. Phones. Effectively all of them, on every adult tour we have run.
  2. Headphones. This is the real gap, and it is the only number worth collecting in advance.
  3. Battery. A participant at 6 percent at the start of a three-hour tour is your problem before the tour begins, not during it.
  4. Router coverage for the area, which matters more than the participant count.
  5. A handful of spare cheap earbuds, sized to the headphone gap rather than the group.

What about participants without headphones?

They are the honest weak point, and the number is small. In practice most adults on a tour carry something; the ones who do not can hold the phone at low volume close to the ear, which works in a quiet site and not in wind.

Carrying a few spare pairs covers it. The point is that you are buying five or ten pairs of cheap earbuds, not renting forty receivers, and the spares stay with you between tours instead of going back in a courier bag.

Frequently asked questions

How many receivers does a 40-person tour need?
None, if participants listen on their own phones. On our roughly 40-person field test at Gobeklitepe we handed out zero receivers and every participant heard the guide through the phone already in their pocket.
How many people can listen at the same time?
There is no fixed listener limit on the local network: the ceiling is your portable router, not the app. The largest simultaneous count we have measured in a real session is 29, on a 36-person city tour.
What happens to participants who have no headphones?
They can hold the phone at low volume near the ear, which works at a quiet site but not in wind. Carrying a few spare pairs of cheap earbuds covers the gap, and it is a much smaller number than the group size.
Does a bigger group need a bigger router?
It needs a router that covers the area and holds the client count, which is a different question from group size. A group of forty standing together is easier than a group of fifteen spread over a long site.
Do participants need internet at the site?
No. The guide's phone serves the audio over a local WiFi network, so the system works at sites with no mobile coverage at all. That is how the Gobeklitepe test ran.

Stop counting receivers

Your Next Tours runs the audio from the guide's phone over a local network, so group size stops being a purchasing decision. The Gobeklitepe field test has the full account of the tour described here.

Once you know how many receivers you need, the next question is what they cost: the published tariff and the per-person day maths are on the rental cost page.

See how it works
Share:

Related articles