Ask the internet what a trip to Egypt costs and you mostly get an airfare. Flight comparison sites answer the flight question, then stop, which leaves out the part that actually varies: the hotels, the guide, the boat, the tickets, the transfers and the handful of cash costs nobody warns you about until you are standing at a temple gate.

This page answers the other part. We are a local agency in Egypt running our own programmes with our own guides, so the package figures below are our published rates rather than a blogger's estimate. They are quoted in US dollars, per person, sharing a double room, and they are land-only: the programme begins when you land at Cairo airport and ends when we drop you back there.

What the headline number covers

Our classic 7-day programme starts at US$1,348 per person in a double room. That figure carries hotels, private transfers, an Egyptologist guide, the Nile cruise, the entrance tickets on the itinerary, and any domestic Egyptian flights the route needs, such as Cairo to Luxor or the return leg out of Aswan. Those internal sectors are inside the price. They are a real cost that catches people out when they try to price a trip themselves.

Three things sit outside it, and it is better to know that now than at checkout:

  • Your international flight. We do not sell, quote or book it. You buy your own return ticket, from whichever airport and on whichever airline suits you.
  • Your entry visa. Paid to the Egyptian government, not to us.
  • Cash you spend in Egypt. Tips, optional tickets, drinks, souvenirs. Realistically 140 to 260 US dollars over a week, and the section below breaks that down properly.

Travel insurance is worth adding to your own budget too. It is not part of any tour price, ours included, and for a trip built around long days, internal flights and a boat, it is the cheapest protection you will buy all year.

Cost by trip length

The single decision that moves your total more than anything else is not which airline you fly. It is how many days in Egypt you give yourself. Egypt's sites are spread along roughly a thousand kilometres of river, and a short trip does not make them closer together, it just makes each visit shorter.

Programme What it covers Price per person, double room
Classic Egypt, 7 days / 6 nights Cairo, the Giza pyramids, the Nile cruise, Luxor and Aswan. Our best seller, and the right answer if you have exactly one week. From US$1,348
Cruise and Cairo, 8 days / 7 nights An extra Cairo night for the Grand Egyptian Museum and Coptic Cairo, without rushing either. Quoted on the programme page
Classic Egypt, 10 days / 9 nights Cairo, Luxor and Aswan with real time at each site, plus Abu Simbel. Quoted on the programme page
Deep Egypt, 12 days / 11 nights Everything above plus Alexandria or the Red Sea, for travellers crossing half the world who would rather not leave anything out. US$2,196

If you have flown a long way to get here, the honest recommendation is to stretch the week into the ten-day version. The jump buys Abu Simbel and full days in the temples instead of express visits, and per day of actual sightseeing it is the better value of the two. Current pricing for each length sits on our published tour packages, since the middle two vary by season and boat.

What a Nile cruise costs

The cruise is the heart of the trip and also the line item where prices move the most, because two boats moored side by side can be very different products. A 5-day, 4-night cruise on a five-star Nile boat, full board, with a guide and every visit included, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, Kom Ombo, Edfu and Philae, starts at US$755 per person in a double cabin when you book directly with the operator running the boat. We run it in both directions, Luxor to Aswan and Aswan to Luxor, both 5 days and 4 nights. Routes, sailing days and what is on board are set out on our Nile cruise routes and prices page.

One caution on the word "five-star". Nile boats are graded on Egypt's own local scale, which is not the same scale as an international hotel chain. A good boat at this price is genuinely comfortable, well fed and properly staffed, but do not read the stars as an equivalence. What matters far more is cabin position, deck, the age of the refit and how many people the boat carries. That is worth ten minutes of reading before you commit, and how to choose a boat covers the questions to ask.

The money you spend on the ground

Egypt is inexpensive once you are there. The Egyptian pound has devalued heavily against the dollar, so eating, moving around and shopping cost far less than most visitors expect. A meal in a local restaurant runs 5 to 10 US dollars, dinner with a view of the Nile 15 to 25, and a bottle of water under half a dollar. If your package already covers most meals, 30 to 50 dollars a day is a comfortable spending budget.

Bring dollars in cash. The rate you get changing US dollars at a bank or exchange office in Egypt is better than almost any conversion you will arrange at home, and cash is still the way most small transactions happen. For a week, 300 to 400 dollars in cash is a sensible amount to carry.

