Cheapest cities in Europe to visit in 2024/2025 revealed - infographic

Kirsten Henton

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Discover the cheapest cities in Europe to visit in 2024/2025 and start planning your next European city break today. Find out how popular cities rate based on a typical two-night stay.

• Top 60 cheapest cities in Europe
• Why book a European city break?
• Cheapest 'popular' cities in Europe
• How we've rated cities
• Research data sources
• Most expensive cities in Europe

Check out our Cheapest cities in Europe to visit in 2024/2025 infographic to see where the top 60 cities are located on the map.

Why book a cheap European city break?

One of the greatest perks of living in Europe, the UK in particular, is the ease with which we can escape on a low-cost city break in countries across the Channel.

Unlike, say, our neighbours across the pond, where an internal flight can last more than five hours (hello NYC to LA), relatively condensed Europe sees 43 sovereign nations (according to the UN, excluding Russia) jigsawed across a land mass that's far smaller than Australia.

If you're travelling by car or train, you could easily shoot through three or more countries in one day, ensuring a weekend, long or short, can be enjoyed in a land not that far away.

With the increasing emphasis on thoughtful, responsible travel and, of course, the cost of living crisis biting, we wanted to create something practical to help you decide where to go for a great value city break.

We have explained the rationale and where we sourced the data from, excluding travel costs to each destination. With options from flying and sailing to training and driving, these prices will vary greatly depending on how you get to where you're going.

What we're interested in here is the real cost on the ground when you arrive. How much can you expect to pay for a meal out in Valencia, a hotel in Istanbul or a taxi ride in Gothenburg?

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Cheapest European cities

Perhaps unsurprisingly, cities in the Balkans have proven to be the most affordable. Pristina, the capital of the second youngest country in the world, Kosovo, takes top spot for hitting the hat trick of affordable accommodation, restaurants and transport.

Meanwhile, North Macedonia's Skopje, said to have the oldest bazaar in the Balkans, and Bosnia and Herzegovina's Sarajevo, where Ottoman mosques rub shoulders with Austro-Hungarian architecture, take the next two places respectively.

If getting around is your main concern, then look to cities such as Sofia and Plovdiv in Bulgaria and Cluj-Napoca in Romania, where bus fares and airport transfers are nothing if not cheap.

The list also highlights places that may surprise you. Up-and-coming Tirana in Albania and ancient Athens in Greece, for example, are both very affordable when it comes to finding accommodation but less so when considering the cost of food.

Yet, Tirana still pips Athens to the post overall as eating and drinking out in the Albanian capital remains cheaper than doing so in the Greek capital.

Then there's seductive Seville, home of the world's largest Gothic cathedral and producer of the juiciest oranges, in Andalusia where accommodation is pricey but eating, and particularly drinking, out is still great value.

It's a similar picture in Croatia's capital, Zagreb where, among its many attractions, you'll find the quirky Museum of Broken Relationships, possibly because nothing sparks an argument quite like eye-watering hotel prices, especially when compared with the low cost of catching a bus or booking an airport transfer.

When it comes to the least affordable, Croatia's walled port city of Dubrovnik, the Catalan city of Girona and Spanish seaside favourite Malaga stand out for their high-priced stays.

Meanwhile, eating and drinking out among the elegant streets of Strasbourg will quickly drain your holiday budget.

Ultimately, where you choose for a cheap European city break will depend on what matters to you and hopefully, our thoroughly researched findings will help you make that decision.

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Top 60 cheapest cities in Europe in 2024/2025

Thinking of booking a European city break? Below is our list of the 60 cheapest cities in Europe you should consider visiting in 2024/2025.

Ratings are based on combined costs of accommodation, food, drink and in-destination transport. Each element has a rating from 1 (the cheapest) to 6 (most expensive).

The overall rating combines all the elements placing equal weighting on each. Learn more about the rating system and the data sources below.

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€ = local currency is euros (EUR)

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Cheapest 'popular' cities in Europe 2024/2025

As well as considering cheap cities in Europe overall, we wanted to compare costs in some of the most popular city break destinations, even if they are expensive cities to visit.

