How Much Does a Trip to Cambodia Cost? A USD Budget for Americans
Cambodia runs on US dollars, which makes budgeting from the United States unusually simple — no exchange-rate guesswork. Here is what a trip actually costs, from daily spend to a full 10-day total, in plain USD.
How much does a trip to Cambodia cost for an American?
A typical 10-day trip to Cambodia costs an American roughly $2,000–3,500 USD all-in at a comfortable mid-range level — that includes the round-trip flight ($900–1,500 from most US cities), the Tourist eVisa at $80 USD all-in, and on-the-ground spending of about $70–110 a day for a hotel room, meals, transport, and sightseeing. Go lean and you can do it for well under $1,800; stay in resorts and fly business and it climbs past $6,000. The single biggest budgeting advantage for Americans is that Cambodia prices nearly everything in US dollars, so you plan and pay in the currency you already think in — no exchange-rate guesswork.
Key Takeaways
- Cambodia prices most things in US dollars, so an American can budget the whole trip in USD with no exchange-rate math — the riel only shows up as small change under a dollar.
- On the ground, a backpacker can travel on $35–45 USD a day, a mid-range traveler on $70–110 a day, and a comfortable traveler on $150–250+ a day — meals, transport, and a room included.
- The big fixed costs are the round-trip flight ($900–1,500 USD from most US cities) and the eVisa, which is $80 USD all-in for the Tourist eVisa, approved in 3–5 days.
- A typical 10-day first trip lands around $2,000–3,500 USD all-in per person at the mid-range level, flights and visa included — less if you go lean, more if you fly business or stay in resorts.
- Budget two small mandatory extras most people forget: the $20 USD verified e-Arrival Card filed before you fly, and the Angkor temple pass at $37 for one day or $62 for three.
The short answer, and why budgeting Cambodia is easy in USD
Cambodia is one of the most affordable destinations in Southeast Asia for an American, and it has a quirk that makes budgeting it easier than almost anywhere else: it runs on US dollars. Hotels quote in dollars, tour operators quote in dollars, restaurant menus print dollar prices, and ATMs dispense crisp USD bills. The Cambodian riel exists, but you will mostly see it as small change for anything under a dollar. That means you can plan your entire trip in the currency sitting in your checking account, with no exchange-rate spreadsheet and no nasty surprise when the statement lands.
So here is the headline number before we break it down: a comfortable 10-day first trip costs most Americans somewhere between $2,000 and $3,500 USD per person, all-in — flight, visa, hotels, food, transport, and temple passes included. Travel lean and that floor drops under $1,800. Fly business class and stay in five-star resorts and it climbs past $6,000. Most first-timers land in the middle, and the rest of this guide shows you exactly which line items make up that total so you can place yourself on the scale.
Two things drive every Cambodia budget: your fixed costs (the flight and the eVisa, which you pay once before you go) and your daily on-the-ground spend (which you control by the room you book and the way you eat and move around). We will cover both. If you want a day-by-day version of where the money goes, our Cambodia 10-day itinerary for first-time Americans maps the spending onto a real route, and our guide to using US dollars, riel, and ATMs in Cambodia explains how the cash actually works once you land.
- Add your round-trip flight
Budget $900–1,500 USD in economy from most US cities; there are no direct flights, so every routing connects through an Asian or Gulf hub.
- Add the eVisa
The Tourist eVisa is $80 USD all-in, approved in 3–5 days; the Business eVisa is $90 USD all-in on the same timeline.
- Add the e-Arrival Card
Budget $20 USD for the verified e-Arrival Card, a separate 14-field arrival declaration filed within 7 days before you land.
- Add the Angkor pass
Budget $37 for a one-day pass or $62 for three days; it sits on top of your daily spend, not inside it.
- Multiply your daily tier by your nights
Use $35–45 a day for backpacker, $70–110 for mid-range, or $150–250+ for comfort, then multiply by your number of nights.
- Total it in USD
Sum the fixed costs and your daily spend for a real all-in figure — the same US dollars you will actually pay on the ground.
Your daily on-the-ground budget in USD
The number that matters most for your gut feel of a trip is your daily spend — what one day on the ground costs once you are there, covering a room, meals, getting around, and a bit of sightseeing. Cambodia stretches across three clear tiers, and the gap between them is wide. Where you sit is almost entirely a choice about your room and how you eat.
