For a visitor with hard currency, Cairo is very cheap — among the cheapest major cities anywhere. Food, transport and everyday services cost a fraction of European prices.
There is one enormous caveat, and it needs stating before any number.
The currency has moved
The Egyptian pound (EGP) has been devalued repeatedly and severely. It was around 15.7 to the US dollar in early 2022; a series of devaluations, the largest in March 2024, took it past 45 and then higher.
The practical consequences:
Any price in pounds quoted more than a few months ago is unreliable. That includes guidebooks, blogs and this site. Monument tickets in particular have been raised repeatedly to keep pace.
Egyptians have been badly hit. Inflation ran above 30 per cent for extended periods and food prices rose sharply. The cheapness a visitor experiences is the other side of that, which is worth holding in mind.
Check current prices at the source before budgeting, and treat any figure here as an indication of relative cost rather than an amount.
Daily budgets
Rather than pound figures, here is the shape of it, per person per day excluding flights:
- Frugal: hostel or budget hotel, metro and walking, koshary and ful, free mosques and churches, one paid site. This is genuinely very little money.
- Comfortable: mid-range hotel in Zamalek or Downtown, Uber everywhere, restaurant meals, two or three ticketed sites a day, a guide for one of them.
- Generous: a Nile-view hotel, private Egyptologist guide, a driver for the day, dinner in Zamalek.
The gap between frugal and comfortable is small in absolute terms. Upgrading in Cairo costs less than almost anywhere.
Where the money goes
Monument tickets are the largest recurring cost and there is a two-tier system: Egyptians pay a small fraction of what foreign visitors do. This is standard across Egypt and is not negotiable. Students with an international card get a substantial discount — bring one if you have it.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, the pyramids with interior access, the Royal Mummies Hall and the Serapeum are the expensive items.
Guides — a licensed Egyptologist for a day at Giza or Saqqara costs less than a mid-range dinner in Europe and genuinely changes the visit. This is the best-value money you can spend here.
A driver for the day to Saqqara, Dahshur and Memphis costs less for two people than a coach tour ticket each.
Hotels are the one category where prices are closer to international norms at the upper end.
What is free
The mosques — Ibn Tulun, al-Azhar, Amr ibn al-As. The churches of Coptic Cairo. Walking Al-Muizz Street and Khan el-Khalili. The corniche. Downtown. The tentmakers’ street.
Al-Azhar Park charges a nominal amount for the best view in the city.
Cash
Egypt runs on cash. Cards work in hotels, malls and better restaurants and nowhere else. ATMs are widespread in central districts; withdraw in reasonable amounts and keep small notes for tips, which are constant.
Decline dynamic currency conversion at any machine.
Tipping
Frequent and small. See hassle and baksheesh — carrying a stack of low-denomination notes solves most of it.
The two-tier ticket system
Worth understanding rather than resenting. Egyptian nationals pay a small fraction of the foreign price at every state monument and museum, and the foreign price funds a conservation and staffing burden that domestic ticket revenue could not cover.
Student cards get a substantial reduction — usually around half — and an ISIC card is accepted. Bring it if you have one; it pays for itself within two days.
Children’s rates apply at most sites.
Photography permits
Several museums charge separately for a camera. The Egyptian Museum, the Coptic Museum and the Museum of Islamic Art have all operated some version of this. Phone photography is sometimes included and sometimes not.
Ask at the ticket window rather than discovering it inside.
Guides and drivers
The single best-value spend in Egypt. A licensed Egyptologist for a day at Giza or Saqqara costs less than a mid-range European dinner and transforms the experience — you get the context, and you get left alone by everybody else.
A driver for the day to Saqqara, Dahshur and Memphis costs less for two people than one coach-tour seat.
Book both through your hotel or a licensed agency rather than accepting an offer at a monument gate.
A realistic three-day sum
Two people, mid-range hotel in Zamalek, Uber everywhere, a licensed guide for one full day at Giza and a driver for another at Saqqara, all the major museum tickets, eating a mix of koshary counters and Zamalek restaurants: Cairo comes out well below any European capital for a substantially richer itinerary.
The guide and the driver, which sound like luxuries, are the two items that most improve the trip and they are the cheapest relative to their equivalents anywhere else.