How Much Does a Trip to Cambodia Cost? A USD Budget for Americans

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.

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.