Daily budget for trekking in Nepal, budget to comfort

A daily trekking budget in Nepal depends on three choices: how high you sleep, how comfortable the lodge is, and how many people share the guide and porter. As of October 2026, our data puts lodging and food in the Annapurna region at about USD 16 to 25 a night below 2,500 m, USD 22 to 32 between 2,500 and 3,800 m and USD 43 to 50 above 3,800 m for a budget trekker, rising to USD 30 to 69 for the comfort style. A guide adds about USD 20 to 30 a day if you are alone and USD 5 to 7 each in a group of four. Everest is dearer, at USD 31 to 44 a night for budget lodging between 2,500 and 3,800 m.

This guide turns those numbers into a daily budget you can multiply by your days, with worked examples for one, two and four trekkers. It uses the cost files behind our route pages, verified on 18 and 19 October 2026, converted at NPR 134 to the dollar. For a whole-trek view, see the Nepal trekking cost guide; for what a night buys, see teahouse prices by altitude.

What a night covers

Each figure below is a room plus meals at the lodge, for one person. Our bands come from a room price and a dal bhat price for each altitude band, and the three styles are price tiers (budget, mid-range and comfort). The files do not itemise what each tier includes, so look at the room and the menu before you pay. Nightly figures exclude hot showers, battery charging, wifi cards, snacks, bottled drinks and tips, which are separate lines. Dal bhat is often refilled free, which makes it good value at every altitude; our teahouse menu guide explains why.

Annapurna region by altitude and style

As of October 2026, per person per night, in NPR with the dollar figure at 134:

Annapurna is the one region where we have region-specific figures for all three bands. Treks such as the Annapurna Circuit spend most nights in the middle band, so the middle row is the daily budget that matters for the walk as a whole.

Everest and the rest of Nepal

The Everest region is priced separately for the two upper bands, and the lower band uses Nepal-wide ranges. Where our sources name no region, the files use the Nepal-wide ranges below:

Below 2,500 m the Everest region uses the same Nepal-wide figures as Annapurna's low band, roughly USD 16 to 25 for budget. The jump in the Khumbu is the mid band: a budget night costs about USD 9 to 12 more than in Annapurna. See the Everest Base Camp cost breakdown for how that adds up over a trek, and the Everest region page for the route.

Adding the guide and the porter

Staff are paid per day, and the daily cost to you falls with the group size, because the guide is shared and in the mid-range style a porter serves two trekkers. For Annapurna rates (NPR 2,700 to 4,000 a day for a guide, NPR 2,100 to 3,400 for a porter), as of October 2026:

The porter figure stops falling after two people, because a porter serves two trekkers. The guide does not stop falling: a larger group dilutes it further, up to the limits your agency sets for group size. Our guide and porter day-rate guide gives the rates for every region.

Worked examples: one day on the Annapurna Circuit

Take an ordinary middle-band day in the Annapurna region. Each total is per person per day:

The comparison between rows one and three is the case for partners in a single line: the same budget day costs roughly USD 42 to 62 alone and USD 27 to 40 in a group of four, with identical lodging and food. Whether you need a guide at all depends on where you walk; the guide rule applies in the Annapurna Conservation Area, and the guide rule explainer sets out the sources, including the 2026 operator reports on checkpoint enforcement (checked 19 October 2026).

Checking your own estimate

Once you have a daily figure, test it against the route pages on this site. Each route page has a "What it costs" section that builds a total from the same cost files, using the route's own number of nights in each altitude band and its own guide and porter days. If your daily figure multiplied by the days comes out far from the route page total, find out why: you may be assuming a different style, a different group size or a different number of porter days. The difference is usually one of those three choices, and making it explicit is the best way to turn a vague budget into a number you can compare with a quote. Where the route page flags a line as "to check", such as a transfer with no published fare, add your own figure from a written price.

What a daily budget does not cover

Daily figures are only part of a trek. Permits, flights or road transport, insurance, hotels in Kathmandu or Pokhara, gear rental, tips and the TIMS card are not daily costs. Permits alone range from NPR 3,000 for Annapurna to about USD 500 for a 10-day Upper Mustang permit, so always add them on top; our permits explainer lists them and the permits page keeps the table. Rest days, weather days and a spare day at the end each cost a full daily budget, so a plan with three buffer days costs three more days of everything above. The buffer days guide explains how many to keep.

From daily to whole trek: an Everest example

To see how the nightly figures add up, take the 12-day Everest Base Camp plan in our data, with 5 nights between 2,500 and 3,800 m and 6 above 3,800 m. At budget prices that is NPR 51,000 to 72,100 for lodging and food over 11 nights, an average of about NPR 4,640 to 6,550 a night (USD 35 to 49). Add the guide at NPR 3,400 to 4,700 a day: a solo trekker's day is then about NPR 8,040 to 11,255 (USD 60 to 84), while in a group of four, where the guide costs NPR 850 to 1,175 each a day, it is about NPR 5,490 to 7,730 (USD 41 to 58). Multiply by the days and add permits and flights to get the whole bill, which our Everest Base Camp cost breakdown does.

The example shows two things. The daily figure is far higher on a route like Everest than on Annapurna, because the Khumbu bands are dearer, and the guide dominates a solo day while it is a minor line in a group. If you are comparing your own quote with these numbers, convert it to a per-day figure and see which of the lines is out of range.

Building your own daily budget

1. Choose a style for each altitude band you will sleep in. You can mix styles, for example a better room in the low villages and a simpler one higher up.
2. Count your nights per band from the route plan, which the route pages list.
3. Add guide and porter days for your group size using the table above.
4. Add a margin of around a tenth for showers, charging, snacks and the odd extra night, and treat that margin as a rule of thumb, not a quoted figure.
5. Compare the result with a written quote. If the quote is lower than your arithmetic, ask what is missing; if it is far higher, ask which lines are agency margin.

For partners to split the shared lines, see the Annapurna Circuit partner page and the Everest Base Camp partner page, the sample budget for Annapurna Base Camp and the cost split calculator guide. More budgets are in the costs and budget hub, and you can explore the Annapurna and Everest regions for routes.