Backpacker: $35–45 USD a day
At the lean end, $35 to $45 a day covers a dorm bed or a basic private room ($8–18), street food and local restaurants ($8–15 for three meals), tuk-tuks and shared transport ($5–10), and a beer or two. This is genuinely doable in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and the coast, and a lot of younger US travelers run their whole trip at this level. The catch is that big-ticket sightseeing — the Angkor pass especially — sits on top of this number, not inside it.
Mid-range: $70–110 USD a day
This is where most American first-timers land, and it buys a comfortable air-conditioned hotel room with a pool ($35–70), a mix of nice restaurants and casual local spots ($20–35), private tuk-tuk or car transport for the day ($15–25), and a guided tour or two. At this level you are not roughing it — you are staying in the kind of boutique hotel that would cost three times as much in Thailand or four times as much back home. It is the sweet spot of value in Cambodia.
Comfort and luxury: $150–250+ USD a day
At the top end, $150 to $250 and up a day puts you in four- and five-star hotels and resorts ($120–300+), fine dining, private drivers, and private guides at the temples. Cambodia has genuinely world-class luxury properties in Siem Reap and on the coast, and because the base cost of everything is low, your dollar stretches a long way even at this tier compared with a comparable trip in Europe or the US.
The fixed costs: flights and the eVisa
Two costs are fixed before you ever set foot in Cambodia, and together they usually make up the largest single chunk of an American trip budget: your round-trip flight and your visa. You pay both from home, in advance, so they are easy to lock in and easy to plan around.
Flights from the US: $900–1,500 USD round trip
There are no direct flights from the United States to Cambodia, so every routing connects through a hub in Asia or the Gulf — typically Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, Doha, or Taipei. From the US mainland, expect roughly $900 to $1,500 round trip in economy for most of the year, with the higher end around the November-to-February peak and the lower end in the green-season shoulder months. From the West Coast you are looking at 20-plus hours door to door; from the East Coast, closer to 24–30. Premium economy and business push the ticket to $2,500–6,000+, which is the line item that most changes a total budget.
A note on airports: Phnom Penh is now served by Techo International Airport (KTI), which replaced the old Pochentong airport in September 2025. Siem Reap (for Angkor) and Sihanoukville (for the coast) have their own international airports too, so you can sometimes save a domestic hop by flying your inbound or outbound leg straight into the city you actually want to start or end in.
The eVisa: $80 USD all-in, Tourist
The Cambodia Tourist eVisa is $80 USD all-in and approved in 3–5 days, delivered as a printable PDF by email. It is valid for 3 months from issue and lets you stay 30 days on a single entry — which comfortably covers any normal first trip. If you are traveling for work, the Business eVisa is $90 USD all-in on the same 3-business-day timeline. Either way, the visa is a known, fixed number you budget once. You can apply when your dates are roughly set; there is no rush option and no benefit to applying months early, so most US travelers lodge it a few weeks out.
One thing the eVisa fee does not include, because it is a separate step entirely, is the e-Arrival Card — the short arrival and customs declaration every air passenger files in the week before they land. Budget $20 USD for a verified e-Arrival Card, and we will come back to it below. For now, file it under "small mandatory extras," not "visa."
Three sample 10-day budgets, fully costed
Numbers in isolation are hard to feel, so here are three complete 10-day trips, costed end to end per person, the way an American would actually spend. Each one assumes Phnom Penh and Siem Reap with a stop at the Angkor temples — the classic first-trip route — and each includes the flight, the eVisa, the e-Arrival Card, the Angkor pass, and all on-the-ground spending.
The lean trip comes in around $1,700–1,900 USD: a $950 flight, the $80 eVisa, a $20 e-Arrival Card, a $62 three-day Angkor pass, and roughly $40 a day for 10 days of dorms, street food, and shared transport. It is a real, comfortable backpacker trip — not a survival exercise — and it shows how far a dollar goes in Cambodia.
The mid-range trip, where most first-timers land, runs about $2,400–3,200 USD: a $1,100 flight, the $80 eVisa, the $20 e-Arrival Card, the $62 Angkor pass, and roughly $90 a day for 10 days of nice hotels, good food, and private tuk-tuks. This is the version most readers of this guide are actually planning, and it buys a genuinely relaxed trip with no scrimping.
