Travel Budget Calculator

Build it up from the components rather than guessing a total: accommodation per night, food and activities per person per day, transport as a lump, and a contingency on top.

Because a six-night trip covers seven days of eating. Budgeting food per night undercounts by a full day, which on a two-week trip is a meaningful sum.

Ten to twenty percent is realistic rather than generous. It covers the unplanned taxi, the meal that cost double and the thing that broke — and trips without one reliably overrun.

Airport transfers at both ends, tips where they are expected, data roaming, and the last-day meal before a late flight. Individually small and collectively a real fraction of a short trip.

Build the budget in the local currency and convert once, so exchange rate movements affect one number rather than every line. Remember that the conversion itself has a cost.

Separate the shared costs from the individual ones. Accommodation and car hire are shared; food and activities are per person, and mixing them makes the per-person figure meaningless.

Enough for the first day and for places that do not take cards, which varies enormously by country. Withdrawing locally usually beats exchanging at home, provided the card has no foreign fee.

For medical cover abroad, almost always — a single hospital admission can exceed the cost of insurance for a lifetime. Cancellation cover is a separate calculation about the trip's cost.

Per day rather than per trip, since costs scale with duration rather than being fixed. A daily burn rate also makes it obvious when a few expensive days need offsetting.

Shoulder season in most destinations — the weeks either side of peak, with better prices and fewer crowds. School holiday dates drive prices more than weather does.

In peak season and in small places, yes. Off season and in cities with plenty of supply, booking on arrival can be cheaper — at the cost of certainty.

In one currency, updated daily. Converting each transaction as it happens is tedious; recording in local currency and converting once at the end loses the ability to correct course mid-trip.