The travel expense trackerthat keeps every trip on budget

Log each expense the moment you pay, in the currency you paid in, and tag it with a category. A travel expense tracker converts it to your home currency, subtracts it from your daily budget, and shows what you can still spend today, so nothing depends on decoding receipts a week later.

Take what you can spend on the trip, subtract the fixed costs you have already paid (flights, hotels, rental car), then divide the rest by the number of days. That daily number, not the total, is what keeps a trip on budget. Costari calculates it and updates the remaining amount after every expense.

Trail Wallet is no longer actively developed, so travelers who relied on its daily-budget model need a maintained iPhone app with the same fast entry. Costari keeps that model (one trip, one daily budget, quick logging in 150+ currencies) and adds shared trips and trip statistics.

A spreadsheet is excellent for planning before you leave. It falls apart during the trip: exchange rates have to be typed in by hand, phone editing is slow, and one skipped day breaks the running total. Plan in a spreadsheet if you like. Track in an app.

Record every expense in the currency you actually paid, and let the app convert it into one home currency for the trip total. Costari supports 150+ currencies with automatic conversion, so a trip through several countries still produces a single, comparable number.

Yes. Invite other travelers to a trip in Costari and everyone adds expenses to the same trip, with the shared budget synced across devices. Nobody has to send screenshots of a notes app at the end of the week.

Backpacking budgets run on a daily number, not a monthly one. Set a daily target, log everything including street food and local buses, and review the remaining daily budget each evening so cheap days visibly pay for the expensive ones.

By city, not by vacation. Create a separate trip for each base, keep one home currency so the numbers stay comparable, and use the daily average to see which city your income actually supports before you commit to another month there.

Total the fixed costs first: flights, accommodation, car, big-ticket attractions. Subtract them from what you are willing to spend, and turn the remainder into a daily family allowance for food, activities and souvenirs. Then track that allowance while you are away.

Costari is free to download and free to start tracking a trip. Costari Pro is an optional upgrade, available as a yearly or weekly subscription or as a one-time lifetime purchase, for travelers who want the full feature set.