China Travel Budget: What a Day Really Costs

In our estimate, a day in China costs about ¥150–350 per person if you sleep in hostel dorms and eat in noodle shops, about ¥400–800 if you share a mid-range hotel room and take the odd taxi, and ¥1,000 or more for comfortable hotels and restaurant dinners — before long-distance train fares, which you can check on 12306, China Railway's official ticket site and app, for your dates. These ranges cover the bed, food, getting around the city and sightseeing.

Some costs are fixed and lower than many visitors expect. A metro ride in Beijing or Shanghai starts at ¥3. The Forbidden City costs ¥60 in peak season. Many public museums are free. What moves your total up or down is where you sleep, how often you take taxis, and the long train rides between cities.

How much a day costs: three budget levels

The table is per person, per day. Mid-range and comfortable assume two people sharing a room; a solo traveler pays more for the bed. It leaves out flights to China and long-distance trains, which you budget separately (see the train section below). Every row is our estimate from typical big-city prices; only the anchor prices named in the last column are official.

Three things decide which column you end up in.

• The bed. A backpacker and a comfortable traveler can eat lunch in the same dumpling shop, but their rooms can differ by several hundred yuan a night. Pick your hotel level first and build the rest around it.
• Taxis. Metro rides cost a few yuan each. A day of taxis across a big city costs many times more, especially to and from airports.
• The number of cities. Each city you add means another train or flight. On a fast-moving trip, intercity transport can cost more than a few days of food.

Beijing and Shanghai sit at the top of each range. Smaller cities usually cost less for beds and meals, while entry tickets at the famous sites have fixed, published prices wherever you go.

Where to sleep and what it costs

Hotels in China set their own room rates as market prices, so there is no official price list for a hostel bed or a budget hotel room. Here is what to expect in big cities, in our experience, per room per night:

For an official reference point, look at star-rated hotels. China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism reports that the average room rate at star-rated hotels nationwide was ¥360.2 a night in 2025. In Shanghai, star-rated hotels averaged ¥731 a night in August 2026, and five-star hotels ¥943. These are averages for star-rated hotels only. They tell you that a big-city hotel can cost roughly double the national average; they do not tell you what a hostel guest pays.

Foreign guests can stay in ordinary hotels. A July 2024 notice from seven national agencies says platforms and local officials should not use licensing rules to stop hotels from taking foreign guests, and that hotels should not post "no foreigners" notices. A few small guesthouses still do not register foreign guests, so confirm when you book. When you check in with your passport, the hotel registers you with the police for you. If you stay in a private home instead, you or your host must register at the local police station within 24 hours. Our guide to booking hotels and the registration rules walks through this, and cheap hotels and hostels in China covers the budget end in more detail.

Room prices go up around national holidays. That is legal, because hotel rates are market prices. What is not allowed is price gouging, fake discounts and raising the price after an online order has been confirmed. National pricing rules also ban charging fees that were not listed and inventing an "original price" to make a discount look bigger. If you travel during a holiday week, book early; our Golden Week survival guide explains which weeks to avoid.

To compare prices for your dates and read recent guest reviews, check Booking.com before you commit.

What food costs

Food is where China is cheapest if you eat where office workers eat. Restaurants set their own prices, so these are ranges from our experience in big cities:

For a real price from a busy tourist street: a reporter from China Consumer News found mirror cakes (镜糕, jìnggāo), a sticky-rice snack, selling for ¥5–7 each on Xi'an's Datang Everbright City walking street in June 2025. Stalls on that street post a price, a weight and a photo for each item. When the menu shows a price per 500 grams (斤, jīn) rather than per dish, ask how much your portion weighs before they cook it.

Ways to keep food costs down without eating badly:

• Make lunch your main meal. Many small restaurants offer set lunches that cost less than ordering the same dishes at dinner.
• Walk one street away from the scenic area. Prices drop as soon as you leave the main tourist strip.
• Use mall food courts and supermarket hot-food counters. They have picture menus and fixed prices.
• Order fewer dishes than you think. Portions for sharing are large.

You do not need to budget for tips. In our experience, tipping is not expected at ordinary restaurants, food stalls or in taxis in mainland China. Some hotel restaurants add a service charge, which is printed on the bill. Our guide to tipping in China covers the few situations, like private guides, where a tip is welcome.

