What the Trip Budget Planner does
This planner adds up a trip budget by day and by category - flights, stays, food, transport, activities - in as many currencies as you like, converted to your home currency at exchange rates you enter. It splits shared costs between travellers (evenly or by weight), tracks what has actually been spent against the plan, and works out who should pay whom to settle up.
It uses your own rates rather than live ones, so the totals match the rates you actually got, and nothing you type leaves the page.
How to use it
- Set your home currency and the number of nights, and list the travellers. Give anyone a weight other than 1 if they should carry a smaller or larger share - a child at 0.5, for instance.
- Enter one exchange rate per foreign currency as CODE = value in your home currency, for example EUR = 1.10.
- Add costs one per line: day (blank for whole-trip costs), category, description, currency, planned amount, and later the amount actually spent and who paid. Mark a line per person or per night to multiply it automatically.
- Read the planned total, spending so far, the category breakdown and the daily table. The settlement lines tell you the fewest simple payments that square everyone up.
Reading the results
Planned figures are your budget; spent figures are what has happened. The remaining or over-budget number compares the two across the whole trip.
Shares follow the weights. Each traveller's share of spending is total spent x weight / sum of weights. Balance is what they paid minus that share: positive means they are owed money, negative means they owe.
Settlements pair the largest debtor with the largest creditor repeatedly, to the cent - a simple method that usually needs no more payments than there are travellers.
Worked example: a four-night Lisbon trip for two friends
Ana and Ben budget in US dollars with EUR = 1.10. Return flights at 420 dollars per person are 840; an apartment at 95 euros per night for 4 nights is 380 euros, or 418 dollars; a 60-euro dinner is 66; train tickets at 12 euros per person are 26.40; palace tickets at 20 euros per person are 44; a 30-euro lunch is 33. Planned total: 1,427.40 dollars, 713.70 each, 356.85 a day.
So far Ana paid the flights (840) and the dinner, which came to 72 euros (79.20 dollars); Ben paid the apartment (418) and the trains (26.40). Spending so far is 1,363.60, so each share is 681.80.
Ana paid 919.20, which is 237.40 more than her share; Ben paid 444.40, which is 237.40 less. The settlement line says: Ben pays Ana 237.40.
Formulas and scoring rules
- Line in home currency
amount x multiplier x ratemultiplier = travellers for per-person lines, nights for per-night lines, otherwise 1.- Share
share_i = total x weight_i / sum of weights- Balance
balance_i = paid_i - share of spending_iPositive is owed money; negative owes.- Per day
planned total / nights (or the number of days listed)
Limitations: what the result does not prove
- Exchange rates are yours and fixed for the whole trip. Real card payments settle at the rate on each day, plus any fees.
- It does not save anything. Download the CSV or copy the summary if you want to keep the budget.
- Settlements cover only lines with a spent amount and a payer. Costs paid by someone outside the traveller list are refused rather than guessed.
- The budget is arithmetic on your numbers. Prices for flights, hotels and activities have to come from you.
Privacy: where your data goes
Everything you paste, type or drop is processed in this browser tab. It is not uploaded, logged, stored or sent to analytics. Session recording and tag-manager scripts are switched off on this page.
Standards and sources
Frequently asked questions
How much should I budget per day for travel?
It depends entirely on the destination and your style, which is why this tool does not guess. List the fixed costs (flights, stays, passes), estimate daily food and transport from real prices you have seen, and the planner shows the per-day and per-person figures that result.
How do I split travel costs fairly between friends?
Record who paid each item and the planner divides the spending by share weights - equal by default. It then shows each person's balance and the payments that settle everything. Adjust weights if someone joins for fewer days or shares a room differently.
Can I budget in several currencies at once?
Yes. Give each line its own currency code and enter one rate per foreign currency in terms of your home currency. Totals, shares and settlements are all in the home currency; the CSV keeps both the local and converted amounts.
What does share weight mean for a traveller?
It is how much of the shared cost that person carries relative to others. Two adults at weight 1 and a child at 0.5 split a 500 total as 200, 200 and 100. Weights affect shared totals only; a per-person line already multiplies by the number of travellers.
Why is my budget over when the plan looked fine?
Usually because some lines were more expensive than planned, or because per-night and per-person costs multiplied up more than expected. Compare the planned and spent columns by day and category to find where it happened.
Last reviewed by the A2Z.Tools team against the sources listed above.
