When people just out of college go traveling in Paris they’ll often sleep just about anywhere, but when they get some money a bit later in life they’ll want to stay only at the best hostels in France. Who could blame them? The prices of hostels in general tend to be similar from one to the next, but the services offered and the overall experience can vary greatly so being picky is a good thing.

The best way to get a handle on this is to do your research early and book your hostel beds as soon as you’ve bought your airline ticket into Paris. The crummy hostels will often have beds even at the last minute, but the best hostels are the ones that sell out early. But don’t be fooled by thinking the most famous hostels are always the best hostels. In some cases this will be true, but in other cases the most famous places are just the notorious party hostels where everyone goes to get wasted instead of seeing the sights.

If you scan around on website you’ll see that many of them have rating systems for hostels. You can almost always trust these systems because fraud seems to be very rare at this point, but you can never be too careful so it’s not a bad idea to ask around on travel message boards before you actually book.