Trip Budget Calculator + Free Spreadsheet Template

How do I use the calculator?

Start with real quotes, because the calculator holds no prices of its own and every blank price counts as zero. The receipt shows a labelled sample trip until you add up your own.

1. Collect your quotes. Take the hotel price from the final booking screen, plus the flight and car quotes, and check whether the hotel price already includes tax and fees. For the car, use the daily price with taxes and fees included, because the calculator has no car tax line.
2. Fill the top row. Enter travelers, nights, hotel per night and flights per person. If the hotel price already includes tax and fees, divide it by nights, then by rooms, to get the per-night figure.
3. Open "Add more lines". Add rooms, car, food, activities, insurance, card fee, buffer and deposits. Add tax and resort fee only if the hotel price leaves them out. If it includes them, leave Hotel tax % and Resort fee empty, as the all-in shortcut further down explains. Trains, parking, fuel and anything else without its own line go in Activities.
4. Press "Add it up". After that, the receipt updates as you change a figure.

To bring the sample back, press "Try an example". With its buffer set to 0, the total is $3,810.94, the figure used in the buffer section below.

Type every figure in one currency, because the receipt prints a dollar sign either way. The sum runs in your browser, and the calculator does not send or store what you type.

No quotes yet? Our daily budget figures by region give you a starting point, and families can use what a family vacation costs.

Costs people forget, and which line they go in

Quotes for the room, flights and car leave out several costs, so add them before you trust the total:

• Checked bag and seat fees go in Flights per person when every traveler pays them. If only some travelers pay, put the total in Activities.
• Visa or entry authorization fees, such as the US ESTA or the UK ETA, go in Activities. Check the amount on the official government page for your trip.
• Vaccines for the trip go in Activities.
• Airport transfers at your destination go in Activities.
• Parking at your home airport goes in Activities.
• Phone roaming or eSIM data goes in Activities.
• Tips that are not already in your food figure, such as for guides, drivers or hotel staff, go in Activities. Food is its own line.
• Travel insurance stays in Insurance.

Activities counts toward the card fee, so if you pay some of these at home in your own currency, lower the card fee % as the card fee section below explains.

How the sum works

The total is nine lines added together, and the calculator and the spreadsheet use the same formulas.

Receipt line	How it is worked out
Room	Rooms × nights × hotel per night
Hotel tax + resort fee	Room × hotel tax %, plus rooms × nights × resort fee
Flights	Travelers × flights per person
Car + driver fees	(Car per day + young driver fee per day) × car days
Food	Travelers × nights × food per person per day
Activities	The amount you type
Insurance	The amount you type
Card fee	(Room + hotel tax and resort fee + car + food + activities) × card fee %
Buffer	All eight lines above × buffer %
Total	The nine lines above added together

Five details decide how the result reads:

• Tax applies to the room only. The resort fee is charged per room per night and is not taxed in the sum.
• The buffer applies to all lines, including flights, insurance and the card fee.
• Deposits are never in the total. They appear under it as "Held, not spent".
• Blanks have defaults. Blank travelers and rooms count as 1, and blank car days use the number of nights. Food counts one day per night, so put any extra day's food in Activities.
• Per person and per night are plain divisions. Per person is the total ÷ travelers, and per night is the total ÷ nights, flights included, so it is not a hotel rate.

Each line is rounded to the cent, and the total adds the rounded lines, so the receipt always adds up. Per person assumes an equal split. If people owe different amounts, use one of the methods for splitting a group trip.

Insurance is one amount for the whole trip. If you plan to buy cover at the rental counter, add its daily price to Car per day.

Does your hotel quote already include tax and fees?

Check before you type, because a US hotel total may already include the resort fee, and entering it again counts it twice. Since May 12, 2025, the FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees has required US short-term lodging prices to show the total, mandatory fees included. The FTC's own guidance on a resort example says:

"The required resort fee must be included in the total price."

