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I have a spreadsheet for this trip. It has a tab for flights, a tab for lodging, and a tab I named “actual food” after I realized the first food number I wrote down was a fantasy. Danny thinks the spreadsheet is excessive. The spreadsheet is the only reason I know whether we can go in May or whether we are waiting another year.
So when people ask me is Portugal expensive, I can finally answer with something better than a feeling. The short answer is that Portugal is one of the cheaper countries in Western Europe once you are on the ground, and the flight from Chicago is what makes or breaks the whole thing. The money is not where I expected it to be.
We have not taken Lochlan to Portugal yet. He is twenty months old and this is the trip I am building, so what follows is a budget, not a receipt. The on-the-ground prices come from six trips and from checking current rates while I planned. The totals are what I have actually set aside.
The short version
I have budgeted about $5,900 for ten nights in Portugal for the three of us, flying from Chicago in May. Roughly $2,500 of that is airfare. The other $3,400 covers ten nights of lodging, all our food, four days of a rental car, trains, and every ticket we buy.
Which means the trip itself costs less than the flights to get to it. Once you are there, Portugal is genuinely affordable. A sit-down lunch for two adults with a shared plate for a toddler runs €35 to €45. A good apartment with a kitchen in Cascais in May is €140 to €170 a night. The train from Lisbon to Cascais is a couple of euros each.
If you can find cheaper flights than I did, this is a $4,500 trip. If you go in August instead of May, add a thousand dollars to the lodging and do not expect to enjoy the queue.
Flights, and the line nobody warned me about
Here is the thing that reset my entire budget. Lochlan will be over two years old by the time we go. That means he is no longer a lap infant. He needs his own seat, at close to full fare.
I knew this in the abstract. I did not understand what it did to the math until I priced three seats instead of two. Chicago to Lisbon in May runs somewhere in the $750 to $900 range per person when I have looked, so three of those is $2,250 to $2,700. That single change is the difference between this being a trip we take this year and a trip we talk about.
If your child is still under two on the return flight date, you are getting a real discount and you should use it. Lap infant fares are usually around ten percent of the adult fare plus taxes. If your child turns two in the middle of your trip, airlines go by the age on the date of each flight, so check it rather than assuming.
The other flight lever is where you land. Flying into Lisbon and out of Faro saved me nothing on the fare itself but it saves a four-hour drive back north at the end, which I would pay for separately in car rental and in goodwill. More on that in our 10-day Portugal itinerary with kids.
Where the money actually goes
This is the whole spreadsheet, flattened. Ten nights, two adults, one toddler, May, three bases.
- Flights, three seats: about $2,500
- Lodging, 10 nights: about $1,650 (3 nights Lisbon, 4 Cascais, 3 Lagos)
- Rental car, 4 days plus one-way fee, fuel and tolls: about $430
- Trains, metro and a couple of airport rides: about $90
- Food, all of it: about $760
- Tickets and activities: about $160
- Everything else (SIM, pharmacy, laundry, the inevitable): about $160
That lands at roughly $5,750, and I have rounded up to $5,900 because something always comes up. For a ten-night international trip for three people, I think that is reasonable. It is less than we spent on two weeks in Italy before Lochlan was born.
Lodging: what €150 a night actually gets you
This is where Portugal still feels like a bargain, and where having a kitchen changes the budget more than anything else.
In Lisbon I have budgeted €170 a night for a two-bedroom in Baixa, which is flat, which matters more to me than anything else about a Lisbon apartment. In Cascais I have €150 a night for four nights, and that gets a real apartment near the beach with a washing machine. In Lagos I have €140 for three nights.
For comparison, the same quality of place in coastal Italy or Spain in May would run me a third more. The reason I have gone with apartments over hotels for every stop is laid out in where to stay in Portugal with kids, and the short version is that a kitchen and a door between the bedroom and the living room are worth paying for when someone goes to bed at seven.
Two things that will blow this number up. Booking August, where the same Cascais apartment is €280 to €320. And booking a place with a pool, which in the Algarve adds €50 to €80 a night and which, as I said in the best time to visit Portugal with kids, is only worth it in high summer.
Food: the part that is genuinely cheap
Portugal is the only place I have been in Western Europe where I stopped doing currency math in restaurants because the numbers never surprised me.
A coffee standing at a counter is about €1. A pastel de nata is €1.20 to €2 depending on how fancy the bakery is. The daily lunch special, which is what you want and which most places do on weekdays, is €9 to €14 and comes with soup and bread. A proper sit-down dinner for two adults with wine is €50 to €70 at the places I wrote about in best restaurants in Lisbon.
Restaurants here are relaxed about children in a way that still surprises me. Nobody has ever made me feel like a toddler was an imposition. Most places will bring a plate of rice and whatever fish is on the grill without being asked twice, and they usually do not charge much for it.
I budgeted €70 a day for all three of us, which assumes breakfast in the apartment, one real meal out, and a lighter second one. Over ten days that is €700. I think we will come in under it, because on at least three of those days we will eat bread, cheese and fruit on a balcony and call it dinner.
Groceries, and why the kitchen pays for itself
A supermarket run on the first day of each stop is the single best money decision in this budget.
Milk, bread, fruit, yogurt, eggs, coffee, pasta, a bag of whatever snack is going to get us through the drive south. In a Portuguese supermarket that is €40 to €50 for a few days for three people. Fruit in particular is cheap and good, and the markets are better than the supermarkets if you are somewhere that has one.
That matters because breakfast is the meal where eating out is worst value with a toddler. A hotel breakfast for two adults is €20 to €30 and Lochlan will eat four bites of it. Doing breakfast at home every day over ten days saves us something like €200 and, more importantly, means the morning is calm.
