Where these numbers come from

Cost comparisons between countries

The cost-per-country planner does one piece of arithmetic: it takes a daily figure and scales it by each country's published price level, where the EU27 average is 100. There is no reference country to choose, so nothing you pick can rescale the other countries. The price levels are not ours. They come from Eurostat. The daily figure being scaled is ours, and it is the same editorial band described under the budget calculator below.

The full report on that page goes further. It weights seven Eurostat categories instead of one, using assumptions about how you travel that are ours rather than published. The report says so on every table that depends on them.

Price level index for restaurants and hotels, where the EU27 average = 100. A country at 120 is about 20 percent dearer than the EU average for the same basket; a country at 80 is about 20 percent cheaper.

What is missing, and why

Liechtenstein is not in the comparison. Eurostat does not cover it in this dataset. We could have estimated it from Switzerland, which it shares a customs union and a currency with, and nobody would have noticed. We left it out instead, because an estimate presented alongside measured figures is indistinguishable from one, and that is the kind of thing this page exists to prevent.

What it does not tell you

This is the price level for restaurants and hotels only, not a basket of every tourist price. Capital cities and tourist districts run above their national average. High season and low season can differ by more than two countries do. Flights are not in it at all, and they often decide the total. Treat the ranking as reliable and the exact figures as a starting point.

How often it is refreshed

Eurostat publishes this annually, usually mid-year. When new figures appear we replace the data file and the retrieval date on this page changes with it. The reference year is shown on the planner itself, so you can see how current it is without coming here.

The daily spending bands in the budget calculator

The budget calculator offers three daily spending bands: budget, mid-range and comfortable. These are the only figures on our planners that do not come from a published dataset. They are Durian Travel's own estimate, the same ranges we publish in our Europe budget guide, and we would rather call them an editorial estimate than present them as a statistic. There is no survey behind them.

They describe Western Europe. That is the more expensive half of the continent, so with no destination chosen the calculator leans high for anyone travelling east or south.

Choose a destination in the calculator and those bands are scaled by the Eurostat price level index described above, the same index behind the cost-per-country planner. The scaling is sourced. The starting figures being scaled are not.

The top band is shown with a ceiling of 380 a day. That ceiling is ours too. It is not published anywhere, including in our own guide, and there is no real upper limit to what a trip can cost. Treat it as the point where our estimate stops being useful rather than as a maximum.

Whether a passport needs a Schengen visa

The visa requirement check reads one legal instrument and nothing else. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 lists the countries whose nationals need a visa for a short stay in Annex I, and the countries whose nationals do not in Annex II. Conditions on individual entries, such as a biometric passport requirement, are footnotes to those annexes and are quoted as they are written.

We use the consolidated version rather than the original text, because the regulation has been amended several times and the consolidated version is the one that reflects every amendment in force.

What it does not cover

Short stays only: tourism and similar purposes, up to 90 days in any 180 day period, in the Schengen area. It says nothing about work, study, residence or any longer stay, which run on different rules entirely. It does not tell you what a consulate will ask you for, what an application costs or how long it takes. Only the consulate handling your application can tell you that.

Nationals of the EU, the EEA and Switzerland appear in neither annex. The tool lists them under free movement rules, which is a different legal basis, and says so.

Border rules

We do not publish border rules as though they were ours. Where this site describes EES, ETIAS or Schengen visa requirements, it is summarising these sources, and they are the ones to check before you rely on anything:

Dates we have checked, and when

The EES and ETIAS status quoted across this site was last verified against the official EU sources on 17 September 2026. The ETIAS fee comparison above was checked on 2 September 2026. Border rules change, and a page that does not say when it was last read is asking you to trust it blindly.

What changed here, and when

This site publishes under a company name rather than a person's, so there is no byline to trust. This log is the substitute: what was checked or changed, and the day it happened.

The method behind every figure is set out on the methodology page.

Why this page exists

Most travel sites ask you to trust an author. We publish under a company name rather than a personal one, so that is not on offer here. What we can offer instead is that every number has a source, a date, and a link, and that where something is missing or contested we say so on the page rather than hoping you do not look.

If you find a figure on this site without a source, or one that has gone out of date, tell us and we will fix it.