Trip Budget Calculator
Every cost as either a lump sum or a daily rate, multiplied out across travellers and nights, with a contingency and the one number that actually compares trips: cost per person per day.
Nothing you type here is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere. It all runs in your browser.
The number that lets you compare trips
Trip totals are almost useless for comparison, because they bundle together two different things: the cost of getting there, which is fixed, and the cost of being there, which scales with how long you stay. A 2,000 EUR fortnight and a 2,000 EUR long weekend are not the same trip in any sense worth discussing.
Cost per person per day is the figure that compares. It also tells you the one thing that matters when a trip is over budget: whether the problem is the flights or the days. If the daily rate is fine and the total is not, you are buying too many days or the wrong flight. If the daily rate is the problem, no amount of shortening the trip fixes it — you need cheaper beds or cheaper food.
The lines people forget
- Getting to and from your own airport. Parking for two weeks, or two taxis at unsociable hours, is routinely a tenth of a cheap flight and almost never gets budgeted.
- The first and last day. A ten-night trip has eleven days of eating. Arrival day usually costs more than a normal day, because you are tired, you do not know where anything is, and you eat at the first place you see.
- Card and cash costs. Foreign transaction fees, ATM charges and a bad airport exchange rate quietly take two to five per cent off everything you spend, which is a real line item on a long trip.
- Gear you buy because of the trip. Boots, a bag, a jacket, a visa photo. It is trip money whether or not it feels like it.
- The way home when something breaks. This is what the contingency is for. Not souvenirs.
What a contingency is actually for
A contingency is not a slush fund for spending more. It is the money that lets a cancelled bus, a closed pass or a day in a clinic stay an inconvenience instead of becoming a crisis. Ten per cent covers ordinary friction. Twenty is right when you are somewhere remote, travelling in a season with weather, or on a route where the fallback is an unplanned flight. If you come home without spending it, it was still doing its job the whole time.
Currency is a label here, on purpose
This page does no conversion and holds no exchange rates. Rates move, a stale rate baked into a tool is worse than no rate at all, and a budget built at a fixed rate quietly lies to you by the time you travel. Enter every figure in one currency, label it, and if you are spending in another, budget a few per cent of slack for the rate moving against you — which is one more argument for the contingency line.
Questions people ask
How much should I budget per day?
That depends entirely on where and how you travel, and any page that gives you one number is guessing. Build it from the bottom up instead: what a bed costs where you are going, what three meals cost, what a bus costs. Two hours on accommodation listings and a couple of menus will get you closer than any average.
Does this convert currencies?
No. The currency field is a label so the summary reads properly. Exchange rates move, and a rate frozen inside a tool would silently make your budget wrong — enter everything in one currency and allow for the rate in the contingency.
What contingency percentage is right?
Ten per cent for a familiar place with good transport and a flight you could change. Twenty for somewhere remote, for a trip with weather in it, or where the plan B is buying a new ticket home at short notice.
Should I budget per night or per day?
Accommodation is per night; everything else is really per day, and a trip has one more day than it has nights. This page counts on nights for consistency, so if your trip is front-loaded — an expensive arrival day, an early departure — add that difference as a lump sum rather than nudging the daily rate.
Is my budget saved or sent anywhere?
No. Everything you type stays in the page. There is no backend, nothing is stored, and closing the tab discards it.
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