The comfort trip lands around $4,500–7,000+ USD: a $1,400 economy or $3,000+ business flight, the $80 eVisa, the $20 e-Arrival Card, the $62 Angkor pass, and $200+ a day for resorts, fine dining, and private guides. Cambodia rewards this tier with luxury that punches well above its price, but the flight class is what really moves the needle here.
The small mandatory extras Americans forget to budget
Most over-budget Cambodia trips are not blown by one big mistake — they are nibbled by a handful of small costs people did not plan for. None of these are large, but together they can add $150–300 to a trip if they catch you by surprise. Put each one in the budget now.
- The Angkor temple pass. Not included in any tour price by default. It is $37 for a one-day pass, $62 for three days, or $72 for a week — sold separately at the official ticket office. For a first trip, the three-day pass is the standard choice.
- The e-Arrival Card. A mandatory arrival and customs declaration filed before you fly, separate from your visa. Budget $20 USD for a verified card so it is handled and checked before you reach the kiosk.
- A local SIM or eSIM. A tourist data SIM runs $5–15 for the trip, and you will want it for maps, ride apps, and translation. Pick it up at the airport on arrival or buy an eSIM before you fly.
- Tuk-tuks and ride apps. Budget $3–8 for most short city rides, more for full-day temple loops. They add up faster than you expect across a 10-day trip.
- Tips and small cash. Tipping is appreciated but not mandatory; a few dollars for guides and drivers, and small change for restaurants, is the norm. Keep a stash of small US bills.
- Travel insurance. Sensible for any US traveler heading to Southeast Asia and worth pricing in at $40–120 for a 10-day trip, depending on coverage and your age.
One genuinely common surprise worth flagging: the Cambodia–Thailand land borders have been closed since June 2025, so the old shoestring move of bussing in overland from Bangkok is off the table for now. If your plan was a Thailand-then-Cambodia overland loop, you will need to fly between the two countries instead, which changes the budget — factor an extra short-haul flight of $80–150 if you are combining the trip. Our guide to combining a Cambodia and Vietnam trip on a USD budget runs the numbers on the most popular two-country pairing.
How to keep your Cambodia trip cost down
Because Cambodia is cheap on the ground, the biggest lever on your total budget is the flight, followed by your hotel tier. A few practical moves move the needle more than skipping street-food meals ever will.
On flights, the single biggest saving is timing. Avoiding the November-to-February peak, when the weather is best and prices are highest, can knock $200–400 off a round-trip ticket. The green season (roughly May to October) brings short, predictable afternoon downpours and dramatically thinner crowds at the temples, along with the cheapest fares of the year. Flying mid-week and booking your connection through a major Asian or Gulf hub rather than insisting on the shortest routing also tends to lower the price.
On the ground, the mid-range tier already delivers most of the comfort of luxury at a third of the cost, so trading a five-star resort for a well-reviewed boutique hotel is the cleanest saving available. Eating where locals eat, using tuk-tuks and ride apps instead of hotel cars, and buying the three-day Angkor pass instead of separate single-day tickets all chip away at the daily number without making the trip feel cheap.
One area where cutting corners backfires is your card and your cash. Cambodia is a cash-first, USD economy, and ATMs typically charge a fixed fee of $4–6 per withdrawal on top of your home bank fees, so frequent small withdrawals quietly bleed money. Bring some clean US bills to start, withdraw larger amounts less often, and use a card with no foreign-transaction fee for anything you put on plastic. Our guide on using US dollars, riel, and ATMs in Cambodia covers exactly how to carry and spend money there without losing a slice to fees on every transaction.
Visa options by nationality
Thailand
Visa-free 60 days
A natural pairing — but the land border is closed, so budget a short flight between them.
Read the 2026 update →Vietnam
eVisa required ($25 single / $50 multi)
Classic Indochina pairing. Phu Quoc beaches are visa-free for 30 days.
See the combo guide →Laos
eVisa $50 or VoA $35–40
The overlooked third stop on the Indochina loop.
Plan the Laos route →Putting your Cambodia budget together
Build your number from the bottom up and it stops feeling vague. Start with the flight ($900–1,500 economy), add the eVisa ($80 Tourist, all-in), add the $20 e-Arrival Card and the $62 Angkor pass, then multiply your chosen daily tier by your number of nights. That gives you a real all-in figure before you book a single thing — and because it is all in US dollars, it is the figure you will actually pay.