The FTC's example is a $199 room with a mandatory $39 daily resort fee, which adds up to $238 a night. If you type $238 as the hotel price and $39 as the resort fee, a 7-night stay comes out at least $273 too high. Our guide to hotel resort fees covers how to find the fee on a quote.

Taxes work differently. The FTC says the upfront total "doesn't need to include" taxes, but the final amount must be displayed before you pay. That final amount gives you the safest way to enter a hotel price, the all-in shortcut:

1. Go to the last screen before payment. Note the final amount for your stay.
2. Divide it. Divide by nights, then by rooms.
3. Enter the result as Hotel per night. Leave Hotel tax % and Resort fee empty.

The shortcut gives the same answer in the calculator's sample trip. There, 7 nights at $180 with 12% hotel tax and a $30 resort fee come to $1,621.20, or $231.60 a night, and the total stays at $4,001.49 either way.

The all-in shortcut also handles places that tax the resort fee, which the sum does not do. In Hawaii, Act 20 of 2019 states that resort fees are subject to the transient accommodations tax, according to the state's Department of Taxation. The FTC rule is a US rule, so read foreign quotes line by line.

What belongs in the card fee?

Card fee covers what you pay abroad or in a foreign currency. Flights and insurance are left out, on the assumption that you pay them at home. Use 0 for a trip in your own currency.

Use the foreign transaction fee on your own card's fee schedule. As one example, Wells Fargo's Everyday Checking lists a 3% international purchase transaction fee on each debit card purchase in a foreign currency (effective July 28, 2026). That figure describes one account. We found no primary source for a market-wide rate, so the 3% in our sample is only an input.

The base can be adjusted by hand. If you prepay half of the base in your own currency and your fee is 3%, type 1.5. A flight paid in a foreign currency is outside the base, so add its fee to Activities.

How much buffer should you add?

We found no official figure, so size the buffer to cover one extra night of your stay. That is our rule of thumb, a judgement and not data, and it gives you a number tied to your own trip. Raise it if many lines are still unbooked, and lower it if most are already paid, because the buffer also applies to lines that can no longer change.

Published percentages vary and we found none with data behind them: JustCover's holiday budget guide says 5–10%, and MiniWebtool's calculator calls 10% to 15% "a practical starting point".

To apply the rule, divide one night of room, tax and fees by the total with the buffer at 0. In the calculator's sample trip, 7 nights at $180 with 12% hotel tax and a $30 resort fee, one night costs $231.60 and the same trip totals $3,810.94 with no buffer, which is 6.1%. A 6.1% buffer adds $232.47. The 5% buffer that sample uses adds $190.55 and would fall short of that night.

What is the difference between spent and held?

Spent money is the cost of the trip. Held money is reserved on your card and is released afterwards, minus anything you are charged against it. The calculator keeps it out of the total, but you still need it available while you travel. The FDIC describes the available balance as "generally the amount of money/funds the consumer can access", and pending debit transactions can reduce it.

Type only the extra amount in the deposit fields, because the hold often includes costs that are already in your total:

• Hotels. Marriott's digital entry terms say the bank places a hold "for room & tax charges, any applicable resort fees, plus an amount for incidentals per day for the entire stay". The incidentals part goes in Hotel deposit. The hold "will not be released by the issuing bank for up to five (5) business days after your departure". See how long a hotel hold can last.
• Cars on a credit card. Enterprise says "the full cost of the rental and the security deposit will be authorized on your card" at pickup. On return it releases the authorization and charges the rental. Only the deposit goes in Car deposit. Amounts differ by company, as our deposit figures for rental cars show.
• Cars on a debit card. Enterprise says the rental cost and deposit are "charged to your checking account", with the deposit refunded in "approximately 5 to 10 business days". The deposit really leaves your account, but you get it back, minus any extra charges, so it still belongs in Car deposit.

Before you leave, add the total you will put on that card to the held amount, and check the card can carry both. In the calculator's sample trip, with deposits of $150 and $300, that is $4,001.49 + $450.00 = $4,451.49, if every line goes on one card.

Two sample trips

Both trips below use invented inputs to show how the sum behaves. Neither is a price or a budget suggestion.

Input	A weekend for two	Two weeks in Europe
Travelers	2	2
Nights	2	14
Rooms	1	1
Hotel per night	$150	$140
Hotel tax %	10%	10%
Flights per person	$120	$750
Car per day	–	$55
Car days	–	5
Food p.p. / day	$40	$50
Activities	$60	$600
Insurance	–	$180
Card fee %	0%	2%
Buffer %	10%	10%
Hotel deposit	$100	$200
Car deposit	–	$500

The weekend comes to $434.50 per person, and the two weeks to $3,409.79 per person. The weekend's card fee is 0 because the trip stays in the traveler's own currency.

In the two-week trip, the card fee is 2% of $4,431.00, leaving out $1,680.00 of flights and insurance. The car is only needed for 5 of the 14 days, so Car days is typed in. The buffer is 10% of $6,199.62.

The 10% buffer in both trips is only an input. The one-extra-night rule would give 20.9% for the weekend ($165.00 of $790.00) and 2.5% for the two weeks ($154.00 of $6,199.62), so the rule's share shrinks as a trip gets longer, and it looks high on a short trip.

What does the federal rate button do?

"Use the US federal travel rate" fills Hotel per night with $113 and Food with $68. Those are the US government's standard per diem rates for the continental US under GSA Bulletin FTR 27-01, for travel from October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2027. They are a reimbursement limit, never a price.

GSA says the lodging rates "are a maximum amount", and 295 locations have non-standard rates. Lodging taxes are not included, so add your Hotel tax %. The $68 for meals and incidentals does include taxes and tips, according to GSA.

The button keeps everything else you typed and assumes one room per traveler if Rooms is empty. For 2 travelers and 3 nights, that gives $1,086.00 on two rooms and $747.00 on one, so set Rooms to 1 if you share.

What is in the spreadsheet?

The trip budget spreadsheet is an .xlsx file you download, with no email and no sign-up. It has the same input lines and formulas as the calculator, on one sheet.

The sheet opens with the sample trip filled in, so replace the figures in column B with your own. Type percentages as plain numbers: 12 means 12%.

On November 6, 2026, we ran the receipt's sample trip and both trips above through the calculator's code and the sheet's formulas, using a script. Every line matched, and the receipt's sample gave $4,001.49 both ways.

How we checked

We read the sources below, copied the published figures and dated them.

1. GSA Per Diem Bulletin FTR 27-01, gsa.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
2. GSA, Frequently asked questions, per diem, gsa.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
3. GSA, Per diem rates (who sets CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii and foreign rates), gsa.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
4. FTC, The Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees: Frequently Asked Questions, ftc.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
5. FTC, Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees to take effect May 12, 2025, ftc.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
6. 16 CFR Part 464, Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees (2026 CFR edition), govinfo.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
7. Hawaii Department of Taxation, Tax Information Release 2019-02, files.hawaii.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
8. Wells Fargo, Everyday Checking fee summary, effective 7/28/2026, wellsfargo.com, checked Nov 6, 2026
9. Marriott, Digital Entry Terms of Use, marriott.com, checked Nov 6, 2026
10. Enterprise, Refunds for Car Rental Security Deposits, enterprise.com, checked Nov 6, 2026
11. FDIC, Supervisory Guidance on Charging Overdraft Fees (FIL-19-2023), fdic.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
12. GOV.UK, Apply for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), checked 2026-11-07, gov.uk, checked Nov 6, 2026
13. CBP, FAQ about the Visa Waiver Program and ESTA, checked 2026-11-07, cbp.gov, checked Nov 6, 2026
14. JustCover, How to plan a holiday budget, justcover.ie, checked Nov 6, 2026
15. MiniWebtool, Travel Budget Calculator, miniwebtool.com, checked Nov 6, 2026