What a visitor's money does in Russia: 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.
Russian Ruble (RUB) · 1 EUR = 98 RUB · 1 USD = 84 RUB
Bring cash, in euros or dollars, in clean notes, and enough for the whole trip. Foreign Visa and Mastercard have not worked in Russia since 2022 — not in shops, not online, not in ATMs — and foreign-issued UnionPay now fails more often than it works. Change money at a bank branch with your passport; the rate is fair and the street offers are not.
Avoid: every machine in the country — foreign Visa and Mastercard do not work in Russia
Use: Cash brought with you, changed at a Sberbank, VTB or Alfa-Bank branch with your passport
Foreign-issued UnionPay now fails more often than it works. Budget the whole trip in cash before you fly.
A short ride in Moscow: 300–600 ₽ across town — cheap
From the airport: Sheremetyevo to central Moscow 1,500–2,500 ₽
Nobody flags a taxi in Russian cities any more.
Eat where the students do on Rubinstein Street, which has more restaurants per metre than anywhere else in the country. Georgian and Central Asian food are the strengths; so is anything with smoked fish, and the pyshki — plain sugared doughnuts — from the Soviet-era counter on Bolshaya Konyushennaya.
Omul, the endemic whitefish, smoked at the roadside and eaten hot with bread — it is the one thing everybody has here and it deserves the reputation. Buryat buuzy, big steamed dumplings you drink the broth out of first, are the other. In summer there are wild berries and pine nuts at every stall.
Better and cheaper than its reputation: the Georgian restaurants are the ones to seek out — khachapuri and khinkali — and the canteen chains do a full lunch for the price of a coffee at home. Try the Danilovsky or Usachevsky markets, where the produce halls have turned into good food courts.
The best seafood in Russia and some of the best Korean and Chinese food too — this is a port city that has always eaten across the water. Scallops, king crab, sea urchin in season, and pyanse, the steamed Korean bun sold from kiosks that is the local street food.
Red caviar by the spoonful, king crab in season and salmon in every form — this is one of the great seafood regions and it costs a fraction of what it does anywhere else. Eat at the fish market in Petropavlovsk. Ask about the ukha, a fish soup that arrives as a whole meal.
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.
MoscowRussiaRed Square, marble metro halls, and a city that runs to the second
St PetersburgRussiaCanals, the Hermitage, and a month of nights that never get dark
Lake BaikalRussiaA fifth of the world’s unfrozen fresh water, and in March you can walk on it
KamchatkaRussiaThirty active volcanoes, brown bears fishing, and no road to the rest of the country
VladivostokRussiaRussia’s Pacific city, closer to Tokyo than to Moscow, at the end of the railway