How much does a trip cost in different countries, per day?

“How much will it cost?” is the first real question of any trip — and the honest answer is that your destination decides most of it. Two weeks in Vietnam and two weeks in Switzerland are the same fourteen days; they are not remotely the same budget.

To put real numbers on that, we took the World Bank’s price-level data for 50 popular destinations and used it to scale a transparent daily-spend model. The result is a like-for-like ranking of what a day on the ground tends to cost, from the cheapest country to the most expensive — for budget, mid-range, and luxury travel.

The short answer

• Destination beats duration. The gap between the cheapest and most expensive countries here is roughly 8× at the budget level.
• Cheapest tier (Egypt, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia): about $12–34 per person per day for budget to mid-range travel.
• Most expensive tier (USA, Switzerland, Iceland, the Nordics, Australia): about $80–260+ per person per day depending on style.
• These are model estimates, not quotes, and they exclude international flights.

50 countries ranked by daily budget

Per person, per day, in US dollars. Sorted cheapest to most expensive by the mid-range figure. Click any country to load it in the budget calculator and adjust for your own trip.

Country	Budget /day	Mid-range /day	Luxury /day	Price level (US=1)
Egypt	$12	$34	$91	0.14
India	$23	$58	$162	0.24
Nepal	$24	$61	$168	0.25
Sri Lanka	$26	$64	$177	0.27
Vietnam	$27	$70	$192	0.29
Indonesia	$27	$71	$199	0.30
Thailand	$27	$71	$198	0.30
Malaysia	$30	$75	$204	0.31
Kenya	$30	$78	$213	0.32
Georgia	$31	$78	$218	0.33
Cambodia	$31	$80	$220	0.33
Philippines	$31	$82	$224	0.34
Colombia	$34	$88	$241	0.36
Morocco	$38	$96	$266	0.40
South Africa	$38	$97	$270	0.41
Jordan	$40	$102	$284	0.43
Argentina	$44	$110	$305	0.46
Brazil	$45	$111	$308	0.46
Türkiye	$45	$111	$308	0.46
Peru	$45	$114	$316	0.47
China	$46	$119	$327	0.49
Poland	$46	$119	$327	0.49
Hungary	$46	$120	$331	0.50
Croatia	$49	$121	$335	0.50
Mexico	$53	$132	$367	0.55
Czechia	$53	$135	$370	0.56
Portugal	$55	$139	$382	0.57
Greece	$53	$137	$376	0.57
Costa Rica	$55	$139	$384	0.58
South Korea	$57	$144	$395	0.59
Singapore	$57	$145	$400	0.60
Spain	$58	$148	$408	0.61
Japan	$59	$152	$418	0.63
United Arab Emirates	$61	$153	$423	0.64
Italy	$63	$158	$436	0.66
France	$69	$175	$485	0.73
Germany	$72	$184	$507	0.76
Austria	$74	$188	$518	0.78
Netherlands	$76	$192	$532	0.80
Sweden	$76	$194	$534	0.80
Ireland	$76	$195	$538	0.81
Canada	$80	$202	$557	0.84
Norway	$80	$202	$558	0.84
United Kingdom	$82	$207	$569	0.86
Denmark	$84	$214	$587	0.88
New Zealand	$84	$215	$594	0.89
Australia	$87	$217	$599	0.90
United States	$95	$241	$665	1.00
Switzerland	$100	$253	$700	1.05
Iceland	$102	$258	$710	1.07

How to read these numbers (and where they come from)

The country-to-country differences are not our opinion — they come from the World Bank’s price level, calculated as the PPP conversion factor divided by the official exchange rate, relative to the United States (1.0). A price level of 0.30 means general prices run about 30% of US levels. That single ratio explains most of the spread above.

What we added is a stated daily-spend model: an assumed per-day cost for budget, mid-range, and luxury travel, split across accommodation, food, local transport, and activities. We scale that model by each country’s price level. So:

• The ranking and the relative gaps are data-driven (real World Bank figures, mostly 2024).
• The absolute dollar amounts are a model, not measured prices — they’re there to be sanity-checked, and we’d rather show the method than pretend at false precision.

Two honest caveats. First, the price level is economy-wide, not tourist-specific — a cheap country can still have expensive tourist hotels, and vice versa. Second, the figures exclude international flights, which often dwarf daily costs on a short trip to a far place.

What actually drives the differences

Beyond the headline price level, three things move a real budget the most:

1. Accommodation. Usually the single biggest line, and the one that varies most between budget and luxury. Travelling as a pair roughly halves it per person.
2. Eating out vs self-catering. In expensive countries, restaurant meals are where budgets quietly blow out; in cheap ones, street food keeps them tiny.
3. Local transport. In rural or multi-stop trips, taxis and transfers add up — sometimes enough that a rental car is cheaper. That’s worth checking rather than assuming.

Turning a ranking into your number

This table is a starting point, not your itinerary. To get a figure for your trip — your destination, your length, your travel style, and how many of you are splitting costs — run it through the calculator, which uses the same data and model:

The trip budget calculator lets you set days, travellers, and style and breaks the estimate down by category. If the transport line looks heavy, compare it against a rental with our car rental comparison — for two-plus people or rural routes, a car often undercuts a string of taxis. (Prefer to search directly? You can compare rental prices on DiscoverCars — an affiliate link, at no extra cost to you, that never changes our rankings; see our disclosure.) And for the things this table leaves out, our travel insurance checker covers what your destination requires. Rankings here are never influenced by commission; see our methodology.