Three Best Budget-Friendly European Cities To Visit This Year

Summer vacations are wonderful, but in autumn and winter, most of us also need a change of scenery. Fortunately, Europe offers many great cities where you can have a fantastic time on a limited budget.

DiscoverCars.com has announced its annual ranking of the best places for winter getaways in Europe. For the third year in a row, Krakow in Poland tops the list.

The old stone city in Krakow, Poland, is filled with basement bars, providing a perfect escape from the seasonal gloom while also offering insight into the fascinating history of Eastern Europe.

According to the study, Krakow boasts extremely low car rental and hotel costs, along with a whopping 665 restaurants with reasonable prices. Moreover, a pint of beer will cost you a mere €2.25 (£1.95; $2.35).

The second-best European destination for autumn and winter is Prague in the Czech Republic, just slightly behind Krakow with a score of 37 out of 50 (Krakow scored 38).

The Czech capital boasts a staggering, 1206 budget-friendly dining options and also received good ratings for affordable accommodation and airfare.

In third place is Brussels, Belgium. It earns high marks due to its abundance of free attractions, including the stunning Grand Place. Flight tickets to the Belgian capital from London Heathrow are also the cheapest on the list, averaging around £98.

DiscoverCars.com’s assessment methodology included several factors to narrow down the best European cities for budget-friendly autumn and winter getaways. The factors considered were:

The number of ‘cheap’ restaurants
The average cost of renting a car for one week
The average overall cost of a one-week hotel stay
The average flight cost (from London Heathrow)
The cost of the largest attraction
They examined ten European cities known as winter tourist destinations

They collected data, assuming the reader would travel for a week, and used dates from November 22 to November 28, 2023, for any data that required this field.

They used Google Flights to determine the average airfare cost and recorded the top 10 round-trip flight prices from London Heathrow to the nearest airport in each city.

Furthermore, they also used TripAdvisor to gather information about the number of budget-friendly hotels, events, restaurants, and information about the largest attractions in each city.

They determined the average car rental cost using their internal data and recorded the average car rental price available in each city to create an overall average.

Finally, they used Expedia to find out the average cost of accommodation in each place for a week and recorded the prices of the top 10 recommended hotels in each city (excluding advertisements) to create an average price.