Drinks and going out
A beer costs three to five euros in Paceville and a little less away from the strip. A cocktail is eight to twelve. Club entry is often free before midnight and ten to twenty after, rising for a headline night. A pool party with a drink runs twenty to thirty five, a boat party with open bar forty to seventy. That last one looks expensive until you count the drinks included, at which point it is usually the best value night of the week.
Food
A pastizzi, the local pastry, costs under a euro and is the cheapest breakfast in Europe. A sit-down lunch is twelve to twenty, a proper dinner twenty five to forty five with wine. Eating one street back from the seafront in Sliema or St Julian's cuts the bill by a third for the same food. Supermarkets are inexpensive, and self-catering for breakfast and lunch makes a real difference over a week.
Getting around
Public buses cost two euros a journey in summer, and a weekly Tallinja card is far cheaper if you use them. Taxis are where budgets slip: fifteen to twenty five euros for a short late-night ride, and the price climbs after 2 am. Ride-hailing apps operate on the island and are usually cheaper than a street taxi. Splitting across four people changes the maths entirely.
Where to stay, and what it costs
A hostel bed is twenty to thirty five euros a night in season. A mid-range hotel room in St Julian's is eighty to a hundred and fifty. Staying in Sliema instead of Paceville drops the price and adds a fifteen-minute walk or a short ferry. Prices roughly double between May and August, and the same room in October costs what a hostel does in July.
A realistic week
Excluding flights, a careful week is around five hundred euros: hostel, self-catered breakfasts, buses, a few nights out. A comfortable week with a mid-range hotel, restaurants and going out most nights lands between nine hundred and thirteen hundred. The two costs people forget are late-night taxis and buying club entry at the door instead of online, which is consistently dearer on a busy night.