About Stay Cost Brain

The room price is what every booking site shows first. It is rarely what you pay. Cities, regions and countries add a tourist tax on top, and the rules differ everywhere: per person or per room, by star rating, by season, capped after a number of nights, free for children up to an age that changes from town to town.

Stay Cost Brain puts those rules in one place, with the source for every figure.

How we work

• Official sources only. Every rate comes from the authority's own page, its regulation or the official gazette, with a short quote and the date we read it. Travel blogs often disagree with the law, so we never use them for a figure.
• Dated, and checked again. Each place has a re-check date, every 90 days or every 30 when a change has been announced. Announced changes are shown ahead of time, with the date they start.
• Worked out night by night. The calculator applies each place's rules to your dates: the season of each night, the cap on nights, children's ages and the type of stay. When it can't know something, such as the star rating, it shows a range, not a guess.
• The headline stays honest. We never change the room price. The tourist tax is shown beside it.

What we don't do

We don't sell rooms or take bookings. We don't track you (see the privacy policy). Some special exemptions, such as residents, medical stays or work trips, are listed on each place's page but not worked out by the calculator.

The Brain family

Stay Cost Brain is a sister site of Car Rental Brain, which measures what car hire really costs, and Airfare Brain, which does the same for low-cost flights.

Found a mistake?

Taxes change, and we want to know first. Write to [email protected] with the place and, if you have one, the official link.