Budget/Backpacker Travel Guide: Syria
Experience authentic local culture on a shoestring budget with hostels, street food, and public transport
Daily Budget: $31-85 per day
Complete breakdown of costs for budget/backpacker travel in Syria
Accommodation
$15-40 per night
Simple guesthouses and budget hotels in functioning neighborhoods, typically family-run operations where the smell of coffee and bread drifts from a shared kitchen. Options are limited in areas still recovering from conflict damage. Flexibility matters more than brand loyalty.
Browse budget/backpacker accommodation →Food & Dining
$8-20 per day
Neighborhood eateries serve the smoky, charred flatbread Syria has always done well, alongside tangy hummus, ful, and grilled meats from small braziers. Markets in Damascus and Aleppo offer the cheapest and most honest eating. The sizzle and charcoal smoke of street-level grills marks the best spots.
Transportation
$3-10 per day
Shared microbuses and minivans connect major cities, crowded and warm in summer but functional for most intercity routes. Walking covers the compact lanes of old city quarters. The cool shade of covered souks makes the distance feel shorter.
Currency: Syrian Pound (SYP), though US Dollars (USD) are widely accepted and often preferred for accommodation, private transport, and larger transactions
Money-Saving Tips
Travel between Syrian cities by shared microbus rather than private taxi. The cost difference is typically three to five times, and routes cover most destinations travelers want to reach.
Eat at neighborhood flatbread bakeries, morning hummus shops, and market-adjacent eateries where Syrians eat. These spots tend to run around half the cost of anything positioning itself toward outside visitors.
Prioritize Damascus and Aleppo old city accommodation where restored courtyard guesthouses often offer better value than equivalent-priced modern hotels, and location cuts daily transport costs significantly.
Visit historical sites independently rather than through organized tours. Syria's major ruins generally have straightforward access once you have transport to the vicinity, and entry fees are modest.
Carry USD in small denominations. Making change for large bills is difficult in local markets, and the USD exchange rate tends to be more favorable outside formal institutions.
Build a contingency reserve of roughly a quarter of your planned total spend for unexpected permit fees, additional driver days caused by checkpoint delays, or simply the unpredictable friction of travel in a country still rebuilding its infrastructure.
Common Budget Mistakes to Avoid
Underestimating transport costs and complexity. In Syria, sites that look close on a map can translate into expensive private-vehicle days once public options prove unavailable or unsafe on a given route. This category consistently runs over budget for travelers who plan on paper.
Arriving without sufficient USD cash. Syria's banking infrastructure remains severely disrupted, ATMs are unreliable outside major city centers, and card payments are largely unavailable. Insufficient hard currency is the single most reported practical problem among recent travelers to Syria.
Treating accommodation as a simple line item to optimize. In some areas, functioning options have narrowed to a handful of establishments, which limits negotiating use and means budget flexibility in travel dates or destination order is worth more than squeezing a cheaper nightly rate.