Tipping, or baksheesh

Tipping in Egypt is not a bonus for exceptional service. It is part of the culture and part of what the people looking after you actually earn, so budget it as a real line rather than treating it as optional. A workable model: about 5 dollars a day for your guide, 2 to 3 for your driver, and on the boat around 5 dollars a day for the crew, handed over in an envelope on the last morning. In restaurants, 10 per cent.

That comes to roughly 7 to 8 dollars a day on land days and 12 to 13 on cruise days. Over a 7-day trip with four nights on the boat, expect somewhere around 60 to 90 dollars in total, and closer to 100 to 150 on a twelve-day programme. Amounts by role, including porters, housekeeping and the boat crew, are laid out in our guide to tipping in Egypt.

Entrance tickets

The main tickets on your itinerary are already inside the package price. You pay separately only for optional extras, typically going inside the Great Pyramid or a special tomb such as Seti I. Those are bought at the site itself, in Egyptian pounds, which is the currency you actually hand over.

Gate fees are set by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and revised from time to time, so any figure printed on a page like this one ages badly. What does not change is the structure of it. General admission gets you onto the site, and going inside a pyramid or into a single named tomb is a separate ticket bought on top of that one, which is why the optional extras are the part worth budgeting for rather than the standard entries already covered by your programme. Current amounts site by site are on our monument entrance fees page, and we confirm the ones that apply to your itinerary before you travel. Two practical notes: the Grand Egyptian Museum sells timed entry and has more than one ticket type, so confirm which one you are buying, and at Abu Simbel the ticket is the small part of the cost compared with getting there.

Optional extras worth budgeting for

Some things are not in any package but almost everyone ends up doing at least one. The sunrise balloon over Luxor's west bank is the optional most of our travellers ask about. Camel or horse time at Giza, a sound and light show, a felucca hour at sunset, and a special tomb ticket all live in the same bracket. Standalone day trips start from US$120, and a realistic allowance for extras across a week is 80 to 150 dollars.

Your entry visa

The tourist visa is a fixed government fee, in the region of 25 to 30 US dollars for a single entry with a 30-day stay, payable either as an e-Visa arranged online before you fly or on arrival at Cairo airport. It is small money, but the important part is not the price.

Eligibility for the e-Visa and for visa on arrival is granted by nationality, from published lists, and those lists do not cover every passport. Some nationalities must apply through an Egyptian embassy or consulate in advance, which takes time and paperwork. Check your own passport against the official Egyptian government portal before you book flights, and check the current fee there at the same time, because it is set by the government and not by us.

When you go changes what you pay

Egypt has a clear high season, roughly October through April, when the weather is at its best and the good cabins and well-located hotels sell out first. What is left late in that window is always worse and more expensive. May, June and September are noticeably cheaper for hotels and considerably quieter at the sites. The heat is manageable if you start early, which is how Egypt is best visited in any month. If your dates are flexible at all, the shoulder months are where the value is, and the month-by-month detail is in our guide to the best time to visit Egypt.

Where to save, and where not to

The largest saving available on the whole trip is structural rather than clever. Every agency that sits between you and the local operator adds its margin to the final number. Booking the ground programme directly with the company that runs it in Egypt, and buying your own international ticket, removes that layer entirely. After that: travel in the shoulder season, lock the programme in early for high-season dates, and share a room. Per-person rates in a double are always better than a single supplement, and a group of four to six friends gets genuinely good private rates.

Three things are not worth cutting. The first is the guide. Egypt without a good Egyptologist is a lot of very impressive stone with no story attached, and the difference between a licensed guide and a cheap one is the difference between the trip you remember and a week of walking past things. The second is the boat category, where the price gap between a doubtful boat and a solid one is small next to how much it changes four days of your life. The third is safety and logistics: proper transfers, correct convoy arrangements to Abu Simbel, and an operator who answers the phone when a flight moves.

A trip that looks far too cheap almost always is. The usual mechanics are hotels a long way from anything, headline sites quietly moved into the optional column at extra cost, and a daily stop at a shop that pays commission. In Egypt, cheap has a way of becoming expensive.

Get an exact number for your dates

Send us your dates, how many days you have and how many people are travelling, and you get back an itinerary and a closed price with nothing hidden underneath it. We answer on WhatsApp at +201032295513, from Cairo, usually within a few hours. No obligation, and no pressure if the numbers do not work for you.