How to build a trip budget that you will actually use
A useful trip budget is not a single scary number. It is a short list of the costs that actually move: where you sleep, how you get there, what you eat, and what you have already decided to do. This trip budget calculator is built around those four lines, plus an optional “other” line and a buffer. Work through them once before you book, then again after the big tickets are paid, so the remaining figure is what you still have to spend on the ground.
Start with travellers and dates. Lodging almost always follows nights. Food almost always follows days. A Friday-to-Monday city break is three nights in a room and four days of meals. The form fills days with nights + 1 automatically; change it if you arrive late and skip a meal day, or if you want to count only the days you will eat out.
Lodging, transport, food and activities
Put the room or apartment rate in the unit you were actually quoted. “Per night for the group” is the usual hotel or whole-apartment price. “Per person per night” is handy for hostels and some packages. “Total for the trip” is right when you already have a paid booking or a fixed invoice.
Transport is often one or two big tickets (flights, long-distance trains) plus smaller local costs. If you only know the price per person, use that mode and the calculator will multiply by the group. If you have a family ticket or a shared car, use a group total. Keep airport transfers in this line or in “other”, but do not forget them — they are a common hole in first-pass budgets.
Food is the line people under-estimate. A per-person, per-day average that includes coffee, lunch, dinner and a drink is more honest than a restaurant dinner-only figure. If breakfast is in the room rate, lower the daily food amount rather than pretending those meals are free. Activities can be a group total (a tour you will book once) or a per-person figure (museum cards or a class).
Add a buffer, then decide what is prepaid
A 10% buffer is a reasonable default for a first estimate. Increase it when you have not booked yet, when prices are in a currency you do not use every day, or when tips and cash extras are likely. Decrease it when flights and lodging are already paid and you are only planning pocket money.
Once the total looks real, split it mentally in two: prepaid (already on a card, or about to be) and on-the-ground (food, local transport, tickets you will buy there). The prepaid part should sit in the trip total so you know what the holiday really costs. It should not sit in the daily spending cap you take to dinner. Per-person and per-day figures on the results card help you have that conversation with the people you travel with.
The calculator does not fetch exchange rates or hotel prices — it runs in your browser, and the amounts you type stay on your device. If you need a record you can share, change and come back to, with bookings, a day-by-day itinerary, packing and a group split, take the same numbers into the Kotlets Travel Planner (opens in a new tab) for Google Sheets and Excel.