I have visited Hungary three times now, in three different decades, so I’ve got a good sense of where travel prices in Budapest, Hungary have been in the past and where they are now. The first time I landed in Hungary it was the ’00s, the second time the ’10s, and the third time in October of 2024. I spent the longest on this last trip too (17 days), so I’ve got some accurate and current costs for you.
While this country has experienced inflation like everyone else, it also has seen its currency decline steadily against the U.S. dollar, so if you’re pulling from a dollar account and spending in Hungarian forint, you’ll be doing quite well. Euros too for that matter: Hungary is part of the EU and the Schengen Zone, but has not ever transitioned over to the euro. In 2012 I got 230 forint to the dollar; as I write this the rate is around 400 to the dollar.
I’ll get into details for everything, but my impression after 17 days in Budapest, with two side trips in the mix, is that prices for a lot of goods and services have barely budged. Others have gone up a lot over time though, especially restaurants and hostels. Thankfully groceries are still a relatively good value if you eat at home and this is one of the cheapest wine countries in the world. It’s not bad for beer either.
One other major bargain is public transportation, especially local trains and trams, even more so if you stick around long enough to use a monthly pass as we did.
What do you need for a trip to Budapest? Appropriate clothing for the weather, of course, travel insurance, and some way to keep in touch and use your phone. Our T-Mobile service worked relatively well, though it wasn’t always super-fast and the map app would lag sometimes when walking around. Good enough, but you might want to get an eSim for Europe if you have a different carrier or want faster speeds.
And the Google Translate app of course: this is a tough language to even pick up a few phrases in and pronounce them correctly. Thankfully the level of English proficiency gets better all the time, especially among the young.
Travel Prices in Budapest: Transportation
If you buy a single metro ticket in Budapest, that will cost you anywhere from $1.15 to $1.80 depending on how long you need it for and if there are transfers. Almost nobody who’s not a tourist buys single tickets though since a monthly pass for everything is only about $23. Even though we weren’t staying for a month, we certainly got our money’s worth from that purchase. You can get nearly everywhere you want to go on a tram, subway, or bus, so you’re completely covered with just that and your feet.
If you won’t be there so long, a 72-hour pass is under $14 if you will be moving around a lot. Or if you have the Budapest Card, that includes public transportation too.
The Budapest metro is awesome too. There’s a nostalgic original line that’s the oldest in continental Europe and it’s fun to ride that to see the old stations and cars. It’s barely underground and it’ll get you to Hero’s Square and the awesome Ethnography Museum.
The other lines are deeper and modern, with some stations being really impressive (see the photo I took in one of them above). The lines have frequent cars coming, they’re nice new trains, and they’re well-maintained. We took a couple of trams and two local buses too, the latter to get out to Memento Park, which is tough to reach otherwise.
We also took two side trips on Hungarian trains. One was to Szentendre on what was basically a Soviet era suburban commuter train, the other a real journey to Eger, much further away. The first trip was around $2 each round trip and the second was $7 each round trip.
I should mention that our train trip TO Budapest was awesome. We came from Prague on a nearly seven-hour Regiojet train and it was quite comfortable, with waiters bringing around food and drink you order from an app, and 500ml Pilsner Urquell beers were just €1.25! The train ticket itself was €41.50 each with seat selections.
A taxi from the airport to the center can cost as much as $35, but going the other way it’s half that. There’s a special metro train from the airport that’s a far better deal. Then in general you can get around the center in a cab for $4 to $10. The base fare is 1,100 forint and then it’s 440 per kilometer after that. So a 5km ride should cost you around $8.25. From the center to Buda Castle should be about that.
After an eight-year gap, Uber returned to Budapest in 2024 by working out a partnership with a local taxi company. So it probably won’t save you money, but you the certainty of knowing what you’ll be paying and having it charged automatically to the saved card.
Plenty of locals get around by bike and a lot of the main avenues have marked bike lanes. Some hotels and hostels have loaner bikes available, but you can also find a public city bike system with drop-off points. I could never get the notification on my phone to activate the app though, so I gave up and deleted it without taking a ride after the weather got chilly.
Hostel and Hotel Prices in Budapest
This is an area where I saw a significant change on this trip and I was very glad that we had lined up lodging through our membership in HomeExchange.com. Travel prices in Budapest are high if you don’t have a place to stay for free or cheap.

