Set per-day spending caps for your trip
Enter trip length, number of people, and four daily categories — food, local transit, activities, and misc — all as per person per day amounts. Hit Calculate to see total trip spend, daily per-person burn rate, and each person’s full-trip share.
Use this after a rough total from the trip budget calculator to sanity-check whether your on-ground daily life matches the big picture. It excludes prepaid flights and hotels — those belong in the trip-level tool.
Category definitions
| Category | Includes | Excludes |
|---|---|---|
| Food / person / day | Meals, snacks, chai, bottled water | Alcohol splurges unless you budget them here |
| Local transit / person / day | Metro, autos, shared cabs, city buses | Intercity trains booked upfront |
| Activities / person / day | Museum tickets, guides, rentals averaged daily | One-off scuba or helicopter — bump the day you do it |
| Misc / person / day | Tips, SIM top-up, laundry, small shopping | Large souvenirs — track separately |
Formula
Per person per day = food + transit + activities + misc. Trip total = per person per day × days × people. Per person trip total = per person per day × days.
Worked example: six days in Bangkok for two
Two friends allocate ₹900/day food (street food plus one café), ₹300 local transit (BTS and boats), ₹700 activities ( temples, markets, one day trip), ₹200 misc. Trip lasts six days.
| Metric | Calculation | Amount (₹) |
|---|---|---|
| Per person / day | 900 + 300 + 700 + 200 | 2,100 |
| Trip total (both) | 2,100 × 6 × 2 | 25,200 |
| Per person trip total | 2,100 × 6 | 12,600 |
Convert foreign spends with the currency converter before entering rupee equivalents, or enter baht if everyone agrees on one currency. Compare with the Thailand budget guide for realistic daily bands.
Daily budget mistakes
- Entering trip totals in per-day fields — inflates budget by number of days.
- Ignoring a ‘heavy activity day’ — allow ₹1,500+ activity budget that day and lower others manually.
- Forgetting transit in walkable old cities — you still pay autos in heat and rain.
- Using this tool alone for flights-inclusive totals — pair with trip budget calculator.
- Setting identical caps for Mumbai and a village homestay — research local meal prices first.
When to adjust daily caps
Re-run when someone joins the trip, you add a festival day with premium pricing, or exchange rates move before an international holiday. During travel, Trip Saathi daily views beat re-calculating here — this page is for planning, not nightly accounting. Read budget tips for cutting categories without ruining the trip.
Mapping daily caps to real itineraries
Spreadsheet planners assign identical numbers to every day; real trips rarely behave that way. Day one might burn transit on airport transfers — temporarily double transit and zero activities. Beach days might invert food (cheap shack lunch, zero activities). Use this calculator for the trip average, then annotate high/low days in your notes app.
Couples sharing costs can set People to 2 and later log individual splurges in Trip Saathi without rerunning the planner. Families with free kids’ museum entry should lower activity averages rather than inflating food.
Linking daily caps to the trip budget calculator
Multiply per person trip total from this tool by travellers, then add prepaid transport and stay from quotes. The sum should approximate the trip budget calculator subtotal before buffer. If daily planner totals exceed the big-picture budget, your food or activity assumptions are optimistic — trim here first because daily overspend is how trips actually fail.
Students on tight student travel budgets often set food lower and transit higher when staying far from city centres — the four fields flex independently for that reason.
Using soft caps without killing spontaneity
A daily soft cap is a guardrail, not a prison. If day one includes prepaid transfers and a big museum, run a higher cap that day and a lower cap for a beach or park day. The planner’s trip total should still match your ceiling from the trip budget planner.
Groups benefit when everyone sees the same daily number in chat. Optional extras — cable cars, dessert cafés, souvenir stops — get a yes only if the remaining soft cap allows it. That conversation takes thirty seconds and prevents last-night settle-up shock.
Rolling unused budget forward
When you underspend breakfast and lunch, roll the surplus to a celebration dinner instead of random shopping. Mark the roll-forward in Trip Saathi notes so the finance lead does not think the group is “under budget” and approve a new expensive activity that blows the weekly envelope.
Families can set adult and child food assumptions differently — see family tips — while still using one household daily total for taxis and tickets.
Frequently asked questions
Does this include hotels?
No — only on-ground daily spends. Add stays in the trip budget calculator.
Can days differ?
Enter an average; manually note high-spend days in your notes.
Solo vs group?
Set people to 1 for solo; totals scale automatically.
International trips?
Works in any currency if all fields use the same unit.
How tight should caps be?
Aim for 90% of what you think you will spend — leave slack in misc.