Once your dates are roughly set, the visa is the first piece to lock down, because it is the one fixed cost with a real timeline attached. The Cambodia visa for US citizens is a Tourist eVisa at $80 USD all-in or a Business eVisa at $90 USD all-in, both approved in 3–5 days and delivered as a printable PDF by email, with free resubmission if Immigration flags a correction. There is no flight, hotel, or bank statement required to apply, which is one reason the visa side of a Cambodia budget is so painless. If you want to see the visa cost broken out against the rest of the trip, our Cambodia trip and visa cost breakdown for Americans lays it side by side.
The last small line item is the one people leave to the airport and regret. The e-Arrival Card is a separate, mandatory arrival and customs declaration filed inside the 7 days before you land — 14 fields, returned as a QR code Immigration scans at the kiosk. We file a verified e-Arrival Card for $20 USD, submitted inside the window and checked end-to-end before it reaches Cambodian Immigration, so a date-format slip or a passport typo does not turn into a problem on arrival day.
Next steps and related reading for US travelers: apply for your Cambodia eVisa once your dates are set, map the spending onto a real route with our 10-day Cambodia itinerary for Americans, learn how to carry and spend money with our US dollars and ATMs in Cambodia guide, and run the two-country numbers with our Cambodia and Vietnam budget guide.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a trip to Cambodia cost for an American?
A typical 10-day mid-range trip runs about $2,000–3,500 USD per person all-in, including the round-trip flight ($900–1,500), the Tourist eVisa at $80 USD all-in, and on-the-ground spending of roughly $70–110 a day. Travel lean and you can do it for under $1,800; stay in resorts and fly business and it climbs past $6,000. Because Cambodia prices nearly everything in US dollars, you budget the whole trip in the currency you already use.
What is a realistic daily budget for Cambodia in USD?
A backpacker can travel on $35–45 USD a day, covering a dorm or basic room, street food, and shared transport. Most American first-timers sit at the mid-range tier of $70–110 a day, which buys an air-conditioned hotel with a pool, good food, and private tuk-tuks. Comfort and luxury travel runs $150–250+ a day. Big-ticket items like the Angkor temple pass sit on top of the daily number, not inside it.
How much are flights from the US to Cambodia?
There are no direct flights, so every routing connects through an Asian or Gulf hub like Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, or Doha. Expect roughly $900–1,500 USD round trip in economy for most of the year, with the higher end around the November-to-February peak. Premium economy and business push the ticket to $2,500–6,000+, which is the line item that most changes a total budget.
How much is the Cambodia visa for Americans?
The Tourist eVisa is $80 USD all-in, approved in 3–5 days and delivered as a printable PDF by email. It is valid for 3 months from issue and allows a 30-day single-entry stay, which covers any normal first trip. The Business eVisa is $90 USD all-in on the same timeline. There is no flight, hotel, or bank statement required to apply, so the visa is a clean, fixed number you budget once.
Do I need to budget anything beyond the flight, hotels, and visa?
Yes — a few small mandatory extras catch people out. The Angkor temple pass is $37 for one day or $62 for three. The e-Arrival Card is a separate $20 USD step filed before you fly. A tourist SIM or eSIM runs $5–15, and travel insurance is worth $40–120 for a 10-day trip. None are large on their own, but together they can add $150–300 if you do not plan for them.
Is Cambodia expensive compared with Thailand or Vietnam?
Cambodia is broadly comparable to Vietnam and slightly cheaper than Thailand on the ground, especially for hotels — a boutique room in Siem Reap often costs less than a similar room in Bangkok. The flight from the US is the main cost, and it is similar for all three because they share the same Asian and Gulf connecting hubs. Cambodia’s USD pricing makes it the easiest of the three for an American to budget.
Should I bring US dollars or use ATMs in Cambodia?
Both. Cambodia is a USD economy, so bring some clean US bills to start, then top up at ATMs, which dispense dollars. ATMs typically charge a fixed $4–6 fee per withdrawal on top of your home bank fees, so withdraw larger amounts less often rather than making frequent small withdrawals. Use a card with no foreign-transaction fee for anything you put on plastic to avoid losing a slice on every purchase.
Can I still travel overland from Thailand to save money?
Not right now. All seven Thailand–Cambodia land borders have been closed since June 2025, so the old budget move of bussing in overland from Bangkok is unavailable. If you are combining the two countries, budget a short-haul flight of roughly $80–150 between them instead. Plan the trip as a fly-in, fly-out itinerary rather than an overland loop.
Sources
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