The travel cost calculator was built to help you estimate the cost of the basics in various countries as a backpacker. The calculated cost is only an estimate of the baseline cost of your trip per day! Everything beyond the essentials is not included. Things deemed non-essentials include a broad range of common expenses: museum entry, concert tickets, tourist attractions, intra-city transport, and beer, to name a few.
The Controls
Cost Vs. Rating
Cost/Day is determined using the 4 sliders under Adjust Travel Style.
Average Rating measures the desirability of a country based on the average of hundreds of user votes. You can add your own ratings to the mix by creating a user account and visiting individual country pages.
Eating (Meals)
This tool assumes a relatively high caloric intake due to the generally high activity level of hard trekkers.
Staple Foods is unhealthy and extreme. It basically assumes you'll eat nothing but bread, and drink nothing but tap water.
Basic Restaurants will allow you to eat basic prepared meals for most of your meals.
Nicer Restaurants will fill you up with a small prepared meal and one three-course meals per day, and the budget includes a drink or two. This is not meant to include top notch restaurants.
Sleeping (Accomodation)
The calculator assumes you seek accomodation every night. This is not always the case in countries where overnight buses are common! Check out the individual country pages for more information about country-specific cost saving tips.
Couchsurf means you never pay for accomodation, either by sleeping at friend's houses or by finding couches to surf through couchsurfing.org.
Hostel Dorm gets you a bed in a dormitory-style room in a cheap but well-rated hostel.
Hostel Private will afford you your own room in a cheap but well-reated hostel.
Trekking (Transport)
Each 'trek' is assumed to be 300km to attempt a fair comparison between the 'expensiveness' of the countries. This sometimes results in over-estimation of trekking cost for small countries and under-estimation of trekking cost for larger countries.
Trek Frequency Use the first slider to indicate how long you'll stay in each place. More frequent travel increases your cost/day.
Hitchhiking is only for the Hardest Trekkers, but with the right amount of patience and courage you can get everywhere for free!
Bus/Train includes the price of a typical (cheap) bus or train fare between tourist destinations within a country.