Southern Europe has a reputation for being the cheap half of the continent, and that is mostly earned. But “cheap” covers a wide range once you put Lisbon, Seville and Florence in the same week, and the gap between the three countries is bigger than most people expect.
Here is what a week actually costs in Spain, Portugal and Italy, broken into the line items you pay rather than a single daily number. Everything below is a range, because a Tuesday in October and a Saturday in July are different trips.
What “a week” means here
To keep the comparison honest, the numbers assume the same trip in each country: seven nights, two people splitting a room, two cities with one train between them, breakfast where it comes with the room, one sit-down meal a day, and two or three paid attractions across the week. No car, no domestic flights, no all-inclusive resort.
Flights to the region are left out. They swing too wildly by departure city and booking date to average into anything useful, and we covered that separately in our guide to when to book flights and trains in Europe.
Two tiers run through the whole piece. Budget means hostels and guesthouses, markets and bakeries, standing at the bar for coffee, walking most places. Mid means a three-star hotel or a decent apartment, a proper lunch out, taxis when you are tired, and paying for the things you came to see.
Accommodation: the line that decides everything
Where you sleep sets the tone for the whole budget, and it is where the three countries separate most clearly.
Portugal is the cheapest of the three by a visible margin, especially outside Lisbon. A clean guesthouse room in Porto, Coimbra or the Alentejo often sits around a third below the equivalent in Spain, and roughly half what central Florence asks in summer. Lisbon has caught up with Spanish prices in the last few years and no longer counts as a bargain, but the rest of the country still does.
Spain sits in the middle and has the widest internal spread. Barcelona and Madrid price like any major European capital. Seville, Valencia, Granada and almost anywhere in Andalusia drop noticeably, and the drop gets steeper the further you get from a high-speed rail station.
Italy is the expensive one, and the reason is concentration. Florence, Venice, Rome and the Amalfi coast absorb most of the demand, and they price accordingly from May through September. Move to Bologna, Puglia or the smaller Tuscan towns and Italy becomes competitive with Spain again. It is a country where the postcode matters more than the country.
One Italian line item catches people out: the tassa di soggiorno, a per-person, per-night city tax collected at check-in, usually in cash, and almost never included in the price you booked. It is a few euros a night in most cities and higher in Venice and Rome. Over a week for two people it is a real number, not a rounding error. Spain and Portugal levy similar taxes in some regions, but they are generally smaller.
Food and drink
This is where Southern Europe earns its reputation, and where the daily spread between budget and mid travel is widest.
In Portugal, the prato do dia at a neighborhood restaurant, usually a main, bread, and often a drink, remains one of the best value lunches in Europe. Pastelarias sell coffee and a pastry for pocket change if you drink it standing up. Portugal also has the couvert habit: bread, olives and cheese arrive unasked and are charged if you touch them. Wave them away if you do not want them, and nobody minds.
Spain’s saving grace is the menú del día, a fixed-price weekday lunch with two courses, bread and a drink. It is served roughly between one and four in the afternoon, it is genuinely filling, and eating your main meal at lunch instead of dinner is the single easiest way to cut a Spanish food budget. Tapas culture varies by region. In Granada and parts of León a free tapa still comes with each drink. In Barcelona it does not.
Italy is the priciest of the three at the table, but the rules are gentle if you know them. Coffee at the bar costs a fraction of coffee at a table, and the difference is posted on the wall. The coperto is a small per-person cover charge in most restaurants and is normal, not a scam. Aperitivo in Milan, Turin and Bologna, where a drink comes with a spread of food in the early evening, can genuinely replace dinner.
Across all three, the pattern is the same: markets and bakeries in the morning, one real meal a day, and the tourist-facing restaurants nearest the main square skipped entirely. That habit alone moves a food budget from mid to budget without eating worse.
Getting between cities
Trains are the default in all three countries, but they behave differently enough to matter.
Spain has the most extensive high-speed network in Europe. Renfe now competes with two low-cost operators on the busiest corridors, which has pushed Madrid to Barcelona and Madrid to Seville fares down hard for anyone booking a few weeks out. Walk-up prices on the same trains stay high, so the booking window does most of the work.
Italy has the same dynamic. Trenitalia and Italo run against each other on the Milan to Rome to Naples spine, and advance fares can be a third of the flexible price. Regional trains, the slow ones that stop everywhere, are cheap, unreserved, and fine for short hops. Validate a paper ticket before boarding a regional train or expect a fine.
Portugal is smaller and simpler. CP runs the Lisbon to Porto line frequently, and it is inexpensive by Western European standards even booked late. For everywhere the train does not reach, long-distance buses are comfortable, cheap and often faster than the rail alternative. This is the one country of the three where the bus is a genuine first choice rather than a fallback.
Getting around inside cities
Most Southern European old towns are small, flat enough, and best walked. The exceptions are worth budgeting for.
Lisbon and Porto are hills, and the hills are steeper than photographs suggest. Rome sprawls and its metro covers less of it than you would like. Madrid and Barcelona both have excellent metro systems with multi-ride tickets that beat singles almost immediately.
