How much does a holiday in Budapest cost?

Ever wondered how much a weekend in Budapest really costs? PalPrices allows you to check how much your dollar, euro or pound will get you in Hungary, so you can budget your trip. The new site provides quite accurate prices for 50 top travel destinations – including Budapest – allowing you to check approximately how much transport, accommodation, food and drinks, and activities cost. There are plenty of settings to tailor to individual needs, so you can use PalPrices whether you're a backpacker or an upscale tourist.

The PalPrices website was created in Hungary by a family who found there was no easy way to find out how much a holiday would cost in advance, making cost blow-outs an annoying part of trips. Anna Danyi from PalPrices says the website has been up since the end of 2014 and has already gained a strong usership among young people aged 19 to 30, as well as those with young families. She says people in their 20s travel a lot, use the internet to research and are budget conscious making PalPrices the perfect tool for them. The website is used by both Hungarians wanting to plan their trips to one of 50 top travel destinations, but also by Americans, Russians, Australians and others when planning a trip to Budapest, for example.

There are loads of tools and calculators to choose from. Firstly you can use the calculator to plan the total cost of your trip including flights, accommodation and daily expenses. Enter your city of origin and destination, the dates you wish to travel and choose whether you want the backpacker, budget, mid-priced or upscale setting. PalPrices then reveals how much that holiday is likely to cost.

Secondly, if you know you have a set budget in mind, use the destinator to see which destinations you can afford. The city prices section allows you to check the prices of everything from a beer, cigarettes and a Big Mac to a souvenir t-shirt, airport transfers and a Time magazine.

Finally, if you have two destinations in mind but what to compare the prices of those two, you can! PalPrice can give you these average prices in whichever currency you pick too.

There are plenty of algorithms behind PalPrices, which cleverly works out the accurate price of a holiday. It’s not so much the cost of living in the given city, but an accurate look at how much a holiday costs given that flights, accommodation and tourist activities are typically priced above the average cost of living. The algorithms that have gone into PalPrices also make the website more 'clever,' for example a family of four don't generally need four separate hotel rooms or four separate hire cars.

The website currently covers 50 of the most popular city destinations such as Dubai, Sydney, Moscow, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Las Vegas and Barcelona - and of course Budapest! At the moment it’s focused on city breaks but will expand to beach resorts, ski holidays, study abroad semesters and business trips in the future.

Users of the site can contribute to the accuracy of costs by uploading the price of various items. The site’s developers also do extensive research and enter the prices of various things in all of the listed cities.

Looking at just the destination costs (excluding flights, which varies so much) New York, London, Zurich and Paris are among the most expensive destinations listed on PalPrices, with Budapest, Prague and Dubrovnik among the cheapest of the cities listed in Europe. Further afield Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Bangkok are among the cheapest cities overall on the website.

If you factor out flights because this changes based on where you’re from, we checked out the the cost of weekend in Budapest, in March, for one person on the backpacker setting. PalPrices calculates that including accommodation, visiting cultural sights, watching shows, taking part in fun attractions, eating and exploring the nightlife, as well as public transport, these two days will cost €115. Remember this is on the most frugal setting. You can set your preference for the various activities - perhaps you prefer budgeting for nightlife and eating than cultural activities and sights. On the high-end upscale setting a weekend in Budapest costs €666 according to PalPrices.

Interested in the so called "Big Mac Index" of Budapest? Well at the time of writing PalPrices says that a Big Mac costs €2.80 in Budapest. It also tells us a beer is €2.06, a pack of cigarettes is €3.16, a cocktail is €6.25, a coffee is €1.67, a dinner is €14.61, a night in a hostel is €12.60 and a souvenir t-shirt is €19.51. Of course this is a rough idea and everyone holidays differently but given the settings you can input, PalPrices provides a great way to budget your visit to Budapest. So have a play and start planning your trip!

Also check out their fun infographic below on the costs in Budapest, although please note some prices may have changed: