What a visitor's money does in Moldova: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Moldovan Leu (MDL) · 1 EUR = 20.1 MDL · 1 USD = 17.5 MDL
Leu, and Chișinău is cheap in it. Exchange booths are everywhere, honest and post the rate; euros and dollars change easily, roubles less so. Cards work in the capital and in wineries, and cash runs the villages and the markets.
Avoid: the standalone machines in the centre, which charge, anything in Transnistria, where no foreign card works
Use: Maib, Moldindconbank, Victoriabank
Bank machines are free with most foreign cards; decline the conversion. Cash for the markets and the villages. Transnistria has its own rouble that no card touches; change a few euros at the bus station and spend them before leaving.
A short ride in Chișinău: 50–80 lei across town — cheap
From the airport: From the airport to the centre 150–200 lei on the app, or trolleybus 30 for 6
Cheaper than the taxis at the airport kerb, which quote in euros and round up.
Mămăligă with brânză and sour cream, plăcinte (stuffed flatbread) from any window, zeamă (chicken soup) and the wine — Moldova’s reason to exist, and cheap. The restaurants around the centre, and the wine bars that have opened for the visitors who are starting to come. A dinner with wine is 300 lei.
The guesthouses in Butuceni cook: mămăligă, sarmale, zeamă, and the house wine from a jug. There is nowhere else, and nowhere better.
Soviet canteen food, done well and for nothing, plus Kvint brandy, which is genuinely good. The restaurants on 25 October street; the market for the produce.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
ChișinăuMoldovaThe least-visited capital in Europe, a city of parks and Soviet concrete, with the biggest wine cellars in the world under the hills outside it and a country that wants you to come
Orheiul VechiMoldovaA limestone gorge an hour from the capital with a monastery cut into the cliff, a village of whitewashed houses, and two thousand years of layers under the grass
TiraspolMoldovaThe capital of a country that does not exist: Lenin still standing, a currency nobody else takes, a Soviet main street kept as it was, and a day trip from Chișinău that is stranger than anywhere else in Europe