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Balkans & Eastern Europe
≈ €40–60 / day. Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary. Cheap beds and hearty food. The thing to watch here is the mix of currencies (forint, leva, dinar), not the prices.
Interrail & Eurail · Budgeting
Every city, every currency, one budget.
An Interrail trip packs a dozen countries into a couple of weeks. Euros one morning, Swiss francs by lunch, forint by nightfall. PocketTrip keeps your pass, your beds and your daily spend in a single view, converted back to your home currency, so you always know if the whole trip still adds up.
Why rail budgets slip
The pass is the easy part
You paid for the Interrail or Eurail pass in one clean transaction, so it feels like the trip is sorted. It isn't. The real spend is everything the pass doesn't cover: beds, food, seat reservations, the odd night train, that cable car in the Alps. It's spread across a dozen currencies and hard to add up in your head while you're three trains deep into a travel day.
A moving target needs a live number
On a train trip through Europe your costs swing wildly from country to country. A day in Sofia and a day in Geneva barely belong on the same spreadsheet. Guessing an average doesn't help much. What works is logging what you actually spend as you cross each border, so the number in front of you is real and you can slow down or splurge on purpose, not by accident.
- Log the pass, reservations and beds as fixed costs up front
- Add daily spend in the local currency in a few taps
- See everything converted to one home currency
- Watch a daily cap that adjusts as countries get pricier
- Keep it all offline-friendly for long stretches of track
Rough daily budgets
What a day costs, region by region
These are realistic per-person, per-day ranges for a mid-range budget traveller: a hostel or cheap guesthouse bed, mostly self-catered or casual meals, local transport and one paid sight. They sit on top of your pass and any seat reservations. Use them to sketch a total, then let PocketTrip replace the guesses with your real numbers as you go.
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Central Europe
≈ €50–75 / day. Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia. Great value cities, koruna and złoty alongside the euro, superb train links.
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Southern Europe
≈ €60–90 / day. Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece. Mostly euro, but Italian high-speed trains often need paid reservations on top of the pass.
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Western Europe
≈ €80–120 / day. France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria. Big capitals push the top of the range; reservations common on fast trains.
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Nordics
≈ €90–130 / day. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland. Krone and krona, not euro. Beautiful, and brutal on the wallet, so self-cater where you can.
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Switzerland
≈ €100–150 / day. The franc bites. Scenic rail is a highlight but many panoramic lines carry supplements on top of any pass.
A common shape for a two-to-three-week trip: budget the cheaper weeks tight, let the expensive legs run higher, and keep one number for the whole thing. Free PocketTrip covers a single trip with up to 25 expenses; Pro (€ 4,99/month · € 19,99/year · € 49,99 lifetime) gives you unlimited trips and expenses for the summer of rail travel you're actually planning.
Pass + beds + daily spend
Keep the whole trip in one view
1
Log the fixed costs first
Add your Interrail or Eurail pass, any pre-booked seat reservations and your first few hostel nights as expenses. Now your budget already knows about the big stuff before you've boarded a train.
2
Add daily spend as you cross borders
Coffee in koruna, a bed in złoty, dinner in euro. Log each one in the local currency. Live rates convert everything back to your home currency, so a mixed-currency day still totals cleanly.
3
Steer, don't just spectate
Your daily cap updates in real time and your stats show spend by country and category. A pricey Swiss leg is obvious immediately, so you can rein in the next cheap country instead of finding out at home.
FAQ
Interrail budgets, answered
How much should I budget for an Interrail trip?
On top of your pass, most travellers spend roughly €50–70 a day in cheaper regions like the Balkans and Central Europe, and €90–130 a day in expensive countries like Switzerland, the Nordics and big Western capitals. Multiply your rough daily figure by the number of days, add the pass, seat reservations and any flights home, and you have a realistic Interrail budget.
How do I handle multiple currencies on a train trip through Europe?
Most of the Eurozone uses the euro, but you'll also cross into pounds, Swiss francs, Czech koruna, Hungarian forint, Polish złoty, and Scandinavian and Balkan currencies. PocketTrip lets you log each expense in the local currency with live exchange rates and converts everything back to one home currency, so your Interrail budget stays honest whichever country you're standing in.
Can I track my Interrail budget offline on the train?
Yes. Long stretches of railway have patchy or no signal, so PocketTrip stores your trip on your device and lets you log expenses offline. Exchange rates and iCloud sync catch up the next time you have a connection, which is perfect for logging that station coffee while the countryside rolls past.
Should the pass and accommodation be in the same budget as daily spending?
Yes. Keeping the pass, seat reservations, beds and day-to-day spending in one view is the only way to see whether the whole trip adds up. In PocketTrip you can log the big fixed costs up front and then watch your daily cap against them, so a pricey Switzerland leg doesn't quietly blow the budget you set for the cheaper weeks.
All aboard
Budget your rail trip before you board.
Free on the App Store for iPhone & iPad. Log the pass, the beds and every currency in between.