The general rule: buy a multi-ride ticket rather than a day pass unless you are moving constantly. In most of these cities the tourist day pass needs four or five rides to break even, and a walking day rarely gets there.
Attractions and the things you actually pay for
Entry fees are the most controllable part of the budget, and the one people most often let run.
The headline sites in all three countries have moved to timed entry with prices to match. The Alhambra, the Sagrada Família, the Uffizi, the Vatican Museums and Belém’s tower all now cost meaningfully more than they did five years ago, and all sell out in high season. Book the two or three you genuinely care about, well ahead, and let the rest go.
Then use the free layer, which is unusually good in Southern Europe. Most Italian state museums open free one Sunday a month. Many Spanish museums have free late-afternoon windows, including the Prado and the Reina Sofía. Churches, markets, viewpoints and whole historic centers cost nothing at all. We collected more of these in our guide to free things to do in Europe.
What a day costs, side by side
Per person, per day, excluding flights into the region. Accommodation assumes two people sharing.
| Line item | Portugal | Spain | Italy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bed, budget | €25–40 | €30–50 | €35–60 |
| Bed, mid | €45–70 | €55–85 | €70–120 |
| Food, budget | €18–25 | €20–30 | €25–35 |
| Food, mid | €35–50 | €40–55 | €50–75 |
| City transport | €3–6 | €3–7 | €3–8 |
| Sights, averaged | €5–12 | €6–15 | €8–20 |
| Daily, budget | €55–80 | €65–95 | €75–115 |
| Daily, mid | €95–140 | €110–160 | €135–215 |
These are ranges for a normal week in normal season, not floors. High summer in Venice or the Algarve can push past the top of every column, and a rainy February in Seville can sit under the bottom of it.
Three sample weeks
Rough totals per person for seven nights, excluding flights into the region and including one intercity train.
Portugal, budget. Four nights Lisbon, three nights Porto, train between them, hostels or guesthouses, markets and pratos do dia, two paid sights. Somewhere around €450–600.
Spain, mid. Four nights Seville, three nights Granada, bus or train between them, three-star hotels, menú del día at lunch and tapas in the evening, the Alcázar and the Alhambra booked ahead. Somewhere around €850–1,150.
Italy, mid. Three nights Florence, four nights Bologna, fast train between them, three-star hotels, one museum in each city, city tax paid at both. Somewhere around €1,000–1,450.
The Nordic version of this exercise came out roughly double the Portuguese figure, which is the clearest argument for pointing a tight budget south. We ran those numbers in what a week in the Nordics actually costs.
Season moves everything
Accommodation in Southern Europe is seasonal in a way that food and transport are not. The same room in Seville can double between March and May, and the same apartment in Florence can double again in July.
The cheapest usable windows are roughly late October to early December, and January to March excluding Christmas and Easter. Andalusia and the Algarve stay mild through winter. Northern Italy gets cold and foggy, which is fine for museums and bad for terraces. If your dates are flexible at all, shifting a trip two weeks either side of peak is worth more than every other saving in this article combined, which is the case we made in our guide to shoulder season in Europe.
Where the money usually leaks
Four things account for most of the overspending we see on Southern European trips.
- Eating on the main square. A restaurant with a view of the cathedral charges for the view. Two streets back is usually half the price and better food.
- Unbooked headline sights. Turning up at the Alhambra or the Uffizi without a ticket means either missing it or buying a marked-up guided tour on the spot.
- Too many cities. Every move costs a train fare, a check-in, and half a day. Three cities in seven days is usually one too many.
- Forgetting the city tax. In Italy especially, it lands as cash at check-in and is not in the booking total.
If you want more destinations at the cheaper end of the continent, our roundup of cheap European destinations for 2026 covers the rest of the map.
Turning the numbers into a plan
A budget only helps once it is attached to actual days. Two cities, the train between them, the two sights you booked, and the meals you already know you want, laid out night by night, is the version you can check against your bank balance before you leave.
That is the part Lentii is built for. Drop your cities and dates in, build the week day by day, and share it with whoever you are traveling with so the whole trip sits in one place instead of six browser tabs.
FAQ
Which is cheapest: Spain, Portugal or Italy?
Portugal, in most comparisons and by a clear margin outside Lisbon. Spain sits in the middle with a wide internal spread between the big two cities and everywhere else. Italy is the most expensive of the three, mostly because its famous cities absorb the demand.
How much should I budget per day in Southern Europe?
Roughly €55–95 a day per person at the budget end and €95–215 at the mid range, depending on country and season, excluding flights into the region. Accommodation drives almost all of the variation.
Is a rail pass worth it for Spain, Portugal and Italy?
Usually not for a single-country week. All three sell cheap advance fares on their own sites, and a pass still needs seat reservations on the fast trains. A pass makes more sense on a multi-country route with frequent moves. Compare the advance fares for your actual route before buying one.
