Destinations · 7 min read
Bali on a budget: what two weeks really costs
Bali has a reputation for being cheap, and it can be, but the number that lands on your card at the end depends almost entirely on how you sleep, eat and get around. You can do a comfortable two weeks for well under a thousand euros, or you can spend that in five days without really trying. The figures below are rough guides from recent trips, meant to help you plan rather than promise you an exact bill. Prices shift with the season and the exchange rate, so treat them as a starting point.
Getting your bearings on daily costs
Once your flight is paid for, most of Bali comes down to a repeatable daily spend. Here is roughly what a day looks like at three different comfort levels, not counting the flight in:
- Backpacker: around €25 to €35 a day. A dorm bed or basic guesthouse, warung meals, a shared scooter, the occasional temple entry.
- Mid-range: around €50 to €80 a day. A private room or modest villa, a mix of warungs and nicer cafes, your own scooter, a couple of paid activities a week.
- Comfortable: €120 and up. A villa with a pool, restaurant dinners, a hired driver for day trips, spa visits.
Most first-timers land somewhere in the mid-range and are surprised how far it goes. The trick is knowing which line items quietly add up.
Where you sleep: villas versus guesthouses
Accommodation is the biggest lever you have. A clean guesthouse room with air conditioning and breakfast runs about €12 to €20 a night in areas like Ubud or Canggu. Step up to a private villa with a small pool and you are looking at €35 to €70 a night, less if you book monthly or split it with friends. That last part matters: a €60 villa is €60 whether one person or four sleep in it, so a group of four can live in real comfort for €15 each.
Booking a week or two at a time, then extending in person, often beats locking in the whole trip online. Owners will frequently drop the nightly rate for a longer stay, and you get to see the room before you commit.
Tip
Log every rupiah spend against a euro cap
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Getting around: the scooter question
A rented scooter is how most travellers move around Bali, and it is cheap: roughly €4 to €6 a day, or about €50 a month if you rent long term. Petrol is close to nothing, maybe €1 to fill a small tank from one of the roadside bottles. That freedom is a big part of why Bali feels affordable.
Two honest warnings. First, you need an international driving permit with a motorcycle category to ride legally, and police checks do happen. Riding without one can mean an on-the-spot fine, and your travel insurance will not cover a crash if you were not licensed. Second, the traffic in the south is genuinely chaotic. If you are not a confident rider, budget for ride-hailing apps or a private driver instead. A car with driver for a full day of sightseeing runs about €35 to €45, which split between three or four people is very reasonable.
Food: from warung to restaurant
This is where Bali is at its most generous. A plate of nasi campur at a local warung, rice with a few vegetable and meat sides, costs €1.50 to €3. A fresh juice is around €1. Eat like this and you can feed yourself well on €8 to €10 a day.
The Western cafes in Canggu and Seminyak are a different world. A smoothie bowl and a flat white easily comes to €10 to €14, roughly what a whole day of warung eating costs. There is nothing wrong with treating yourself, but if every meal is a trendy brunch spot, your food budget quietly triples. A good rhythm is warungs for most meals and a nicer place a few times a week. A mid-tier restaurant dinner with a drink lands around €10 to €18.
Activities and the things worth paying for
Plenty of Bali is free or nearly so: beaches, rice terraces, walking through Ubud. The paid experiences are where you decide what the trip is about. Some realistic ballparks:
- Temple entry (Tanah Lot, Uluwatu, and similar): €3 to €5 each.
- A sunrise hike up Mount Batur with a guide: €35 to €55.
- A day of surf lessons: €20 to €35.
- A scooter day trip to the northern waterfalls: mostly petrol plus a few euros in entry fees.
- A massage or spa afternoon: €6 to €15 an hour.
Tourist tax and the hidden costs
Indonesia now charges foreign visitors a tourist levy for Bali of 150,000 rupiah, around €9, paid once per entry. Pay it online before you arrive to skip the queue. Beyond that, a few costs sneak up on people:
- Visa on arrival: about €33 for 30 days, extendable once.
- ATM fees: many machines charge a fixed fee per withdrawal, so take out larger amounts less often rather than small sums daily.
- Card conversion: always pay in rupiah, not euros, when a terminal offers the choice. The terminal's rate is worse.
- Scooter deposit and small damage: a scratch can cost you €20 to €40 out of your deposit, so photograph the bike when you collect it.
- Departure and airport transfers: a taxi from the airport to Canggu can be €12 to €18, more than you would expect for the distance.
A sample two-week budget
Here is a realistic mid-range plan for one person over 14 days, flights not included:
- Accommodation (villa or private room, ~€30 a night): €420
- Food (mix of warungs and cafes): €200
- Scooter rental and petrol: €70
- Activities and temple entries: €150
- Tourist levy and visa on arrival: €42
- ATM fees, transfers, buffer: €80
- Total: roughly €960 for two weeks, or about €69 a day
Travelling as a couple or a group brings the per-person number down fast, mostly through shared accommodation and shared drivers. Two people in that same villa pay half each on the biggest line. For a fuller look at how to set a daily number before you go, our guide on how much spending money to bring on a trip walks through it.
Keeping the plan honest while you are there
The reason Bali budgets slip is not any single splurge. It is the drift: a few extra cafe brunches, a spa day you did not plan, a scooter upgrade. Rupiah amounts with all those zeros make it easy to lose track of what you are really spending in euros. PocketTrip is built for exactly this: set your two-week budget and daily cap, log each expense in rupiah, and watch it convert to euros and update your remaining cap live. Scan a warung receipt and on-device AI fills in the details, split the villa with your travel companions, and everything stays private on your device, synced through your own iCloud on iPhone and iPad and backed up to your own Google account on Android. You can sketch the whole plan first with our travel budget calculator, and if you are going long and lean, the backpacker budget guide goes deeper on stretching every euro.
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Keep reading: How much spending money should you bring on a trip? →