Although you won't see many of these in the top 60 list, it should give you an idea of how the city of romance, Paris, compares with the buzzing city of Amsterdam (spoiler: neither are especially cheap but the French capital is a shade more affordable than the Dutch).

More encouragingly, however, the unrivalled city of Istanbul, where east meets west across the busy Bosphorus, is one of the more affordable big hitters.

From its accommodation to eating out, Turkey's largest city, along with Poland's Krakow, where you'll find the biggest central square in Europe, and Latvia's Art Nouveau-laden Baltic capital of Riga, all offer a great value city break where you're guaranteed to see some of the continent's major attractions.

Finally, and perhaps least surprisingly, the capital cities of Copenhagen in Denmark, Reykjavik in Iceland and Oslo in Norway are by far the most expensive with everything from accommodation to public transport and airport transfers fetching a high price.

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€ = local currency is euros (EUR)

How we've rated the cheapest cities

We've identified the top 60 cheapest cities in Europe to visit in 2024/2025 by comparing the costs for three different elements to give us an overall rating: accommodation, food and drink and transport.

Find out more about each element and how the ratings are calculated. We have made some assumptions to allow us to compare the most affordable cities in Europe.

• Overall rating
• Hotel accommodation
• Food & drink
• Transport

Overall rating

The overall rating for each city gives an indication of the combined costs of visiting for a two-night stay. The rating is on a scale from 1 (the cheapest) to 6 (most expensive).

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Hotel accommodation

Where you are staying can be one of the most expensive parts of a city break. Popular cities can have very high hotel prices especially if you want something located centrally.

Our accommodation rating is based on real hotel prices extracted from Booking.com^* based on the typical cheapest hotel accommodation (3* or higher) within 2 km of the city centre for a two-night weekend stay including breakfast for two adults in the middle of the month (over the next 12 months).

Note: other accommodation types are available in cities including hostels, private rentals and couchsurfing, however, for the purpose of the research we have focused on hotel accommodation with breakfast included.

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Food & drink

Eating out is a major part of the experience when enjoying a European city break. Soaking up the café culture, local cuisine and nightlife are what drive many of us to travel to cities across Europe.

We've split our ratings into two elements: food and drink. Travellers will have their own requirements, however, our ratings take into account the different options available in each city to allow us to compare.

Food

Our food ratings are based on a mix of three-course meals, inexpensive meals and cheaper food options for two adults for a two-night stay in the city, but exclude breakfast as this is covered by the hotel accommodation rating.

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Drink

Our drink rating is based on a mix of hot drinks, soft drinks and alcoholic drinks for two adults for a two-night stay in the city.

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Transport

Transport is often an afterthought when booking city breaks, whether it's how you travel from the airport into the city centre or simply getting about an unfamiliar destination.

We've split our transport ratings into two elements: getting about and airport transfers. Travellers will have their own requirements, however, our ratings take into account the different options available in each city to allow us to compare.

Getting about

Our getting about rating is based on a combination of journeys on public transport and by taxi for two adults for a two-night stay within the city.

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Airport transfers

Our airport transfers rating is based on transfers for two adults between the city and the airport, either by taxi or train depending on the size of the city and distance from the airport to the city centre.

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Research data sources

Our cheapest places are rated based on multiple data sources and calculations to find comparable costs of visiting each city for a two-night weekend stay.

Hotel accommodation prices have been extracted from Booking.com^* in February 2023 for stays over the next 12 months.

Costs for food, drink, public transport and private taxis have been extracted from Numbeo.com.

We have researched mileage between airports and city centres and combined our findings with cost data from Numbeo.com to calculate airport transfer costs. In some cases, this is by public transport instead of a taxi.

The following destinations are currently excluded from the research: Belarus, Russian Federation and Ukraine.

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Ready to book your next urban escape? Check out the latest offers on city breaks to budget-friendly travel destinations across Europe and beyond plus travel tips on some of world's best cities.

Kirsten Henton

Kirsten Henton is Weather2Travel.com's editor. Kirsten writes, commissions and edits our travel features, liaising with our contributors and ensuring copy is spick-and-span. A member of the British Guild of Travel Writers, Kirsten also freelances writing articles on travel, history and the outdoors for titles such as Scotland Magazine and BBC Travel.

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