Getting around a city: metro, buses and taxis

City transport is one of the best deals in China, as long as you use the metro. Fares go by distance:

• Beijing: ¥3 for up to 6 km, ¥4 up to 12 km, ¥5 up to 22 km and ¥6 up to 32 km, with transfers inside the system free.
• Shanghai: ¥3 for the first 6 km, then ¥1 more for every 10 km, up to a current maximum of ¥15. A new fare plan was put to a public hearing in September 2026, with both options raising the average fare by close to ¥1, so check the latest fares before you go.
• Chengdu, Xi'an and Hangzhou: rides start at ¥2.

Day passes rarely save money unless you ride a lot. Shanghai sells a one-day metro pass for ¥18 and a three-day pass for ¥45, and Chengdu sells one-day, three-day and five-day passes for ¥20, ¥50 and ¥70. With most rides costing ¥3–5, you need five or six rides a day before a pass pays off — check your planned routes on our metro pages for Beijing, Shanghai or Xi'an first.

You can pay without setting anything up. In Beijing, you can tap a foreign contactless card at any metro gate and pay the same fare as local riders. Shanghai and Chengdu metro gates also accept foreign contactless cards.

Taxis are where city transport gets expensive. A Beijing taxi costs ¥13 for the first 3 km, then ¥2.3 per km, with extra charges after 15 km and late at night. In Shanghai, the meter starts at ¥14 for 3 km, then ¥2.7 per km, and both rates go up by 30% between 23:00 and 05:00. DiDi (滴滴, Dīdī), the ride-hailing app, shows an estimated fare before you confirm, so check it against the metro option. Our guide to taxis and ride-hailing explains how to set it up.

Airport trips are where taxi costs climb fastest, and the metro is usually far cheaper. Chengdu's panda base gives about ¥200 as a reference taxi fare from Tianfu airport to the base, while Metro Line 18 from Tianfu airport into the city costs ¥10. In Beijing, the Capital Airport Express costs ¥25 one way, and the Daxing Airport line up to ¥35. Shanghai's Maglev from Pudong airport costs ¥50 one way.

Trains and flights between cities

For most trips, the high-speed train (高铁, gāotiě) is the main intercity cost. Most travelers book second class, which has assigned, reclining seats and is comfortable for several hours. Railway fares float: the same route can cost a different amount on a different train or date. That is why the table below gives sample fares with the date they were checked, not a fixed price.

The pattern is simple: short hops of about an hour cost from tens of yuan to a little over a hundred, and trips of a few hours cost one or two hundred. The long legs of a first trip cost much more. On one sample travel day (29 October 2026), a second-class seat cost ¥494–587 from Beijing West to Xi'an North, ¥666–766.5 from Xi'an North to Shanghai Hongqiao and ¥553–661 from Beijing South to Shanghai Hongqiao. Fares vary by train and date, and Beijing–Shanghai runs floating fares, so check 12306 for your date; these legs are usually the biggest transport costs of the trip.

A few booking rules affect what you pay:

• Booking window: tickets go on sale 15 days before departure, including the day of travel. Popular trains around holidays sell out, so book as soon as your plans are fixed.
• Refunds: a refund is free 8 or more days before departure, then costs 5% from 48 hours to 8 days, 10% from 24 to 48 hours, and 20% under 24 hours, with a minimum of ¥2. If you book the wrong train on 12306, you can cancel for free within 30 minutes of paying, as long as departure is more than 4 hours away. The full rules are on 12306's refund notice.
• Children: children aged 6 to 13 pay a child fare, and children 14 and over pay full fare. On bullet trains, the child fare in second class is half the adult fare. One child under 6 who does not use a seat travels free with each adult.

You can book directly on 12306 with your passport, or use a booking agency in English. Agencies are easier for many first-time visitors, and some add a service fee, which their checkout page shows. If you prefer an agency, Trip.com sells China rail tickets in English and also sells domestic flights. Our guide on how to book train tickets compares both ways step by step.

Flying instead. For very long distances, like Beijing to Chengdu or anywhere in the far west, a flight saves a day. Flight prices change daily, so compare them with the train fare for your dates. Two things make cheap flights less cheap. First, getting to and from the airport costs more than reaching a city-center train station. Second, the cheapest fares may not include checked luggage. Spring Airlines, a budget carrier, includes no free checked bag in its lowest fare type, and each airline now sets its own baggage allowance. Our domestic flights guide covers this.

Sightseeing tickets: what the big sites charge

Ticket prices at the major sites are set officially and published, so you can budget them exactly. Here are the headline sites on a first trip, with the adult price:

Small extras add up at the big sites. At the Terracotta Army, electric carts inside the grounds cost ¥5 or ¥15 a ride, while the shuttle between the two sites is free. At Mutianyu, the shuttle and cable car are run separately from the wall ticket, so budget for them on top.

