Both get good reviews on these boards.
Question, I want take two tours while I am in Rome: The Vatican and Ancient Rome.
Question 1) do you recommend the Icon Vatican Tour or the Context Vatican Tour and 2)do you recommend the Icon Ancient Rome Tour or the Context Ancient Rome Tour.
Your input would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!

Context for both.

Have done only Context Vatican tour. Loved them, loved them, loved them. Will do ancient Rome next time around with them.

Our family of 5 went with Icon. We took the Vatican tour and the Forum/Colleseum tour. The 2 1/2 hour Forum/Colleseum tour was more like 4 hours but the Vatican tour was truly 2 1/2. There were 13 people on the Forum tour and 15 people on the Vatican tour. The Forum tour seemed a bit more "necessary", since it would have been hard to know what we were seeing. We enjoyed our tours, but I can't compare with Context since we haven't used both.

How can we compare the two companies' tours unless we had take both companies' tours of the same place? I bet very few Fodorites have taken two guided tours of either site. You've already seen positive reviews of both, so only you can decide which looks better to you -- size of group, schedule compatibility, price.
I used ContextRome and was thoroughly satisified, but you could be very happy with Icon.
Just choose one, and enjoy.

kayd is exactly right. If it helps, I think Context limits groups to 6 or 8. We did a private tour with them, as our group was 6 adults and it was a bit cheaper to do a private tour. We were able to tell our guide what we were interested in and she took us there.

I've been trying to decide this same issue. Through Eternity Tours also looks very good and has good reviews here. I'm leaning toward Context for the Ancient Roman tours as they are strongly recommended by paradiselost who is our board expert on Ancient Rome. Through Eternity's Vatican tour looks very good and if you do their tour during the week, they end in the Vatican Museums rather then in St. Pete's so you can stay in the museum after the tour.

Our Context Tour of Ancient Rome had only six people in the group. Our guide, Cecelia, was great. It was a four + hour history lesson and was most informative. Worth every dollar we spent on it.

Just returned from our first trip to Italy. We used Icon for the Vatican tour. It was supposed to be 21/2 hrs, but definitely ran over. Maybe because of the crowds. There were 12 in our group. We thought it was great and worth the money

The main differences are price and size of group. I took Icon for both the Vatican (the 2-1/2 hours were actually closer to 5) and Ancient Rome. Both were excellent, the guides very informative. The cost was 25E, vs 60E for Context Rome. If price is a major concern for you, go with Icon.

My groups were large (around 25 people), so that's a big difference from Context with around 6-8. If that is of major importance to you and price is not a concern, then go with Context. However, I have read that Icon is now limiting their group size, and missypie just had a group of 13-15.

galjackson, I found out that I gave you some misinformation. I just received my Vatican Tour confirmation from Through Eternity Tours. If you take their Saturday tour it begins in St Peters and ends in the museum so you can stay as long as you like. During the week, their tour ends in St Peters.

Thank you all for your information and suggestions!