Private tour guide at Mont St. Michel

My first thought is Mt- St-Michel does not need additional people there! It is so crowded that I don’t see how you would benefit from a guide.

Susan, while you're waiting for a firsthand recommendation, take a look at the guide list on the website of the OffIce De Tourisme Mont Saint-Michel Normandie?

https://www.ot-montsaintmichel.com/en/plan-your-stay/our-history-is-told/guide-lecturers/

They unfortunately don't provide a lot of information about their tours on that site, such as length of tour or price, but you can google up the name of the guide or tour for more info. For instance, doing a search for Visites guidées en Bretagne et Normandie...

https://www.ot-montsaintmichel.com/en/guides/visites-guidees-en-bretagne-et-normandie/

...came up with this:
https://www.visite-guidee-bretagne.com/en/

Give the diminutive size of the mont, it's entirely possible that a guide isn't necessary, and that materials available on the island would be enough for self-guided discovery at one's own pace.

IMHO the only use of a private tour guide would be if you are going to walk across the tidal flats in which case it would be important to have one for safety reasons. But can't imagine needing one for the island and the abbey.

Totally in agreement with Suki and janettravells44. No need for a guide for the Mont itself. And when you get to the abbey, there is a wonderful audio guide available. I haven't walked the tidal flats, nor do I personally ever opt for guides for anything. But if one were valuable, I would guess it would be there.

We loved our time in Mt. St. Michel. If you are staying on the island overnight it is wonderful. There are very few rooms which make for very few people in the off hours. We arrived as the hoards of tourists were leaving, checked into our hotel and pretty much had the place to ourselves to wander the streets in the evening. We got up early the next morning and were the first in line for the Abby and then headed out after. It was a completely different experience than doing it as a day trip or staying in one of the nearby towns overnight. A tour guide is not really necessary especially if you read up on it.

It depends what sort of tourist you are as to whether you need a tour guide. If you're happy with received wisdom (and sometimes quite dodgy translations into English) then a guide isn't necessary. If you're the kind of person who asks questions then a guide may well be the way to go.

We never used to get a guide, these days we almost invariably do when we're in a new (to us) city