If you’ve caught the travel bug and can’t wait to go on your next trip but your budget is holding you back, Malta is the place for you. I had heard that Malta was a very budget-friendly country but I didn’t fully realize it until I reflected on my expenses at the end of our week-long holiday. You really do get bang for your buck over there, and I’m going to show you exactly what I mean!
Below, I’m going to outline for you our Complete 1 week in Malta Budget! This will help give you an idea of what your future budget for Malta should look like. Or even better, I hope it inspires you to visit this budget-friendly country!
*Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking one of these links, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Trip Overview:
We visited Malta for 8 days and 8 nights at the beginning of November – which is during their off-season. Our trip to Malta was most likely cheaper because we visited during the shoulder-season however I do believe this isn’t the only reason our expenses were low. The country, in general, is very inexpensive to visit (in comparison to other European nations).
Here is some context about our trip to gauge if your budge will look similar or slightly different. For our budget, we didn’t necessarily want to splurge like crazy but at the same time, we wanted to enjoy our holidays. We wanted to come back to a nice room, have a good night’s sleep and make the most of our days exploring the country as much as we could.
I will outline below my expenses over the course of an 8-night and 8-day visit to Malta with my fiancee. In the outline, I will list all of our total expenses as well as how much it was per person.
To keep in mind: Since I was travelling with my boyfriend, we agreed to split everything evenly, such as our transportation costs and accommodations. We didn’t necessarily calculate each person’s meal tab, but divided the final bill in half.
Accommodation Expenses:
🏨 Total: 436 € (or 218 € per person)
Normally, I am an Airbnber all the way. However, I realized that the cost of an Airbnb in Malta was comparable, if not more expensive than some of the hotels we were finding online. We used booking.com to reserve a beautiful hotel room on the north of the island for a very reasonable price; it was only 54.5 € a night! Our hotel had 3 different pools, a spa, 2 restaurants and 3 different bars on site. For us, it was well worth it!
I’d recommend seeing what the options are before jumping into a booking. From our experience, a nice, good-quality hotel could be the same price as your average Airbnb. Take the time to peruse your options!
✨My recommendation: Maritim Antonine Hotel & Spa.
Transportation Budget (flight, car rental, gas and parking):
Total: 438.94 € roughly (or 219.47 € per person)
✈️ Total Flight: 234 €
Our flight to Malta was booked with Air Malta through the French service called mytrip. It was our first time using the service and everything went smoothly! The price listed above also includes the cost of adding 1 carry-on bag per person. Like most local, budget airlines, baggage is always an issue but again the costs were surprisingly reasonable!
🚗 Total Car Rental: 165.94 €
One thing they say about Malta is that there are public buses everywhere, so a car rental is not necessary. Which is absolutely true from our experience. We still, however, wanted to rent a car just so we can have as much freedom and flexibility as possible. Our flights were also arriving and departing very early in the morning so we didn’t want to worry about bus schedules.
PRO TIP: We’ve been using rentalcars.com for our last few road trips and have found the BEST deals there! Highly recommend it!
Now that we have done our trip, there are definitely pros and cons to each option:
✅ Pros for car rental: you can come and go as you please. The island is so small the longest drive we did from top to bottom was around 40 minutes. Our car rental was only roughly 18 € per day!
❌ Cons for car rental: drivers in Malta are a little wild and add this to the fact that they drive on the left side of the road…it was quite stressful, many times. We had some complications with our car rental when we first arrived, which was a bit of a headache.
✅ Pros for taking the bus: buses run frequently and can take you to all of the main areas of the island. You don’t have to worry about driving, parking or gas. It costs 2 € per person per bus trip, so again a very affordable option.
❌ Cons for taking the bus: we heard from other visitors that even though there are many buses, you do still end up waiting a considerable amount of time if you have to change from one bus to another. For example, visiting a specific destination by car took us 35 minutes whereas someone we spoke with said it took them between 1-1.5 hours to get to the same place. They aren’t always on time and you are restricted by a schedule.
