Croatia adopted the euro on 1 January 2023, joining the Schengen Area the same day. The kuna is gone, and any price you find quoted in it is at least four years old.
The changeover is worth understanding because it did two things at once. It made Zagreb easier — no exchange, no leftover coins, cards everywhere — and it produced a round of price rises that Croatians noticed immediately and complained about loudly. Studies afterwards found a real if modest inflationary effect from rounding, concentrated in cafés and restaurants.
So Zagreb is no longer the bargain that guidebooks from the 2010s describe. It is still, by a wide margin, cheaper than the western European capitals.
What is free
Zagreb is unusually generous here, and it changes the arithmetic.
- Dolac market
- The Stone Gate
- The noon cannon at Lotrščak
- Mirogoj Cemetery
- The Green Horseshoe and the Botanical Garden
- Maksimir and Jarun
- The Grič Tunnel
- The Upper Town, the gas lamps and the lamplighter
- Novi Zagreb and Bundek
What is not
The museums, all of which are inexpensive. Plitvice, which is the single largest ticket most visitors buy here. The funicular, which costs the same as a tram ride. The cable car up Sljeme.
Theatre and opera at the HNK cost less than a mid-range dinner, which is the best-value ticket in the city by a distance.
Three daily budgets
Excluding accommodation, per person, per day.
Careful — around €30
Burek or a bakery breakfast. Lunch at a gostionica — the ordinary Croatian eating house — or a marenda, the set working lunch, which is very cheap and very filling. Free sights all afternoon. Supermarket dinner or a cheap grill. Two coffees and a beer.
Transport: a day ticket, or nothing, because you walked.
This is comfortable rather than austere. Zagreb is a city where €30 a day genuinely works.
Comfortable — €60 to €80
Café breakfast. A proper lunch. Two museums. Dinner at a good restaurant with a bottle of Croatian wine. Coffees throughout, because that is the local practice.
Add a theatre ticket for very little more.
Generous — €150 and up
A tasting menu, a full day at Plitvice with a private transfer, cocktails, taxis. Zagreb’s ceiling is much lower than a western capital’s — it is genuinely hard to spend a great deal here.
Where the money actually goes
Accommodation, and only in December. Advent roughly doubles central rates from late November to early January. Nothing else in the calendar moves prices like it. Summer, counter-intuitively, is cheap, because Croatian tourism goes to the coast and Zagreb empties.
Eating out is good value at the bottom and normal in the middle. The marenda lunch and the neighbourhood gostionica are where the value is. The newer restaurants in the centre are priced close to Vienna.
Coffee is very cheap and you will buy a lot of it. A coffee in central Zagreb costs a fraction of what it costs in western Europe, which is fortunate, because špica and the terrace habit mean you will drink four a day.
Transport is negligible. A day of unlimited trams costs about what one coffee costs in Munich.
Plitvice is the exception. Entry in high season, plus the bus both ways, plus food, makes it the most expensive day most visitors have here — and worth it, if you go outside July and August.
Practical money notes
Euro. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, contactless is universal, and ATMs are plentiful.
Avoid dynamic currency conversion. If an ATM or a card terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline and pay in euro. The exchange rate they use is always worse.
Independent ATMs in tourist areas — the free-standing yellow ones — charge high fees. Use a bank’s own machine.
Tipping is rounding up. In a restaurant, ten per cent for good service. In a café, leave the coins. Nobody expects more and nobody will chase you.
Prices include VAT, which is 25 per cent — one of the highest rates in the EU, and part of why nothing here is quite as cheap as the wage levels would suggest.
VAT refunds for non-EU residents are available above a threshold; ask in the shop.
Two ways to save real money
Do not come in December unless you are coming for Advent. It is the only month that changes the arithmetic.
Eat lunch as your main meal. The marenda and the daily menu at an ordinary restaurant are a fraction of the evening price for the same kitchen.