Getting around: the train is the bargain, the car is not
The Lisbon to Cascais train takes about forty minutes and cost a couple of euros each the last time I took it. It runs along the water the whole way. There is no version of driving that beats it.
Lisbon’s metro and buses are similarly cheap, and the rechargeable Viva Viagem card is worth getting on day one. A taxi or an Uber from the airport into Baixa is €15 to €20. Walking is free and is most of what you will do, though the hills are the reason I keep saying to book somewhere flat.
The car is where it gets expensive. A small automatic in May runs €45 to €60 a day, and automatics in Portugal cost noticeably more than manuals and sell out earlier. Add a car seat at €6 to €10 a day, a one-way drop fee of €50 to €70 if you are returning it somewhere else, fuel at well over $6 a gallon in American terms, and the tolls on the A2 south. Four days of that is about $430 all in.
Which is why I am only renting for four days instead of ten, picking up in Cascais on the morning we drive south and dropping at Faro airport at the end. For the Lisbon and Cascais half of the trip, a car would be a thing to park, not a thing to use.
Tickets, and what you actually pay to get into
This line is smaller than people expect, mostly because the best things in Portugal are free.
Pena Palace is the big one and it is worth it. Palace and park together is around €17 for an adult, €14.50 for ages six to seventeen, and children under six get in free, so Lochlan costs nothing. Two adult tickets is €34 and that is the most expensive single thing we will buy. Park-only is about €9 if you decide the inside of the palace is not happening with a small child, which is a legitimate call. I went through what is actually doable there in things to do in Sintra and Óbidos.
Beyond that: the Lisbon Oceanarium is the one indoor thing I would pay full price for with a toddler, and the tile museum is cheap and quiet. Most of the rest of what I would do with him is free. Beaches, parks, the Belém riverfront, the markets, the funicular rides that cost the same as a bus ticket. The things I would still do in Lisbon are mostly outdoor and mostly cost nothing.
All of this, plus the parts I could not fit here, is in my Portugal for Families guide if you would rather have it in one place instead of nine open tabs. It is a 13-page PDF covering Lisbon, Sintra and Óbidos, Cascais, Ericeira, Lagos, Albufeira and Madeira, with the full 10-day itinerary and a section on doing each stop with kids.
The one thing I would skip
Renting a car for the whole ten nights.
I understand the instinct. You land, you want your own wheels, you do not want to be working out train timetables with a tired child. I have done it that way on earlier trips and it felt like freedom.
With a toddler and a Lisbon base, it is money spent on a problem. Lisbon parking is genuinely difficult and expensive, and the streets in the old districts were not built for a car you care about. Cascais is walkable to the point that the car sat unused for most of a week the one time I had it there. Six extra days of rental, insurance and a car seat is roughly €350, and the thing you buy with it is the right to look for parking.
Rent it for the leg where you actually need it, which is the drive south to the Algarve and the days once you are there. The rest of the time the train is better, cheaper and less work. The one exception is Ericeira, which is awkward to reach without one.
A few things I am packing to keep this budget honest
Most of what keeps the cost down is the kitchen and the train. These are the small things that make the apartment half of it work.
🛒 A few things I use for this
- Spill-proof snack cups, which are the reason we are not buying a €4 pastry every time somebody gets restless on a train.
- A portable blackout blind. Sunset in Portugal in late May is close to 9 p.m., and this is the difference between an apartment that works and one that does not.
- A car seat travel bag, so bringing our own seat costs nothing and saves the €6 to €10 a day rental fee.
- Packing cubes, which are how we are doing three bases in ten nights out of two suitcases instead of three.
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Questions I get about what Portugal costs with a family
Is Portugal cheaper than Spain or Italy?
On the ground, yes, though the gap has narrowed. Lodging and restaurant meals in Portugal still run meaningfully less than coastal Italy or the Spanish islands in the same month. Flights from the US are usually comparable, so the savings show up once you land rather than in the booking.
How much should I budget per day in Portugal with kids?
Excluding flights, I have worked to about $340 a day for three of us, which covers lodging, food, transport and tickets. You could do it on $250 with a cheaper apartment and fewer meals out. In August the same trip is closer to $450.
Is Lisbon or the Algarve more expensive?
It depends entirely on the month. In May, Lisbon lodging costs more than Lagos. In August, the Algarve is far more expensive than Lisbon, because the whole of northern Europe is trying to be there at once.
Do we need to tip in Portugal?
Not in the American sense. Service is included and nobody is relying on a tip to make rent. Rounding up, or leaving five percent after a long meal you loved, is normal and appreciated. Leaving twenty percent marks you out.
Are attractions free for young children?
Usually. Under six is free at Pena Palace and at most of the national palaces and museums. Trains and metro are free for small children. The main thing you will pay full price for is a seat on a plane once they turn two.
What is the one thing that costs more than people expect?
Automatic rental cars. Portugal is a manual-transmission country and automatics are a minority of the fleet, so they are priced accordingly and they run out early. If you need one, book it months ahead and expect to pay for it.
Could we do Portugal on a tighter budget?
Yes, and the levers are obvious once you see this list. Go in May instead of August, skip the rental car entirely and stay on the train line, book apartments with kitchens, and eat your main meal at lunch when the set menu is half the price of dinner. That is a real trip for a lot less, and I have written about how long it needs to be in how many days in Portugal with kids.
I still do not entirely believe the flight number, and I keep opening the tab to check whether it has moved. Danny has started calling the spreadsheet by name, which I am choosing to take as acceptance.
If you are running your own version of this, the rest of what I have written about the country is in the Portugal archive, and the honest overview of whether it is worth doing at all is in is Portugal good for families. The old Lisbon guide and the Lagos restaurant list are from the years before Lochlan, and the prices in them are the ones I used to pay.
