Travel cost guides
These pages answer one question: what will the trip actually cost? Not the fare you screenshot, the whole trip: flight, bed, food, getting around.
Every number on these pages comes from our own live price data, stamped with the date we collected it. When a figure is an estimate rather than a live quote, the page names the assumptions behind it. The tables carry the numbers; the prose tells you how to read them. Nothing here is sponsored.
Start with a city from the price index, or read how to budget a trip and bring your own numbers.
City guides
Lisbon
The home city: fares from Madrid and São Paulo, and the baseline for the price index.
Paris
A two-hour flight, then the ground costs take over. Where a Paris budget actually goes.
Rome
The widest fare spread in our table, so date flexibility is worth real money here.
Barcelona
The tightest fare market we track, and the softest ground costs in western Europe.
London
Free museums move the budget from tickets to beds. What a London week costs in December.
New York
The sightseeing line is the budget-breaker: the highest activities cost in our table.
Tokyo
Cheap on the ground, expensive to reach. The fare is most of the budget.
Bangkok
Ground costs are a rounding error next to the flight. What the fare season does.
Rio de Janeiro
December is summer: the beach is free and the flight is not.
Buenos Aires
Steak-house prices and food figures from another economy, both explained.
Routes and road trips
São Paulo → Lisbon
The busiest South America–Europe corridor, and what a fair fare looks like on it.
London → New York
The workhorse of the North Atlantic: 4M seats a year and a fare structure to match.
Drive or fly: Lisbon → Madrid
Six hours of road or ninety minutes of air, costed line by line.
How to budget a trip
How to budget a trip before you book anything
A working method: two big lines first, the scaling lines second, a buffer last.
Cheapest, fastest or balanced? Picking a flight quote
Cheapest, fastest, balanced. What each ranking is for and when to ignore it.
The trip costs people forget to budget
Transfers, city taxes, bag fees, card spreads: the lines the search box skips.
Daily food budgets for travel, explained
What budget, mid-range and premium per day actually buy across ten cities.
What a hotel night really costs
Nightly rate, median, city tax: why the sticker price understates the stay.
This month
Trip price index
Ten cities from Lisbon, ranked by what a week costs. Updated every month.