Our Guide to Vienna on a Budget

Research and Budgeting

I’m always researching our next trip and I love to plan fantasy getaways for me and Will. Even if we never get to go on them, the planning is half of the fun for me! It’s also a good idea to anticipate the cost of your trip and make sure you have enough money tucked away. You don’t want to get there and find that you run out of funds!

I’ve put together all of our spending for our trip to Vienna, so that you can see what we spent and where our biggest outlays were. We ended up overspending on our accommodation because we had to book something last minute, but if you’re smart with your bookings we’re sure this is an area where you can reduce the budget. 

Our total budget below covers the 4 days (3 nights) that we spent sightseeing in Vienna. This came to £387 which is more than we like to spend on a trip, because we went for a long weekend, rather than our usual 2 day trips. I know this is a lot to spend on one trip, so I’ll highlight areas throughout the page where I think you can cut back on costs if you’re still keen to visit Vienna but want to reduce the budget.

Flights and Carbon Offsetting £54

Accommodation and City Tax £113

Transport £15

Activities £123

Food £50

Airport transfers £32

£387

Our activities budget includes £99.60 for the city pass and an extra £23.69 for additional activities. We did some activities using our City Pass that we haven’t included in our Things to Do page. For us, the city pass was cheaper than the total costs of paying for all of the activities individually. If you want to save some money in this area of the budget, we recommend skipping the City Pass and sticking to the free things to do and maybe just picking one or two key activities to pay for. 

We always recommend including in your budget the cost of getting to your departure airport and then to your accommodation at your destination. Our airport transfers included a £24.40 return train to Stansted airport from Nottingham and £7.35 for our airport transfers in Vienna. 

We’ve also included flight carbon offsetting in our budget which we did through Sustainable Travel International and cost us £5.25 each for our return flights from London.

Getting to Vienna

1. Flights

Flights to Vienna from London vary between £30 and £50 with both Ryanair and Wizzair for early summer flights (May and June) and £90-120 for peak summer flights (July and August). 

We were able to go early summer, as we’re not dependent on school summer holidays, and we chose to go with the higher end of the price range to be able to fly from an airport that is more accessible for us. When booking flights, don’t forget to think about the cost and time it takes getting to the airport. There’s no point choosing the cheapest flight if it ends up being the more expensive option when you factor in airport transfers. 

Remember to check your nearest airport as well as the big London ones because sometimes local airports offer similar priced flights and will be easier to get to on departure day!

2. Public Transport

We’ve been finding with many of the European countries that aren’t just across the Channel, that it’s difficult to find viable public transport options to get there. 

We’ve used Flixbus a few times in the past to get from one European city to another by coach. Looking about a month in advance on their website, you can get returns from London to Vienna for £142. This takes about 26 hrs though, so you’re using one of your precious holiday days in each direction of travel! As even peak summer flights come in cheaper than this, we recommend flying instead. Save yourself time and money!

If you thought the train would be a better public transport option, think again! Using Trainline, a return train from London to Vienna is coming in at £428 for the exact same dates as the coach option. And if you thought that at least you would be making considerable time savings by using the train, you’d be wrong again! The train is still 13-21 hrs, depending on connection layover times. We’re going to have to recommend flying again on this one I’m afraid. 

If your main concern about flying is the CO2 impacts, then we recommend carbon offsetting your journey. Most airlines now offer this as an additional option at checkout but we prefer to use Sustainable Travel International, who are partnered with WWF so we know we can trust them.

Getting Around in Vienna

1. Airport Transfer

Getting from the airport in Vienna to the centre is fairly straightforward but we’ve included some tips to help your transfer go smoothly (we all know at the end of a travel day figuring things out can seem harder than usual!). 

2.  Public Transport

I know we say it a lot, but the public transport on mainland Europe is so much better than ours in the UK! Between the buses, trams and underground, the public transport network in Vienna covers anywhere you could want to go. And, as we learnt on our bus tour, the Vienna public transport system is one of the cheapest in Europe!

3. Walking

We usually recommend walking as our favourite way to see a city, but due to the size of Vienna it’s not really possible to walk between all your activities. Thankfully, with the public transport being so affordable and accessible, you don’t really need to! This time we recommend just setting some time aside to wander around the city centre and perhaps visit Naschmarkt (the market) and Mariahilfer Strasse (main shopping street). There are also several walking tour options if you want to focus your wanderings and learn some history and facts about the buildings and statues you might see as you go. The hop-on hop-off bus tickets also include a walking tour. 

However, if you’re an avid step counter, worry not! We still racked up over 15k each day just wandering about the attractions and getting to and from the public transport stations. 

Accommodation

After looking at all the options, we do think accommodation costs in Vienna are higher than some of the other places we have visited. This is something to consider when choosing your trip destination. You might decide you would rather visit somewhere with lower accommodation costs so that you can spend more on activities. 

But if you do decide that Vienna is the destination for you, we can suggest some ways to save money and reduce your accommodation costs. With the public transport being so good in Vienna, we recommend staying outside the city centre and saving some money. We bought week passes for the public transport network anyways, so travelling into the city each day from our accommodation didn’t cost us any extra. 

Hotel or Hostel

The place we chose was 20 mins on the underground from one of the main city centre stations, Stephansplatz. We chose a room with a shared bathroom to bring the price down. The hotel we stayed at costs £60-75 a night (including city tax), which works out at £30-£37.50 each if you are sharing a room. We ended up booking our accommodation last minute (due to factors outside of our control!) which increased our cost. If you are able to book your accommodation in advance this will definitely bring down your costs in this area of the budget. Or if you book in advance, there are ensuite rooms available for a similar price to what we paid, if having your own bathroom is important to you. 

If you are looking to save money in this area of the budget, we recommend a shared room at a hostel. If you choose this, you can bring the price down to £20-25 each a night, including city tax.

Airbnb

Airbnb is always a great option for when you’re travelling. If you’re able to book in advance, we’ve found that double rooms on Airbnb in Vienna are £40-£50 a night including all the fees. Between two people, this is the same price as staying in a shared hostel room, but gives you the added bonus of your own private space. Depending on what your preference is (personal space vs social space) it’s good to know there are options available for the same price. 

Things to Do in Vienna

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

Food in Vienna

Wiener Schnitzel

This is one of the national dishes of Austria, so definitely worth trying if you want to experience local cuisine. A Wiener Schnitzel is basically a thin breaded meat fillet that is fried in a pan. It is a fine Viennese cuisine and a national dish of Austria.

You can pick this up as street food at Prater amusement park at a relatively cheap cost. The other slightly more expensive option is to have this as a main meal at a sit down restaurant, and we did see lots of eateries offering it as a dish. 

Cakes and desserts

One of the things Vienna is famous for is its cafe culture. A few desserts that we kept being recommended during our visit are Sacher cake, apple strudel and Knödel. 

Sacher cake originates at hotel Sacher and was supposedly invented for a visiting Prince. The cake itself consists of a layer of apricot jam inside a chocolate cake, topped with chocolate icing. When we visited Vienna, there was always a long queue for entrance to the Hotel Sacher. So unless you are after the original experience, we recommend that you order your taste of Sacher cake from one of the many other cafes in Vienna and save yourself some queuing time! 

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to taste the Knödel, but they definitely look delicious. These are sweet and savoury dumplings and come in a huge variety of flavours! We were recommended to try them from Knödel Manufaktur bakery. They have a couple of bakery locations, one of which is just a 10 min walk from Stephansplatz, a central underground station.