Methodology

How TravelVulture calculates trip costs

Last updated: September 2026

TravelVulture answers one question: what does the whole trip cost from where you start. A whole-trip figure is built from several lines, and the lines are not equally certain. Some are prices somebody is offering right now, some are prices somebody published, and some are our own planning rules. This page says which is which, line by line, and how each is labelled on the site. Nothing here is a quote, and the partner or provider always sets the final price.

Flights

Two different things appear under flights, and they are never merged.

• The arrival transport line in every estimate is a TravelVulture planning figureESTIMATED. It is worked out from the distance between your starting city and the destination and the travel mode (flight, train, bus, drive), for the number of travellers. It is not a fare. Where there is no land route, only flight modes are offered. If you have not told us where you start from, the line is left blank rather than set to zero, and the total is labelled "estimated so far".
• Recent fares seen by travellers RECENTLY OBSERVEDare shown beside the estimate on destination pages where we hold them. They come from Aviasales data through Travelpayouts: round-trip fares that Aviasales users were actually shown on that airport pair within roughly the last 48 hours. They are observed, not live. We store each set and serve it from our store; a stored set is refreshed on an hourly schedule within a fixed call budget, not when you open the page, and a set past its freshness window is shown with its age rather than hidden. We keep every fare we fetch as a history of the route.

On destination pages the estimate and the observed fares sit side by side and the estimate is what goes into the total. Route pages ("Bangkok from Delhi: trip cost") and the trips-by-budget lists go one step further for the origin cities we watch: where the fares store holds a typical observed fare TYPICAL for the route, that range replaces the distance figure on the flight line, and the page says "last observed" with the date. A typical fare is built from the cheapest fare seen on each of several different days in the last 30 days; under three days there is no range at all, only a count. A route page asks to be indexed only when three travel months hold such a range and the destination page itself has content; until then it renders for whoever opens it and stays out of the index. The stay line on such a page is the destination's estimate, labelled as one, until hotel observations exist for the destination. A trips-by-budget list asks to be indexed only when at least three destinations fit with the flight line from evidence and the other lines labelled, and the origin's fare coverage is at least 70%.

The suggested buffer on a complete estimate is 7% by default, shown as its own line with the comfortable budget beneath it and switchable to none, 5% or 10%. It is a cushion for the things a plan leaves out, never folded into the estimate, and never offered on a figure that is still "estimated so far". The "often forgotten" checklist beside it lists only items with a stated basis in what we know about the trip (a visa where we hold the rules, checked baggage on a long-haul flight, insurance and a SIM on an international trip) and carries an amount only where a named source has published one, which today is none of them.

Stay

The stay line is an estimate per destination ESTIMATED, shown as a nightly figure with the word "estimate" under it. Each destination in our catalogue carries a daily cost figure for a mid-range traveller, set when the destination was added, some editorially and some by an automated enrichment step with a regional fallback. The starting point for the stay line is 45% of that figure per night, for one room, for one night fewer than the number of trip days; where a destination has no daily figure, 80 US dollars a day is used. Once a week a model refreshes the nightly estimate for each destination and travel month, within bounds of the destination's daily figure (never below 0.3 times or above 3 times the share above; anything outside is clamped and the clamp is recorded), and the page then says "estimate, refreshed" with the date. Observed prices replace the estimate wherever they exist: hotel medians by star class from real listings replace it for that destination as they arrive rather than being averaged into it. The hotel price source we used until September 2026 was withdrawn by its provider, so no page currently shows an observed stay figure.

Food and local transport

Both lines are per-destination estimates ESTIMATEDfrom the same daily figure: food starts at 30% of it per person per day, and getting around within the destination (buses, metro, taxis, transfers) at 10% per person per day. The same weekly model refresh that sets the stay estimate sets these two, within the same bounds of the destination's daily figure, and the page says "estimate, refreshed" with the date when it has. Observed or published prices replace either line automatically wherever we hold them. Local transport is carved out of the daily figure, not added on top of it: an earlier version added it and quietly inflated every estimate by a tenth, and the split now has to sum to 100% before the code will run. Neither line is a price we looked up for you. The destination page also lists the ride-hailing, taxi and rental providers that actually operate in that country, as links, not as prices.

Activities

The activities line is the remaining 15% of the daily figure per person per dayESTIMATED. On a medical journey no activities are budgeted, because a recovering patient is not sightseeing, and the surfaces say so. On a wellness journey the program is its own line from a sourced range, never the activities figure with a new name; if no program price exists the total is labelled incomplete rather than filled in. Where a partner package includes a component, that component is taken from the partner and the heuristic for it is dropped, not added to.

