Everyone knows it. Copenhagen is expensive. Repeating it over and over again doesn’t make it any better. We spent five days in this city. Therefore we definitely wanted to keep an eye on the money without cutting off the fun.
As my researches on costs in Copenhagen beforehand hardly brought us more than the Big-Mac-Index, I hope this overview will help you a little bit more.
Spendings and prices in cold print
I actually kept some of the receipts of our trip to prepare you what costs you might have to face.
Generally, we recommend you to buy in discount supermarkets. Due to our hotel location, we passed the train station very often. You’ll pay triple the price for a bottle of water there than at Lidl, for example. Of course, spend it if you want to. But you don’t have to.
Smaller shops are expensive as well, therefore: Go to the discount supermarkets whenever possible (for example Lidl).
What’s not on this list: There’s a good kebab booth which is called ‚Kebabish‘. A meat meal of your choice with fries and drink cost around 10€ per person. Can’t eat that every day, but it’s definitely a fast and cheap solution for the occasional hunger.
Prices in Restaurants
There’s everything between skyrocket and acceptable in Copenhagen. Generally speaking, the prettier the food, the more expensive it gets. In between, you just have to be fine with a snack or light meal.
We can recommend a few places, the average Central European might be able to afford.
Bowl Market in Vesterbro
Hipster breakfast affordable. Two bowls, two drinks 33€. Delicious and nice to look at. We think it’s good value for money.
Gasoline Grill
Two burger + one lemonade = 24€. Gasoline burgers are said to be the best in town. We were definitely happy eating them.
The Bridge Street Kitchen
Generally a lot of affordable food. But we don’t know whether it’s opened in winter.
Café Apropos
22,50€ including coffee and juice for a tasty All-you-can-eat brunch (on weekends).
Sporvejen
The burgers are popular and really delicious. They were also huge and instead of walking, we continued rolling our way. Price around 15€ incl. drinks.
Café-Bistro København in Hillerød
Fries cost 4,50€ but we forgot about the drinks. But not very much. We just mention this one for you to know what to expect a little bit outside of Copenhagen. In general, it’s a little bit cheaper.
Louisiana Museum Café
An all-u-can-eat buffet in the evening for 22,50€ excl. drinks. Delicious and not just standard food, more upscale.
Fisketorvet
If you don’t have a problem with fast food, there’s a huge variety of food courts in this mall.
Copenhagen Card
We totally recommend you to get the Copenhagen Card. You can get it here: https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/copenhagen-card
Depending on how much time you want to spend and see here, there’s actually nothing that’s more worth buying than the Copenhagen Card. It includes all kinds of transportation in Copenhagen and surrounding as well as entry fees for museums and castles. You’ll save cash and lots of time, especially if you want to see and do a lot.
Prices in short: (per person; current prices see link to homepage): 24h=54€, 48h=77€, 72h=93€,120h=121€
These are the adult prices. There are perks for kids older than 9 years. Each adult can bring two children under 9 years for free. So if you want to avoid the usual unnecessary stress with tickets and see as much as possible, this card will make it for you.
You can get the Copenhagen Card for example at the airport. You’ll get more information on the homepage of the Copenhagen Card here.
Transportation cost without the Copenhagen Card
For some of you, it might not be worth buying the Copenhagen Card due to for example a lack of time and you have to buy tickets one by one. Here’s an insight on prices for transportation: https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/transportation/tickets-prices
We can’t tell you about entry fees in detail, as we didn’t have to know. Of course, we calculated it before our trip, but we realized very soon the Copenhagen Card was worth buying.
Hotel/Accommodation
The highest cost factor even before food, drinks, transportation or entrance fees definitely is a hotel or any other accommodation in Copenhagen. In general, we recommend you Airbnb, as this is the cheapest way to get around.
But this time it was different. For some reason, we found a good value for money hotel which was a better offer than any Airbnb. It’s called Annex Copenhagen and is located near the train station in Vesterbro. The location is amazing and with the shared bathroom option (they were always clean), it’s really cheap. If you don’t like shared bathrooms: there are rooms with own bathrooms which cost a little bit more but are still affordable.
We can really recommend the Annex Copenhagen, as you usually don’t need more for your city trip.
A lot of walking, maybe getting a bike
It’s always said that Copenhagen is best explored with via bike. You can definitely do this. Renting a bike costs around 20€ per day. There are also a few providers offering bike rents hourly.
As romantic as it may sound exploring the city via bike, we had the impression Copenhageners felt annoyed because of all the tourists with bikes. People are actually living in this amazing city and are not on their bikes for cosy bike tours. These people use their bikes as their daily form of transport and want to get from A to B as fast as possible. This means, relaxed chugging tourists not knowing the rules, should avoid the main traffic routes and not be a pain in the ass. We saw them sometimes suddenly stopping to look after their significant other. We witnessed twice how dangerous this might end for all parties.
Especially when in Indre By, you really don’t need a bike. You might be faster with it, but everything is in walking distance and more important, you don’t disturb or annoy anyone.
To each their own, but biking in Copenhagen is not like a cosy ride along the Main in Frankfurt.
Well. If you have any other questions, you know what to do. Other than that, we will definitely update this post with your knowledge, if you want to. Cheers!
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