The apartment we got for 16 nights via a home exchange
Budapest was already quite popular when I visited more than a decade ago and the visitor numbers keep climbing each year thanks to cheap flights (especially on WizzAir) and this being a major river cruise starting point.
I’ve seen hotel prices that used to only be high in the summer becoming high all year long now.
The Hungarians consider themselves “Central Europe” and they are right next to expensive Austria. They’re on the Danube, with docking river cruise ships a defining feature of the waterfront. So this is a value destination, but the best deals are for those coming on vacation rather than a shoestring budget. Think “value” more than “cheap.”
Before there were some relatively good deals all year at the mid-range and luxury level, but those seem to be fading too, Airbnb and the apartment side of Booking.com have picked up some of the slack at the low end, showing plenty of good apartment rentals for $60 to $80 per night, but don’t book a flight here expecting to find easy lodging bargains.
The sweet spot of choice was between $60 and $100 a night for hotels last decade, where you will still find 40 places or more to choose from in that range in the cold months on sites like Expedia. But once you get to May through October it is more like $80 to $160 for the bulk of them.
Budapest hotels can still be a good deal for splurging at the high end though, with the Ritz-Carlton, W Budapest, Kimpton, and Anantara all going for less than €350 per night much of the year.
Hostel prices are no bargain here. Ten years ago they maxed out at $18 or so. Now they are running $22 to $50 for a dorm bed in the off-season, as high as $80 in the busy summer. (Please look for a roommate or a cheap apartment before shelling out that much for a hostel!)
Food and Drink Costs in Budapest
This category is a mixed bag when looking at travel prices in Budapest. Food and drink prices aren’t bad if we’re talking about a trip to the grocery store or the wine shop, or eating at a simple cafe or street food stall serving basic items. I took that photo above from our first grocery store trip to get stocked up in the apartment.
We spent the equivalent of US$55 on that haul total. It included ham, three kinds of cheese, condiments, two kinds of good bread, dates, olives, tuna, bagged salad, tea, yogurt, frozen berries, and a lot of fruit and vegetables.
Later we went to a fruit and vegetable stand and found better deals on produce there. Items you can get for around a dollar or less a pound include squash, peppers, three kinds of cabbage, four kinds of potatoes, radishes, cauliflower, carrots, onions, pomegranates, or apples. I saw a big bunch of white asparagus for about a dollar when I was there. How much do you pay for that in your local farmer’s market?

A good deal at 400 to the dollar, prices per kilo
Even in the touristy Central Market Hall, you’ll probably find locally grown fruit and vegetables to cost about half what you pay in the USA or Canada. A lot of sausages and Hungarian cheeses there go for $10 to $20 per kilo.
You can put together quite the charcuterie platter at 100 grams at a time for a reasonable price if you also get some bargain pickles, dried fruit, and nuts. Although there are plenty of travelers there buying pretty paprika packs and other gifts, you do see a lot of locals there too getting stocked up for a party or big dinner with company.
The filling staple to get when out and about is a langos, which you can see below will easily fill you up for three or four euros. The traditional one has sour cream and cheese, but now they’re offered with all kinds of toppings.
The other filling bargain is bakery goods, which have gone up quite a bit in price, probably due to importing more wheat than they can grow, but are still a good value overall. Many of the pastries are a buck or two, as are most bread loaf types. Some bakeries and train station stands also sell small sandwiches on their own rolls and these tend to be two to five euros. You can also get pizza by the slice.
Eating out has gotten more expensive though, no doubt. Even places I would have expected to be reasonable, like a burger place or Asian fast food option, tended to cost close to what you’d expect to spend in a much richer country in Europe like Germany. When we would go out for a nice restaurant meal, only the drinks were really a bargain, whether it was Hungarian, Turkish, or something else. We usually spent $30 to $50 on dinner out.
An espresso or Americano will often be $1.50 to $2, a bit more for something fancier. A beer can be as low as $1.75 in a bar or cafe, often around $2: beer and wine are usually the same or slightly more than buying sparkling water or a soda. The beer quality is not as high as the wine quality, but it’s decent. Czech beers are everywhere too.