Visas

Visa facts are taken from government sources only, quoted verbatim, and datedPUBLISHED. Every route, fee, document and deposit carries a piece of evidence that is checked against a saved copy of the official page, so a fee can only be published with an amount and a currency the source itself states. A route is published only when it has been verified; where official sources disagree, the page says so and publishes nothing else. Each fact shows the date it was checked, and rows are flagged for rechecking after 30 to 90 days depending on the route type.

The rules published today are medical entry rules, for a patient travelling for treatment, across the countries listed at Medical visas by country. Tourist visa rules are a separate set of facts with their own routes and fees; they are not published yet and will be kept apart from the medical rules when they are. A visa fee joins a journey total only after you choose your passport, in your browser, as its own sourced line. Your passport never reaches our server.

Medical price ranges

A treatment range on TravelVulture is computed from published price observations at the moment the page is read; nobody types a range in TYPICAL. Each observation names its source and the date it was checked, and observations older than 90 days drop out. The rules:

• Prices for international self-pay patients are used first. Domestic self-pay prices are a fallback at lower confidence. Government or scheme rates are never mixed into the range; where we hold one it is shown separately as a benchmark, unadjusted. Promotional prices are excluded.
• With four or more observations the range is the 25th to 75th percentile of the observed bounds. With fewer it is the lowest low to the highest high. It is never an average. A single price is shown as "from" rather than widened into a range that nobody published.
• A 10% planning buffer is added to both ends of every computed range, and disclosed: the observed figures before the buffer are shown beside it. Published package prices routinely exclude complications, extra nights, medication and clearance, so a real invoice lands above the package more often than below it. Published examples and government benchmarks are never buffered, because adjusting a quoted figure would misquote it.
• Confidence counts independent sources by domain, not pages: a site that repeats one price table on ten country pages is one source. Three or more independent sources is high, two is medium, one is low, and a range built only from an aggregator's indicative table is capped at medium.
• Take-home medication is its own line. A provider's own figure is used where published; otherwise 10% of the treatment figure, marked as an estimate.
• Where no comparable range exists but we hold published prices for related procedures, those are listed as named examples at named providers, never combined into a range.

A quote you enter YOUR QUOTE replaces the range in your journey and is shown exactly as you supplied it. Where a partner behind a range accepts quote requests, the page says so; we do not send patients to organisations that never agreed to receive them. TravelVulture is not a hospital, clinic, insurer or medical provider, and no figure here is a bill or an offer.

Exchange rates

Every figure is computed in US dollars and converted for display into the currency you choose. The rate is fetched once a day from a public feed, stored for 24 hours, and the date of the rate is returned with it. If the feed is unreachable, the last stored set is served and marked stale. If nothing has ever been stored, the site falls back to a static rate table that ships with it, which is approximate and can drift. A converted figure is "about this much at that day's rate", and a visa fee in a currency with no rate stays out of the total rather than being guessed.

Suggested budgets by origin

When you have not typed a budget, the search form shows a suggested starting figure keyed on the country you start from, in that country's currency: a Delhi start suggests a rupee figure, a New York start a dollar figure. It is a default, chosen as a reasonable first number for that market and not converted from any other country's figure. It is never a filter: only a budget you typed or said in words limits the results, and the results never claim they were filtered by a number you did not give. It is also not a claim about what a trip costs.

Data freshness and confidence

• A total is only called a total when every line in scope is known. If your starting city is missing the figure is labelled "estimated so far", no budget fit is claimed, and nothing is shown as "remaining". If you are already at the destination, arrival transport is out of scope rather than zero, and the total is labelled as local spend.
• A real price replaces the heuristic for that line; it is never added to it. Each line keeps its own source, so a total can be three sourced lines and two heuristic lines and say so.
• Observed fares show their age. Medical ranges and visa facts show the date they were last checked. Exchange rates carry the date of the rate.
• Today the site labels lines with plain words such as "Planning estimate", "Indicative range", "Typical provider range" and "Recent fares seen by travellers". The six labels below are the vocabulary those words are being moved onto, surface by surface.

The labels

Six labels, one meaning each. Hover or focus a label anywhere on the site to read its definition.

See also the affiliate disclosure, which covers how TravelVulture is paid, and the medical lane for the full medical pricing notice. Questions about a specific figure: contact us.