Actual Cost of Budapest: 9-Night Expense Breakout

Budapest is an amazing city and was near the top of our list of the countries we have visited. It was also one of the cheapest places we have visited in Europe! We know it can be difficult to budget for a trip to a new city, so we’ve made this breakout to show you the cost of our time in Budapest.

This city is home to some of our favorite sights, such as the Fisherman’s Bastion with its vibrantly colored roof as well as the Parliament building with its hundreds of stone statues lining the walls (all with different poses and expressions). Nearly all of the sites we visited were free. But we did pay $5 for access to walk the Fisherman’s Bastion terraces).

Overall, there is just so much to see throughout the capital city, and much of it can be done for free or relatively cheap. That being said, we must have gotten a little complacent toward the end of our trip because doing this expense breakout was a little painful…

**All amounts are shown in USD***

Food

Going Out to Eat

I think this is the only place we have been so far where going out to eat beats out accommodation as our largest expense… and this is totally avoidable. We got SUPER lazy in finding cheap food while we were in this city. The cost of food in Budapest can be very budget friendly if you take the time to find the right places!

Our most expensive meal was $58 for a Mexican restaurant. We got an appetizer, two entrees, and at least one round of drinks. It was amazing! …Maybe partially because we waited over an hour to get in and we were starving when we got in line. But we also could have found equally amazing food for much much cheaper.

Our cheapest meal (and one of my favorites) included two appetizers, two entrees, a dessert, and a drink. For all of this, we only paid $15! Not only is it great to save money, but many times finding a good, cheap place is just as fun. This place, for example, was a hole-in-the-wall where the entrance was a small staircase that took you below street level. When we walked in, we were greeted by a nice bar area with many locals sitting around eating. It’s always satisfying to find a restaurant with many locals because it usually means you made a good choice.

 

Groceries

We definitely need to step up our game of balancing going out to eat with making our own food. We only spent $21 on groceries throughout our whole stay! I’m pretty sure we only got caffeine and snack food, so we can’t even say we were using groceries to eat healthily.

The AirBnB had a nice kitchen which gave us little excuse to spend this much money on food. Anyone could easily decrease their cost during their time in Budapest and get just as much enjoyment out of it as we did. 

Accommodations

The AirBnB we found for our stay was probably the most spacious one we’ve had and was easily the cheapest. But before I say more about our experience, I want to specify that we visited Budapest in June of 2022. As of right now, the price for the specific apartment we stayed in has pretty much doubled. But, I did see a few options for apartments closer to the price that we paid.

For only $31.60 per night, we got a lovely apartment in a great, central location just one or two blocks away from the Oktogon – one of Pest’s major intersections. From here we could walk to some of the many amazing sights throughout the city. Both Heroes’ Square and the Parliament Building were within a 30-minute walk. It had a very spacious living area, an upstairs loft where the bedroom was, and a full kitchen. 

Travel Insurance

For travel insurance, we got a quote of $158 from World Nomads for two people (both 23) from Colorado, traveling to Hungary for 8 days.

We didn’t want to leave this out because travel insurance is an incredibly important thing to consider when planning a trip, but just keep in mind that this price may vary depending on your situation and the type of travel insurance you are looking for.

Activities

When visiting Budapest, we highly recommend checking out as many of the city’s thermal baths as you can! We visited three during our stay (Rudas, Lukács, and Széchenyi) and they were all wonderful in different ways. For two tickets at each of these baths, and some food from one of their cafes, we paid $106!! Seeing as we spent more than that at one bath without food in Iceland, we were thrilled with this value!

We were able to spend many hours exploring the baths because, at least for the three we visited, there were multiple sections inside the bathhouses with different vibes to hang out in.

Make sure you look at a full map for each bath you visit! Each time, we didn’t know there was more than one section for the first few hours we were there! Walking around the maze of buildings that housed the baths was cool, and discovering whole new sections was a pleasant surprise. But we did miss out on a couple of sections because we didn’t look at the full map before we left.

We loved how there were usually two main options for the sections: you could be outside/in a room with a lot of natural light, or you could find a dark room with little to no natural light which provided a very interesting atmosphere. One place even had a sauna and buckets of cold water to pour on yourself which was nice and refreshing.

If we could do this trip again, we would adjust our budget to spend more money exploring baths and less money at the expensive, inauthentic restaurants that ended up taking most of our money!

Transportation

Usually, we choose to walk around a city instead of taking public transportation, so most of our transportation expense was from our Flixbus tickets (which cost us $30.10 per person) to get to Budapest. We did take a bus the first night we arrived, but we found this to be a very walkable city (for us) which was nice on our wallets.

We tend to get accommodations around a 30-minute walk outside of the city center, so what is “walkable” for us definitely won’t be walkable for everyone.

Wellness

Our only outlying expense was to take care of ourselves while we were still on the road. It turns out that walking many miles every day takes a toll which caused one of us to need a knee brace… Maybe we shouldn’t say this city was walkable for us after all! 

Total Expenses

Our total cost for 9 nights in Budapest was $1,090.32. We hope this breakout gives you a better understanding of how much you should budget to visit Budapest! We absolutely loved this city and recommend making time for it if you can. Especially if you are used to Western European prices, you will be ecstatic at the possibilities of cheap food and activities here!!

Let us know in the comments your favorite money saving activities while traveling! Check out our video below if you want to get a glimpse of visiting the Széchenyi Baths!