Imagine visiting your local wine bar though and ordering three different varieties from assorted regions, being served by someone who can explain the climate there and what awards that vintner has won. The chalk board list behind the bar has over a multitude of wines by the glass to choose from and there’s something for every taste. The interior is elegant and the location is convenient, in the heart of the action. It’s the kind of place you could linger for hours, but how much is it going to cost you when the bill comes?
Less than $10 for three glasses of wine. As you can see from this list outside at a typical wine bar, the prices range from the equivalent of $1.60 to $3.25 at 400 forint to the dollar. Granted these aren’t big pours at 100ml, but you could say, “Make it a double” and you’d be out $6.50 for the most expensive option.
Hungarian wine should be known around the world, but the Soviet occupation days seriously hurt its reputation and the recovery will be a long one. So it remains one of the best bargains in Europe. Sample a lot of it here and you’ll be glad you did. You can find a decent bottle in a store for $2, something quite good for $4 to $8. If you spend over $10 you might end up with something from a “winemaker of the year” who has adorned local magazine covers.
The wine prices have actually gone down since my last visit more than a decade ago, one of the best values in Europe. In general, get reds from the south Villany region or Eger, whites from Lake Balaton, and dessert wine from Tokaj.
Shots of palinka used to be the quick and cheap path to drunkenness at the ruin bars when I first visited the city, but I didn’t see it so much on this trip. This distilled liquor make from plums or other fruit is not as cheap anymore, ranging $1 to $1.50 for the rot-gut versions to $5 for something refined you can sip before dinner.
Museums and Attractions in Budapest
When it comes to travel prices in Budapest, museums and attraction entrances can vary a lot. Many tourists come through on river cruises, so they’re getting milked hard in some spots. This is not a city where you want to go on a whirlwind sightseeing tour unless you’re using the Budapest Card. That gets you a discount of 10-50%, public transportation, and free admission to a few options. The card is 39 euros for 24 hours, up to 99 euros for the most expensive 72-hour Plus version.
Many of the museums and attractions run $10 to $20 now, double again for the baths, so you need to choose carefully. I thought the Ethnography Museum was worth the $20, Memento Park was worth the $7.50, and it was worth it to pay a little extra on Buda Hill to get better photos atop Fisherman’s Bastion and get into the surprisingly impressive Matthias Church below, which was $6.50.
We decided to forgo the $11.25 to go into and to the top of St. Stephens Basilica though and the Retro Museum we went to felt a bit overpriced at $14 on a weekday (it’s even more on weekends).
Otherwise, some attractions and museums are free, like the lower part of the Fisherman’s Bastion and the cool central bank visitor center, which is a money museum.
The public baths Budapest is famous for are really going to cost you. Non-locals paid $16 for an unlimited time of soaking and steaming at the major ones when I visited last decade. Now they’ll run you as much as $50 at Szechenyi Thermal Bath on the Pest side or Gellert Baths on the Buda side.
We couldn’t justify that kind of expense that the river cruise passengers are paying, so we went to a more local set of baths on Margarita Island called Palatinus and paid less than $10 each instead. Not as atmospheric or photogenic as the Instagram favorites, but still a nice day out and the island in the Danube is a nice place to walk or bike around.
I hope you find my rundown on Budapest travel prices to be useful. See more on general strategies here: Budapest on a Budget.
Sasha
Thursday 30th of January 2025
Great article! We were just there for around the same length of time as you and can confirm these are very accurate. The Lukacs Baths are also reasonably priced and have both an indoor/outdoor area and a whole sauna section that's open on the weekends and a few bucks extra. The biggest difference I noticed from my first visit in 2018 was the explosion of craft beer. There were more places on my map than I could hit in our time there, but some favorites were Unity, Beer People, and Hopaholic. Lots of good options for around $4-6 a pint.
Tim Leffel
Sunday 2nd of February 2025
Thanks for sharing your experience Sasha. I only drank a little craft beer there because good wine was such a bargain, so I appreciate you adding that.
Heather
Monday 6th of January 2025
Maybe I missed this on your blog. Public transport is FREE for anyone over 65 in Hungary.
Tim Leffel
Monday 6th of January 2025
Heather, do you have a link confirming that? The official website says pensioners pay 3,300 forint for a monthly pass in Budapest. There's no free level that I can find on bkk.hu, for the city or for the country.