How Much Does a Trip to Paris Cost? Daily Budgets
Four days in Paris costs most travelers $1,100 to $2,000 per person from the United States, flights included. On a hostel-and-bakery budget it’s around $750. Stay somewhere with a view and eat dinner out every night and you’ll pass $3,000.
Paris is expensive in a specific and avoidable way. Accommodation and restaurant dinners are genuinely costly. Almost everything else — the metro, the bakeries, the parks, half the best museums on the right day — is cheap or free. People who overspend in Paris nearly always do it in restaurants.
Prices are in euros, roughly €1 to $1.08.
Daily cost at three budget levels
| Budget | Mid-range | Comfortable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accommodation | €45 | €160 | €330 |
| Food | €25 | €60 | €130 |
| Transport | €6 | €6 | €25 |
| Activities | €12 | €30 | €55 |
| Daily total | €88 ($95) | €256 ($277) | €540 ($583) |
The transport line barely moves, because the metro is the same price whoever you are, and it goes everywhere.
Flights
Round trip from the US east coast runs $450 to $850 in shoulder season, $800 to $1,300 in summer. From the west coast add roughly $200. From elsewhere in Europe, trains and budget flights reach Paris for £40–150.
Paris is cheapest in January, February, and November. It’s also perfectly good in those months — the museums are empty and the queues vanish.
Accommodation
- Hostel dorm — €40–65
- Budget hotel, 2-star — €100–160
- Mid-range hotel, 3-star — €160–260
- Boutique or 4-star — €280–500
- Studio apartment rental — €130–250
Paris hotel rooms are small. A “double” in the Marais is often 11 square metres, and this is normal rather than a scam.
Location matters less than first-time visitors think, because the metro is fast and dense. Staying in the 11th, 12th, 18th, or 20th arrondissements saves €40–80 a night against the 1st through 7th, and puts you fifteen minutes from everything. It also puts you where Parisians eat, which improves the trip.
Add the taxe de séjour, €1–15 per person per night depending on the property’s rating.
Food, and the café rule
Paris has the same two-tier pricing as Italy, and it catches people the same way.
Standing at the counter costs less than sitting at a table. An espresso at the bar is €1.50–2.50. Carried to a terrace table it’s €4–7. On the Champs-Élysées or by Notre-Dame it can be €9. The menu will list both prices — comptoir and salle — and almost nobody reads it.
Typical costs:
- Croissant — €1.30–2
- Boulangerie sandwich or quiche — €5–8
- Bakery lunch with a drink — €9–13
- Bistro formule at lunch, two courses — €17–24
- Bistro dinner à la carte — €32–55
- Glass of wine — €5–9
- Restaurant water — free, if you ask for une carafe d’eau
The lunch formule is the best value in the city. The same kitchen that charges €48 for dinner will serve two courses at midday for €19.
Transport
- Single metro ticket — €2.50 paper, €2.15 loaded onto a Navigo Easy card
- Carnet of ten — €17.35 on a Navigo Easy card, plus €2 for the card itself
- Navigo Découverte weekly pass — €31.60, plus €5 for the card and a passport photo. Runs Monday to Sunday only.
- Airport: RER B from Charles de Gaulle — €13; Roissybus — €17; taxi, fixed fare — €56–65
If you arrive on a Monday or Tuesday and stay several days, the weekly Navigo is the cheapest option in the city by a wide margin. Arrive Thursday and the carnet wins.
Paris is also genuinely walkable. The distance from the Louvre to Notre-Dame is fifteen minutes on foot.
Museums and sights
- Louvre — €22
- Musée d’Orsay — €16
- Versailles palace — €21, or €32 for the full passport with the gardens
- Sainte-Chapelle — €13
- Centre Pompidou — €15
- Eiffel Tower — €14.50 stairs, €22.50 lift to the second floor, €29.40 to the summit
- Catacombs — €29
- Paris Museum Pass — €70 for two days, €90 for four
Two things worth knowing. Many national museums are free on the first Sunday of the month, including the Louvre and the Orsay from October to March. And the Museum Pass only pays off if you’re visiting three or more major sites a day, which is a punishing way to see Paris.
Notre-Dame, Sacré-Cœur, the Père Lachaise cemetery, and every park in the city are free.
A real four-day budget
Mid-range hotel in the 11th, lunches from bakeries and bistros, two dinners out, three museums, flying from the US east coast:
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| Flights | $650 |
| Hotel, 4 nights | €680 ($734) |
| Taxe de séjour | €12 ($13) |
| Food | €240 ($259) |
| Navigo weekly | €37 ($40) |
| Museums | €120 ($130) |
| Total | ≈ $1,826 |
Swap the hotel for a hostel and eat from bakeries and it’s about $1,050. Add dinners at €60 a head and a Seine cruise and it’s $2,600.
Where the money actually goes
Restaurants, almost every time. A Paris trip that eats two bistro dinners instead of four costs €90 less and doesn’t feel like a compromise, because a €12 bakery lunch eaten in the Jardin du Luxembourg is one of the better meals available in the city.
The other reliable leak is the terrace coffee. Four seated coffees a day at €5 rather than four counter coffees at €2 is €12 a day — €48 over the trip, spent on the privilege of sitting down. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want. It helps to know you’re choosing it, which is most of what expense awareness on holiday actually is.
Tracking a short city trip
Short trips are the easiest to lose track of, because four days doesn’t feel long enough to need a budget and the spending is almost entirely small.
Spentrip works well for this because logging takes seconds — photograph the bistro receipt, or say the amount out loud while you’re walking to the next thing, and it’s categorised and converted to your home currency. Manual entry, conversion, and the spending charts are free; receipt scanning and voice entry are premium.
The number most people are wrong about is food. Ask someone what they spent in Paris and they’ll name the hotel. Look at the breakdown and food is usually within €50 of it.
Common questions
How much money do I need per day in Paris?
€88 on a budget, €256 mid-range, €540 comfortable, per person, excluding flights. The floor is unusually low for a major capital because the metro is cheap and the bakeries are excellent.
Is Paris more expensive than London?
Marginally cheaper, on most measures. Hotels are comparable, restaurant dinners are similar, but the Paris metro is roughly half the price of the London Underground and museum entry is generally lower — with far more free days.
Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it?
Only for intensive sightseeing. At €70 for two days it needs about three major museums a day to break even, and both the Eiffel Tower and the Catacombs are excluded. Two or three museums across four days is cheaper bought individually, and reserving time slots online avoids the queues anyway.
What’s the cheapest way to get from Charles de Gaulle into Paris?
The RER B train at €13, taking about 35 minutes to central Paris. The Roissybus is €17. A taxi is a fixed €56 to the right bank or €65 to the left. Rideshares are usually similar to the taxi fare and occasionally worse during surges.
When is the cheapest time to visit Paris?
January, February, and November, excluding the Christmas market weeks. Flights and hotels both fall 25–40% against summer, and the major museums are dramatically quieter. Cold and grey, but Paris handles that well.
Do you tip in Paris?
Service is included by law — service compris — so tipping is optional. Rounding up, or leaving €1–3 for a good meal, is normal. Nobody expects 15–20%, and leaving it marks you out.
The best value in Paris is the thing nobody books: a bakery lunch, a bottle of wine, and a park bench. It costs €15, it’s better than most €50 dinners in the tourist quarters, and it’s what the city is actually for.