Free sights. Since 2008, public museums and memorial halls run by China's culture and heritage departments have been free to enter. Museums at historic buildings and archaeological sites, and special paid exhibitions, are the exceptions. In practice, that gives you several big free days:

• The National Museum of China in Beijing is free, but you must reserve online up to 7 days ahead.
• Tiananmen Square is free, and foreign visitors reserve with their passport 1–7 days ahead.
• The Shaanxi History Museum's main building in Xi'an is free, booked through its official WeChat account.
• The Shanghai Museum East branch is free with no reservation; walk in with your passport.

Senior, student and child discounts. Do not count on them. You may read that foreign seniors get in free or half price with a passport. There is no national rule that gives foreign visitors these discounts; each site decides, and many limit them to Chinese citizens. At the Terracotta Army, for example, foreign adults pay the full ¥120, including those over 60, and the student half price is only for Chinese full-time students. Some sites do include foreigners: at the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace, visitors 60 and over from abroad get in free with their passport. For children, the Terracotta Army lets in non-mainland children up to 1.4 m tall for free if a parent comes along and books ahead. Budget the full adult price and treat any discount as a bonus.

Ticket prices also cannot jump suddenly before a holiday. Under the Tourism Law, a scenic site must announce a ticket price increase six months in advance, and a combined ticket cannot cost more than its parts bought separately.

The official ticket pages are worth bookmarking: the Palace Museum's ticket policy and the Terracotta Army museum's ticket notice both list prices and who qualifies for which discount.

Phone data, visas and payment fees

• Phone data. China's official tourism website suggests buying a regional eSIM with China coverage before you arrive. Providers include Airalo. If you would rather buy a local card, China Telecom in Shanghai launched short-term cards for foreigners in 2024 at ¥85 for 7 days, ¥125 for 15 days and ¥195 for 30 days; check the current price at the counter. Roaming on your home plan is the most reliable option but can be expensive, as Beijing's official guide for newcomers notes. See our China SIM card and eSIM guide.
• Visa. For many travelers this cost is now zero. Ordinary passport holders from 50 countries can visit China visa-free for up to 30 days, and for most of those countries the policy currently runs until December 31, 2026, so check whether it has been extended if you travel in 2027. Check whether your passport is on the list, and if you do need a visa, check the fee at the Chinese visa center for your country. Our guide to visa-free and transit policies has the details.
• Payment fees. If you pay through WeChat Pay (微信支付, Wēixìn Zhīfù) or Alipay (支付宝, Zhīfùbǎo) with a foreign card, fees work like this. WeChat Pay charges no fee on foreign-card payments up to ¥200 and 3% above that, so check the payment page before you confirm a large amount. With Alipay, check the fee shown on the payment page before you confirm. Your own bank may add a foreign transaction fee on top. When a card machine or ATM offers to charge you in your home currency, you have the right to choose; paying in yuan usually avoids an extra conversion markup. Our guide to using international cards in China compares the fees.
• Cash. Bank of China ATMs take foreign cards and pay out up to ¥3,000 per withdrawal; your own bank sets the fee. Exchange counters at airports and hotels give noticeably worse rates than banks and ATMs, so change only small amounts there. More in where to exchange money.

Sample budget: 7 days in Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai

This is a mid-range trip for one person sharing a double room: three days in Beijing, two in Xi'an and two in Shanghai, six nights in total. It follows our Beijing–Xi'an–Shanghai classic route. Tickets and airport links use official peak-season prices. Beds, food and city transport use the mid-range estimates from the first table.

Adjusting this to your trip is simple arithmetic. Visit between November and March and the Forbidden City drops to ¥40; Yu Garden is ¥30 in July–August and December–March. Add the Shanghai Tower deck and you add ¥180. Swap Mutianyu for Badaling and take bus 877 for ¥12 each way to keep the Great Wall day cheap. For a backpacker version, use the backpacker column from the first table for beds, food and transport; the tickets and train fares stay the same.

To plan each day's metro rides and see which sights fit together, the WaysChina app works offline as a metro and itinerary helper for these three cities.

Frequently asked questions

Summary

Plan on about ¥150–350 a day as a backpacker, ¥400–800 mid-range and ¥1,000 or more for comfort, in our estimate, then add trains between cities, which you can check on 12306. The fixed costs are low and published: metro rides from ¥2–3, the Forbidden City ¥60 in peak season, the Terracotta Army ¥120, and many museums free. The big variables are your hotel, your taxi habit and how many cities you visit.

Next steps: choose your hotel level, sketch your route, check the long train legs on 12306, and set up a payment app and phone data before you fly.

Last updated: November 2026