Budget travel tips that are about the trip, not the deprivation

The money you lose without buying anything

Before a single meal, a trip can lose ten per cent to the machinery of paying for it. The independent ATM in the tourist street charges a fixed fee and a poor rate; the card terminal offers to bill you "in your currency" at a rate the operator chose; the exchange desk at the airport takes a spread no bank would dare. None of these is a purchase, and together they cost more than the difference between a cheap hotel and a good one.

The defences are dull and worth more than any deal: decline the currency conversion every time and pay in the local money; use a bank's own ATM, ideally inside a branch; withdraw larger amounts fewer times where the fee is fixed; change cash, where you must, in the city and not at the airport. The guides on this site name the operators to avoid and the banks to use in each place, because the answer is local.

• Two cards from two issuers, one of them with no foreign-transaction fee
• "Pay in EUR/USD?" at a terminal or an ATM: no, always
• Know before you fly whether the place runs on cards or on cash — some markets still take neither

Shoulder season is the biggest discount there is

The same room costs two or three times more in the peak fortnight than in the month either side of it, and the weather in that month is usually the same. The trick is knowing which month that is for the place, and the honest way to find out is the rainfall series, not the brochure: every guide here marks its best months against thirty years of rain, and the months just outside them are where the prices fall and the weather has not yet.

The other half of shoulder season is the day of the week. A midweek night in October is the emptiest thing on a host's calendar, and an empty night is worth nothing to them at any price — which is why, on this site, a host can let you name a price for the quiet dates and accept it.

• Look at the month either side of the "best months" on a guide: same weather, fewer people, lower prices
• On a rental that accepts offers, a midweek stay in shoulder season rarely goes at the listed rate
• Festivals and school holidays triple prices whatever the season — the guides say when

Getting around: the app, the meter, the bus you did not know about

The airport taxi is the most expensive kilometre of the trip almost everywhere, and the fix depends on the city. Where Uber, Bolt or Grab runs, the fare is fixed before the doors close and it is usually half the kerb price. Where they do not, the licensed rank, the airport bus or the train exist and are on the guide's "Get there" card with the time and the distance, so a forty-minute quote for a fifteen-kilometre ride rings a bell.

In the city, the guides rate transport on how easily and cheaply a visitor actually gets around, and a place where a day pass covers everything is a different budget from one where every move is a taxi.

• Install the ride app that works there before you land; the card has to be added on Wi-Fi
• A metro or bus day pass, where one exists, beats every single ticket after the third ride
• Walking is free and the old town is usually small — the guide says which neighbourhoods are comfortable on foot, including after dark

Eat where the locals queue

The restaurant with the tout outside and the photographs on the menu is the most expensive meal in town and rarely the best. The stall with a queue of office workers at one o'clock is the cheapest and, in most of the world, the best. Lunch menus — the set meal at midday — are how people in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Vietnam and Thailand eat well for little, and every guide's food tip says where.

Water, coffee and beer are the small purchases that add up: a bottle from a supermarket is a fifth of the café price, and in the places where the tap water is drinkable the guide says so.

Staying connected for the price of a coffee

Roaming outside your home region is the easiest way to spend fifty euros on nothing. A local SIM from an official shop — not the airport kiosk, which charges triple for the same thing — costs the price of a lunch for a month of data in most of Asia and Latin America. An eSIM bought before departure costs a little more and works from the moment you land. The guides give the local price and where to buy, because "cheap" means something different in Tokyo and in Hanoi.

Where the cheap countries are, honestly

Every guide on this site rates cost for a visitor from 1 to 5, where 5 is very cheap and 1 is very expensive, and the pattern across three hundred places is not a secret: Southeast Asia, South Asia, most of Latin America, North Africa and the Balkans stretch a budget two or three times further than Western Europe, Scandinavia, Japan's cities or Australia. Within a country the gap is as large — Valencia is noticeably cheaper than Barcelona, Porto than Lisbon, Chiang Mai than Phuket — and the cost rating on each guide is where to see it.

The honest caveat: the cheapest places are cheap for a reason that sometimes matters — the flight there costs more than the week, the internet is slower, the season is shorter. The guides carry all three so the trade can be seen before it is made.

• Compare two or three guides side by side — cost, safety, internet, best months — before booking the flight
• The budget pages for each country list its cities from cheapest to dearest