Fiordland & Milford Sound Good value
Te Anau and Milford have a handful of places and that is all there is. Take food for the drive; between the last shop and the fiord there is nothing at all.
Budget travel in New Zealand
What a visitor's money does in New Zealand: 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.
Mid-range average across 5 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
New Zealand Dollar (NZD) · 1 EUR = 2.01 NZD · 1 USD = 1.75 NZD
New Zealand is effectively cashless — contactless cards work everywhere including small cafes and trailhead huts. There is little reason to exchange cash at all.
ATMs
Avoid: independent machines in bars and tourist shops
Use: ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac
New Zealand is close to cashless, so you may not need a withdrawal at all.
Getting around
A short ride in Queenstown: NZ$15–28 across town — middling
Under the meter in the three big cities. In the smaller towns supply is thin and a booked taxi is more reliable.
City by city, cheapest first
Wellington Good value
More cafés per head than New York, and they take it seriously. The night markets on Cuba Street, craft beer that started the country’s scene, and Kapiti ice cream from anywhere that sells it.
Rotorua Mid-range
Hāngī is the thing to eat here: meat and vegetables cooked in a pit with heated stones, and it tastes of earth and steam in a way nothing else does. Try it at a village that cooks it for its own people rather than at a hotel buffet. Trout from the lake cannot be sold in restaurants by law — catch one and they will cook it for you.
Queenstown Expensive
The Fergburger queue is a local ritual, though the neighbouring bakery is just as good with no wait. Central Otago is excellent Pinot Noir country — the cellar doors are 30 minutes away.
Auckland Expensive
The best eating in New Zealand, and mostly Pacific and Asian rather than European: Vietnamese and Korean on Dominion Road, Pacific Island food in Ōtara, and a Sunday morning at the Avondale market. Order the green-lipped mussels, and take the flat white seriously, because everyone here does.
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.
The guides in New Zealand
QueenstownNew ZealandThe adventure capital, ringed by mountains and lake
AucklandNew ZealandA city built on fifty volcanoes, with an island ferry from the bottom of the street
RotoruaNew ZealandGeysers, boiling mud and a smell of sulphur, in the centre of Māori New Zealand
Fiordland & Milford SoundNew ZealandSheer black walls dropping into deep water, in a place that rains two hundred days a year and is better for it
WellingtonNew ZealandA harbour capital wedged between hills and sea, with the best coffee and the worst wind in the country