🇵🇹Cost of Travel in Portugal (2026): Daily Budgets for 3 Cities
Yellow trams on cobbled hills, port wine aged in river-front lodges, and palaces built by romantics on a misty green ridge. The best value in Western Europe, and the friendliest introduction to it.
Daily budgets in Portugal
The cheapest city in Portugal is Sintra, at $65–130 a day mid-range per person; the priciest is Lisbon, at $80–150 — about 17% more for the same style of trip.
| City | Budget / day | Mid-range / day | Comfort / day | Cheap meal | Mid-range hotel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sintra | $40–80 | $65–130 | $120–230 | $9–14 | $75–150 |
| Porto | $40–80 | $70–130 | $130–230 | $9–14 | $70–130 |
| Lisbon | $50–90 | $80–150 | $140–270 | $11–16 | $85–160 |
Per person in US dollars, flights not included. Mid-range is each guide's researched figure and includes a mid-range room; budget and comfort scale it by 0.6 and 1.8, so treat those as rough. How we work these out.
Plan a trip across Portugal
Set the nights you'd spend in each city. Per person, before flights; each night counts one day of that city's daily budget.
Cities
🇵🇹Lisbon
PortugalSeven hills, yellow trams and tiled façades above a river the size of a sea. Western Europe's best-value capital, and one of the few where the historic centre is still somewhere people live.
🇵🇹Porto
PortugalGranite, port wine and a river gorge spanned by six bridges. Smaller, cheaper and grittier than Lisbon, and a lot of people quietly prefer it.
🇵🇹Sintra
PortugalA misty green hill outside Lisbon that Portuguese royalty and rich romantics covered in palaces. Extraordinary, tiny, and overwhelmed by lunchtime — the whole trick is going early.
Head to head
Two cities side by side — costs, best months and what you'd do in each.