Trip Budget Calculator
Build a full travel budget by category — flights, stays, food, transport and more — for any number of travellers and days, in your currency, with per-person and per-day breakdowns.
- Free, no sign-up
- Works worldwide
- Instant results
Enter what you expect to spend in each category to see your total, per-person and per-day breakdown.
How much should you budget for a trip?
There is no single number. A realistic budget is built from your own categories — flights and activities per person, accommodation per night, and food and local transport per person per day — multiplied across your travellers and trip length, plus a contingency buffer of around 10%. This calculator adds it up and splits it per person and per day in your currency.
Methodology: Every figure is built from the amounts you enter — we apply no assumed or 'typical' prices. Each category is multiplied by your travellers, days or nights, summed, and a contingency buffer added. Calculations run entirely in your browser; nothing is stored. How we test & calculate.
What a trip budget really is
A trip budget is not a single guessed number — it is the sum of a handful of categories, each scaled the right way. Some costs are per person (flights, activities, insurance), some are per night (accommodation), and some are per person, per day(food, local transport). Multiply each by your group size and trip length, add the one-off extras, and you have a number you can actually trust — and save toward. Building it this way is far more accurate than copying a “cost of a week in X” figure from somewhere, because it reflects your trip.
How this calculator works
Set your travellers, days and nights, and pick a currency. Then fill in each category and choose how it scales — total, per person, per night, per day, or per person per day. The calculator multiplies and sums everything live, adds your contingency buffer, and shows the total alongside three views that matter for planning and splitting: per person, per day, and per person per day. Add or remove categories freely; nothing is assumed and nothing is stored.
Why it matters
Under-budgeting is the most common way a good trip turns stressful. Two things prevent it: a contingency buffer (around 10%) for the costs that never make the list — baggage fees, a taxi, a better dinner, conversion fees — and an honest daily spending figure for food and getting around. Seeing the per-person-per-day number is often the wake-up call: it is what you will actually spend on the ground, every day, multiplied by everyone.
A worked example
Say two friends plan a 7-day trip (6 nights). For example, they enter flights at 450 each, a 130-per-night hotel, 60 per person per day for food and local transport, and 200 each for activities, with a 10% buffer. The calculator returns roughly 3,210 in total — about 1,610 per person, or around 230 per person per day. Change the hotel to a hostel or drop a travel day and the totals update instantly. (Those amounts are illustrative inputs to show the maths — your real figures come from flight and hotel searches for your dates.)
Who it is for
Couples and families sizing up a holiday, solo travellers keeping a daily cap, friends splitting a group trip fairly, and digital nomads comparing one base against another by simply changing the nightly and daily numbers. Because it is destination-agnostic, it works equally for a weekend city break and a month-long multi-country route.
Common mistakes to avoid
The usual slips: (1) forgetting the buffer, so the first surprise blows the budget; (2) leaving out daily spending money for food and local transport — often a third of the total; (3) entering a per-person cost as a group total (or vice-versa) — choosing the right basis per line fixes this; (4) budgeting accommodation as one lump instead of per night, which hides the effect of adding a night; and (5) mixing currencies — keep every amount in the single currency you selected.
Budget calculator vs. trip cost estimator
These two tools complement each other. This budget calculator is for the whole trip — typically flight-inclusive, destination-agnostic, split across travellers and days. The trip cost estimator is route-based: it works out fuel from driving distance, plus hotels and food, for a road trip between two specific places. Planning a drive? Use the cost estimator for the fuel and ground costs, then bring that figure into this calculator as one of your categories.
Frequently Asked Questions
There is no universal figure — it depends on your destination, travel style, number of travellers and trip length. The reliable way is to build it bottom-up: estimate flights and activities per person, accommodation per night, and food and local transport per person per day, multiply each by your travellers and days, and add a contingency buffer. That is exactly what this calculator does with your own numbers.