How to Eat Cheaply in Europe (Without Living on Gas Station Sandwiches)

Europe has a reputation for draining wallets, and food is often where the damage happens first. A sit-down lunch in Zurich or Barcelona can cost what you'd spend on three days of groceries back home. 

But despite all this, eating on a budget in Europe is not only possible — it can actually lead you to the best meals of your trip. Locals rarely eat at tourist restaurants, and their habits are worth borrowing.

If you're backpacking through Europe on a shoestring or trying to stretch a moderate budget across pricy cities during your EU road trip, this guide is for you. It covers tips and tricks to help you eat cheap and healthy food without spending all your money at restaurants. 

How to eat well cheaply​ across Europe: the variety of food prices

Europe looks compact on a map, but your wallet will feel the difference fast. 

In places like Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, or North Macedonia, you can still sit down for a full local lunch and a drink for around €8 without hunting for deals. Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Croatia land somewhere in the middle, where a realistic lunch usually costs €12–15, depending on the town and how close you are to the sea. 

In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, even a casual lunch can easily drift into the €15–25 range once you add a coffee or drink. And in Switzerland, a simple, cheap lunch often starts around €25–30.

Knowing where you are on that spectrum helps you calibrate your spending. Eating cheap meals in Stockholm means different things than having good food on a tight budget in Kraków. The approach doesn’t change much, but your definition of “cheap” probably should.

How to eat healthy and cheaply​ in Europe: follow the locals

Restaurants on the main square, near major monuments, or listed first on Google Maps in tourist areas typically charge more for equivalent food. The moment you walk two streets off the main drag, prices drop.

Look for places where:

• The menu is handwritten or mostly in the local language
• The lunch crowd is made up of workers, families, and students
• Nobody is standing outside trying to pull you in
• The decor is simple and practical

This is almost always your best cheap dinner — honest food at honest prices.

Look for the cheap lunch menu

Across much of Southern and Western Europe, particularly in Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy, restaurants offer a fixed-price lunch menu (called menú del día, plat du jour, menu do dia, or pranzo fisso depending on where you are). For €8–€15, you typically get a starter, main course, dessert, and a drink included.

This is the single best value meal in Europe. The same restaurant that charges €25–€30 for dinner à la carte will serve you essentially the same quality food at lunch for a third of the price. Make lunch your main meal of the day and eat light in the evenings — this is the cheapest way to eat everywhere.

Go for cheap healthy fast food and bakeries

Street food in Europe doesn't always mean a tourist-trap crepe stand. Some of the best budget meals come from small bakeries, takeaway counters, and local fast-food spots that people actually use in daily life.

These are the kinds of meals that are filling, quick, and usually much cheaper than sitting down at a restaurant:

• Döner kebab (Germany, Central Europe): one of the most reliable budget meals in Europe; usually around €5–€8 for a full wrap or sandwich.
• Pizza al taglio (Italy): Roman-style pizza sold by slice or by weight; cheap, fast, and surprisingly good even from tiny neighborhood spots.
• Ćevapi / ćevapčići (Balkans): grilled minced meat served in flatbread with onions and sauce; common, affordable, and genuinely local.
• Falafel wraps, empanadas, and samosas (major European cities): often sold from takeaway spots that deliver better food for lower prices than nearby tourist cafés.

Bakeries are your best friend for a cheap lunch in Europe. Cheap desserts and sweet snacks often include:

• Pastel de nata (Portugal): Portugal’s famous egg tart; usually around €1–€1.50 in local bakeries.
• Croissants and pain au chocolat (France): still surprisingly affordable from neighborhood boulangeries, especially outside tourist-heavy centers.
• Strudel, cinnamon rolls, and sweet pastries (Central and Northern Europe): found almost everywhere and often paired with cheap coffee deals in bakeries.

How to eat as cheaply as possible​ in European buffets

All-you-can-eat buffets can be a genuinely smart move to get cheap balanced meals. Indian, Chinese, and Turkish cheap buffet restaurants in most major cities charge €10–€15 for lunch and offer nutritious, calorie-dense food. If you're hiking or walking significant distances, this kind of meal pays for itself.

Look for:

• Asian buffet restaurants in business and also in tourist districts.
• University canteens, which are sometimes open to visitors.
• IKEA restaurants, especially in Scandinavia or Switzerland.
• Department-store cafeterias and shopping-center food halls.

