Trip budget calculator

Enter the shared costs, the personal ones and how many of you are going. You get the cost per person, per day, and for the whole group, so everyone agrees on the number before anyone books.

Use any currency, as long as every field is in the same one. "Other shared costs" covers things like a rental car, fuel or group groceries.

Fixed costs first, daily costs second

Budgets go wrong when everything is estimated the same way. Travel and accommodation are known to the cent the moment you book them, so enter them exactly. Food, local transport and activities are genuinely uncertain, so give them a daily figure and let the buffer absorb the difference.

For a group, the trick is keeping shared and personal costs apart. A villa costs the same whether four or six people stay, so a bigger group makes it cheaper per person, while each person's flight does not change at all. Moving people in and out of the group in this calculator shows that immediately.

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Common questions

How much should I budget per day for a trip?
It depends far more on where you stay and how you eat than on the destination itself. A useful method is to price the fixed costs (travel there and back, accommodation) exactly, then estimate a daily figure for food, local transport and activities, and add a buffer of 10 to 15 percent for the things you did not plan for.
How do you split a budget for a group trip?
Separate shared costs from personal ones. Shared costs, like the accommodation, a rental car or group groceries, are divided by the number of people. Personal costs, like flights, meals out and activities, are each person's own. This calculator does exactly that, so everyone sees the same per-person number before anything is booked.
Why add a buffer?
Because unplanned costs are certain even when you cannot say which ones: a taxi when it rains, a museum you did not know about, a dinner that ran over. Ten percent is a sensible minimum; fifteen to twenty percent is safer for long trips or expensive cities.

Track the real costs as you go

Packalong logs shared expenses during the trip, in any currency, and settles everyone up at the end in the fewest transfers.

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