⛽️ Total Gas: 20 €
In terms of gas, as I said above, the island is very small and we went around as much as we could. Even with all of the exploring we did, we only used about 2/3 of a tank over the course of a week. This meant that we only needed to fill up once, as we were heading back to the airport.
🅿️ Total Parking: 19 €
Parking was also very easy for the most part. We only had to pay for parking when we were visiting major cities like Valetta and Sliema. Every other place had free parking either in the street or in a parking lot.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: 3 days in Malta: Complete Travel Itinerary
Food and Drink Expenses:
🍝 Total: 417.4 € roughly (or 208.7 per person)
As I mentioned above, we wanted to enjoy ourselves during this holiday. This meant that we had cocktails from time to time and enjoyed a nice meal with desserts (lots of desserts!). We didn’t do this every day, and of course, we didn’t do this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We would usually have a light breakfast and a light lunch, followed by a nice dinner. It’s hard to budget for food since everyone is different. I was anticipating spending 300 € (around 35-40 € per day) for myself for the week and our costs were much lower than that.
Soft drinks are where I noticed a major difference in prices compared to mainland Europe. I also want to mention that they don’t recommend drinking tap water in Malta. This meant that we were buying bottled water almost every day as well.
Excursion Expenses:
🤿 Total: 367.3 € (or 183.65 per person)
We didn’t pay for any tours since we already paid for a car. We did, however, try to do as many activities as we could to truly experience the island and enjoy ourselves.
To give you a frame of reference we did a traditional cooking class, a beginner scuba diving lesson, rented a buggy in Gozo, visited Popeye’s village, took 2 traditional boat rides and visited St. John’s Co-Cathedral. Considering everything we did, again, I feel like it was a reasonable price.
We used a French discount company called the le Petit Maltais which gave us access to discounts on various excursions. We used this discount for the scuba diving and the buggy rental. Since we were visiting during the off-season, some excursions were not being offered which meant we couldn’t use the discounts as much as we would have liked.
READ MORE: The Best and Worst things to do in Malta
Miscellaneous Expenses (unexpected expenses, gifts, souvenirs etc.):
💸 Total: 155 € (77.5 € per person)
On this particular trip, we didn’t come home with many gifts or souvenirs, so our total came up to more than 10 €. Our unexpected expense was that we were flying in/out of Paris and we needed to pay for the RER ticket that goes to ORLY Airport which cost us 24 € (this was something we forgot to factor in ahead of time).
I also mentioned earlier we had a bit of difficulty when picking up our car rental which resulted in us having to pay for an extra driver at the location. This unexpected expense was 120 € for the week.
Summary: My personal expenses during our ENTIRE trip to Malta were roughly 907.32 € (or 113.42 € per day)
There you have it, our entire budget summary for our week in Malta. I want to remind you that even though we weren’t splurging, we were also not holding back at times. So of course there are other ways to bring your costs down. This budget here is just an example for you to get a sense of what expenses are like on the island.
Could we have brought our expenses down more?
We definitely could have! Here are some ideas to make our Malta budget cheaper:
- Take the bus instead of a car rental (I detailed the pros and cons of each option above)
- We could have skipped the appetizer, cocktail or dessert (I have quite the sweet tooth!)
- Stay at more budget accommodations – even though ours was quite cheap, some could have been cheaper – again we opted for a bit of comfort.
- If I had to choose 1 attraction we could have skipped, I would say Popeye’s village. It’s a really unique place and a nice way to support the locals but we didn’t spend a lot of time here. It also cost 28 euros for two people which was a bit overpriced in my opinion.
- Find out other activities I would have skipped: The Best and Worst things to do in Malta
But in reality, Malta is a very budget-friendly country to visit and is a really easy place to visit if you’re starting from Europe! If Malta isn’t on your bucket list yet, be sure to add it!