If you’re hiking, walking all day, or simply want a fulfilling, cheap dinner, a larger meal like this often works out better than buying small dishes throughout the day.

Another way to follow is to order take away. For instance, we sometimes go to a buffet near our home, get a takeaway box that we fill with everything we want, and then go to the beach for lunch. The cost of one box is just €8, which is a great budget meal option when you're not in the mood to cook.

Shop at markets and supermarkets like a local

Every European city has a market, and most have several. Municipal food markets are where you'll find the cheapest fresh food like fruit, vegetables, bread, cheese, cured meats, olives, and often hot prepared food sold by weight.

For nice cheap meals, this is your best tool. Fill up on:

• Seasonal fruit (always cheaper than off-season imports);
• Local cheeses and cured meats by the slice;
• Fresh bread from a supermarket bakery;
• Nuts, dried fruit, and seeds for snacking on the go.

Chains like Lidl and Aldi operate across most of Europe and consistently offer the cheapest food prices on the continent. Even mid-range chains like Mercadona (Spain), Pingo Doce (Portugal), Biedronka (Poland), and Kaufland (Central/Eastern Europe) have excellent sections where you can buy a cheap, good meal.

The prepared foods section, like rotisserie chicken, roasted vegetables, and pre-made salads, is particularly underrated for eating cheaply.

How to eat cheaply and healthy​ when you travel in Europe: 4 simple tips

Eating cheaply doesn't have to mean eating badly. The cheapest food in Europe is often also the healthiest.

1. Eat what’s in season

Seasonal fruit and vegetables are almost always the cheapest fresh foods in European markets. In Southern Europe, summer produce like tomatoes, peaches, watermelon, or zucchini often becomes dramatically cheaper when it’s in peak season, especially at local markets and neighborhood shops.

2. Legumes are your friend

Lentil soups, chickpea stews, and bean-based dishes appear across Mediterranean cuisine and are almost always the cheapest items on a menu. They're also high in protein and fibre.

3. Don't skip breakfast

A cheap, healthy breakfast like yoghurt, fruit, boiled eggs, and bread eaten in your accommodation sets you up for the day and reduces the urge to buy expensive snacks. Hotel or hostel breakfasts, if included, are worth visiting.

4. Cook when you can

If your accommodation has a kitchen, even one simple cooked meal a day, like pasta, rice, or vegetables, can significantly lower your daily food spend and give you control over nutrition.

Apps and tools that help you find cheap, good food

If you’re looking for the cheapest food to eat from a restaurant, there’s a good life hack that I used numerous times. Some really good meals came from places trying to sell good food before closing time rather than throwing it away. You can find them with the help of specific apps.

Too Good To Go

Too Good To Go is one of the best budget food apps in Europe that we have used many times in Portugal. Restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets, and cafes offer unsold food at the end of the day for reduced prices. The quality varies (and yes, it can be disappointing sometimes because you don't know what you'll get), but it’s one of the easiest ways to get good food cheaply.

HappyCow

The HappyCow app was originally built for vegan and vegetarian travelers, but is useful even if you eat everything. It’s great for finding affordable plant-based spots, which are often healthier and cheaper than tourist-focused restaurants.

TheFork

TheFork app is popular across Western Europe for restaurant discounts, lunch deals, and off-peak reservations. In some cities, you can find surprisingly good restaurants offering major discounts simply for eating at quieter hours.

Google Maps with "€" filter

Weirdly effective. Filtering restaurants by the lowest price range often reveals the small local spots tourists scroll past. It’s not perfect, but it’s one of the fastest ways to escape €24 pasta near the cathedral and find the €9 lunch locals actually eat.

Final thoughts: how to eat as cheaply as possible​ while travelling across Europe

The best meals in Europe are rarely the most expensive ones. A bowl of caldo verde in a Portuguese village, a slice of focaccia from a Ligurian bakery, a plate of čevapi in Sarajevo, a burek eaten standing up outside a Bosnian bakery — these are the meals locals eat daily.

These meals usually cost very little, not because they’re fancy, but because they’re real. Made for locals, not for Instagram menus translated into six languages. That's why eating cheaply in Europe, when you do it right, feels like getting closer to the place you actually came to see.

The best travel days often start with nothing more complicated than a cheap pastry that you found by accident in a bakery just around the corner.