Our Guide to Budapest on a Budget

Research and Budgeting

Normally when we visit a city, our first step is to research and budget. This time we did things slightly differently, we bought a mystery holiday trip from Wowcher. This is where everyone pays the same price, and you are randomly allocated one of their available holidays. Our trip consisted of a 2 night stay in Budapest and we organised this through Weekender Breaks, who were partnered with Wowcher for the deal. We were able to choose our own dates to fly and were given the choice of two 3-star hotels to pick. 

The main reason we went through an agent this time, rather than booking everything ourselves (which I know is what we usually recommend), is that it was our first trip since COVID and we felt we needed an extra layer of security with our booking. Booking through an agent means you can cancel or change your plans much easier and we were glad of this when the agent called me two days before our trip to tell us that our original hotel was closed due to staff being off work from COVID. The agent offered us an alternative 3-star hotel, within a 6 min walk of the original hotel and made all the changes and arrangements for us. 

If you read through the Flights and Accommodation sections further down you can see that the breakdown of our hotel and flights came to about £100, which is the same as what we paid for the mystery holiday deal. The other costs shown in the budget are what we actually ended up spending whilst we were in Budapest. As you can see below, we spent a total of £218 per person for our 2 nights (3 days) trip, with the breakdown as follows:

Flights and Accommodation £100

Carbon Offsetting £6

City Tax £2

Activities £37

Food £30

Airport transfers £43

  £218

There are a few things we recommend you look out for when creating your own budget as they can often be overlooked. Many European cities require you to pay a city tax if you are staying in a hotel. Although this isn’t very much you will need to pay it when you check in. Also remember to include transfers to and from the airport in the UK and then to and from the airport to the city centre when you get there. We spent £38.33 buying a return train ticket to Luton and in Budapest we paid 900ft per ride (£2.14) on the airport to city centre bus. 

The final additional thing we paid for this time was carbon offsetting for our flights. We really want to try and make our travel as sustainable as possible. We used a company called Sustainable Travel International who are partnered with WWF and dedicated to combating climate change. 

Getting to Budapest

1. Flights

The flights that were included as part of our travel arrangements were with Wizz Air and we flew from London Luton.

We checked roughly how much these flights would cost and found that typically Wizz Air winter flights were £20-£40 return and peak summer flights were £130-£150. If you want to get the lower end of the price ranges, the best way is to be flexible with your travel dates. This could mean taking a long weekend to include the Monday, rather than the Friday. These prices do not include priority check in or extra cabin bags. 

Remember, when looking at flights, that the London Airports are often much cheaper than any of the regional ones, but that there is the added cost of getting to London that must be considered. We recommend comparing the local flight cost with the London flight cost plus the travel cost and your time to get there, and seeing if the savings are significant enough to justify travelling to London. 

2. Public Transport

Unfortunately, due to the location of Hungary (it’s very far away from the UK!), it’s not really possible to take public transport. Just to give you an idea of the time and costs of doing this, we did a quick search.

The train is 23 hrs and would require 8 changes along the way. With the Eurostar leg of the trip already costing £89, this makes this option financially unviable. 

The best bus option we could find was to travel to Prague from London and then change at Prague to Budapest. This journey takes 26.5hrs (not including layover times in Prague) and costs about £140 return pp. Considering this cost is already higher than the flight alternative, we think you might as well save yourself some time and get a plane!

If the main draw of public transport for you is the lower carbon emissions, then why not take a flight but choose to offset your carbon instead. We used a company called Sustainable Travel International to offset ours. 

Getting Around Budapest

1. Walking

The centre of Budapest is relatively small, perfect for taking in the sights whilst you walk from one activity to the next. There is lots of really interesting architecture in the centre which you might not get to enjoy in the same way if you whizz past on a bus!

Another great thing about walking is that you can look into all the shops and cafes as you pass. Getting lost and discovering a new favourite place to eat or quirky shop is one of the best things about exploring somewhere new and it’s absolutely free to do!

The main downside of walking around the city is that the Buda side of the river is very hilly so not great for people who have difficulties with hills. You might want to mix and match your options for getting around, perhaps walk around the flat parts and get a bus to the hillier locations?

3. Sightseeing Bus

For this trip we decided to buy a sightseeing bus pass as our main mode of transport. We usually try and walk as much as possible when visiting a city, as you get to see more and experience the feel of the city better. However, as we visited during January, we knew the weather was going to be cold. We figured a warm bus might be preferable! The bus visits all the key sightseeing spots, so if you plan your itinerary in line with the bus route you can get between your activities without wasting time going the long way round the bus route. An added bonus is that the bus comes with audio commentary giving information about all the key sights along the route.

Accommodation

As I mentioned before, for this trip our accommodation and flights were organised by Weekender Breaks, so we didn’t need to do any research into the best option. However, I did do a search to find the cost of our hotel room if you were to book it yourself, and an Airbnb alternative for a quick comparison.  

Things to Do in Budapest

For our top recommendations of things to do in Budapest, check out our Budapest Things to Do page!

Food in Budapest

One of our key tips for saving money on food whilst travelling is either to bring some supplies with you or to stock up when you get there. For this trip we found an Aldi just down the road from our hotel and bought packed lunches each day. This set us back only £3.79 for the three days thanks to the currency differences! 

We also always try and taste some of the local food as we think it’s an important part of experiencing a new place and have included some of the things we tried below.