How these numbers are built

The three tiers

Every city is priced at three levels, and each figure is a daily total per person in US dollars, covering accommodation, food, local transport and activities — not counting getting to the city in the first place.

Each figure is the lower end of a range — the "from" price a city's title and the ranking page quote — not an average and not a guarantee. Barcelona at mid-range shows "$130–$180 a day" because that's the real range a comfortable mid-range trip there costs; the site always quotes the $130.

Where the figures come from

These are researched and set by hand, city by city and tier by tier — checking real listings for hotels, hostels and restaurants at each level, local transit fares, and typical activity prices, then setting a realistic daily figure for that tier in that city. They are not pulled from a live pricing API, and they are not a survey of what other travelers report spending. That's a deliberate trade-off: a hand-checked figure can go stale between checks, but it also can't be thrown off by one unusually cheap or expensive listing the way an automated average can.

Flights are the one figure that is live. The price shown next to a flight is the cheapest fare our own daily search has actually found for that route, refreshed once a day. It carries a real date — "from $75, Oct 12 departure" — rather than the flat range the other figures use, because a flight's price genuinely does change day to day in a way a hotel's typical rate doesn't.

How often figures are checked

There's no fixed schedule — a city gets rechecked when something suggests it should: a reader flags a figure that's off, a currency moves sharply, or it's simply been a long time since that city was looked at. Every tier panel on a city page carries the date it was last checked, so you can see the figure's age rather than take freshness on faith. Across all 82 cities, the most recently checked figure is from 12 October 2026.

What's not included

• Getting to the city — shown separately as a flight price where one is available, never folded into the daily figure.
• Travel insurance, visas, vaccinations and other one-off costs before the trip starts.
• Shopping, gifts and anything that isn't food, a place to sleep, getting around locally, or doing something.
• Currency conversion fees or exchange-rate movement after a figure was checked — figures are set in US dollars at the time of checking.