Guide · Costs
What a day in Phuket actually costs
Built up from sourced prices, not a guess at a daily total
Checked · 4 min read · 6 places · 4 sources
Most Phuket budget pages give you one number and no working. This one gives you the parts, so you can add up the day you are actually going to have rather than the average of somebody else's.
Prices are in Thai baht and come from Numbeo's Phuket dataset, read in July 2026, unless another source is named. Treat them as the middle of a range, not a quote.
At a glance
- Cheap meal
- About 150 baht at an inexpensive restaurant
- Taxi
- Metered fare starts at about 100 baht
- Big costs
- Boat trips, day beds and transfers — not the food
- Carry
- Cash — 13 of the 19 Bib Gourmand spots take nothing else
- Daily total
- Not given — add up the day you actually want
6 places
Listed in the order we would work through them.
6 places
Go Benz
Phuket Town · Price: Cheap
A Phuket Town rice-porridge institution. Cash only.
Michelin Bib Gourmand and a Phuket Town institution for rice porridge. Cash only. Pork is central to the menu.
- Halal
- Not halal-certified, pork on the menu
- Booking
- Walk-in
- Order this
- Rice porridge
Not halalFamily friendlyOpen in Maps — opens Google Maps in a new tabKhao Tom Dibuk
Phuket Town · Price: Cheap
Rice congee, open when nothing else is. Cheap and comforting.
Michelin Bib Gourmand for rice congee — the Phuket Town late-night and early-morning staple. Cheap, comforting and open when nothing else is. Cash only, pork on the menu.
- Halal
- Not halal-certified, pork on the menu
- Booking
- Walk-in
- Order this
- Congee and noodles
Not halalFamily friendlyOpen in Maps — opens Google Maps in a new tabA Pong Mae Sunee
Phuket Town · Price: Cheap
One thing only: thin, crisp-edged coconut a-pong pancakes.
Michelin Bib Gourmand for a single item: a-pong, the thin crisp-edged coconut pancake cooked over charcoal in small clay pans. A few baht each and worth going out of your way for. Cash only.
- Halal
- Ask — no certification listed
- Booking
- Walk-in
- Order this
- A-pong coconut pancakes
Halal: askFamily friendlyOpen in Maps — opens Google Maps in a new tabBanzaan Fresh Market
Patong · Price: Cheap
Pick seafood downstairs, hand it upstairs, eat it cooked. Halal stalls exist.
The fresh market behind Jungceylon in Patong. Downstairs is produce and seafood; upstairs is a cooked-food floor where you can hand over what you bought and eat it at communal tables. Several stalls are halal — look for the green signage.
- Best time
- Evening
- Entry
- Free entry, pay for food
- Getting there
- Easy — central Patong
Family friendlyOpen in Maps — opens Google Maps in a new tabRawai Seafood Market
Rawai · Price: Mid-range
Buy it off the ice, hand it to a stall, they cook it. Cheapest good seafood here.
Not one restaurant but a row of ice tables: buy prawns, crab, squid or whole fish by weight, then hand it to one of the cooking stalls behind for a small cooking fee. Busiest and freshest from about 4 to 6pm when the boats come in. Many stalls are Muslim-run.
- Halal
- Ask — our halal listing came from a source we no longer trust
- Booking
- Walk-in, busiest 4-6pm
- Order this
- Grilled tiger prawns
Halal: askFamily friendlyOpen in Maps — opens Google Maps in a new tabNaam Yoi
Phuket Town · Price: Cheap
In Michelin's cheapest band for Phuket. No cards, no bookings.
Michelin Bib Gourmand, in the cheapest of Michelin's two price bands for Phuket. Southern Thai curries at everyday prices. Cash only, no bookings, no halal certification.
- Halal
- Not halal-certified, pork on the menu
- Booking
- Walk-in
- Order this
- Southern Thai curries
Not halalFamily friendlyOpen in Maps — opens Google Maps in a new tab
That is all of them.
The parts you can price
Eating, moving and doing, line by line. Each price is the middle of a range, not a quote.
Phuket Aquarium at Cape Panwa is half price if you can show a Thai licence.
We will not invent a daily total, because the honest version depends entirely on whether you eat at markets or restaurants and whether you book a boat. Add the lines above for the day you actually want.
| What | About |
|---|---|
| Meal, inexpensive restaurant | 150 baht (range 100 to 500) |
| Three courses for two, mid-range, no drinks | 1,350 baht |
| Cappuccino | 100 baht |
| Small bottle of water | 15 baht |
| Metered taxi | Starts at 100 baht, plus roughly 56 a mile |
| One-way local transport ticket | 75 baht |
| Petrol, per litre | 48 baht |
| Phuket Aquarium, adult | 300 baht |
| Phuket Aquarium, child | 150 baht; no charge below 108 cm |
| Cinema ticket | 255 baht |
Where the money actually goes
The gap is almost never the food. Between a cheap Phuket day and an expensive one, it is the boat trip, the beach-club day bed and the airport transfer.
A market dinner and a restaurant dinner might differ by 300 baht a head; a speedboat island day and a beach walk differ by thousands.
Nineteen Michelin Bib Gourmand places are on this island, and the cheapest are market stalls. Eating where Thai people eat is not a sacrifice here — it is where that list lives.
Beach-club day beds carry a minimum spend that changes by season and by day of the week. Nobody publishes a stable number, so we do not print one. Ask for the current rate before you sit down.
The costs nobody budgets for
Cash withdrawals. Thai ATMs charge a fixed fee per withdrawal on top of whatever your own bank takes, so four small withdrawals cost noticeably more than one large one.
Being cash-only. Thirteen of the nineteen Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurants here take cash only, as do most village stalls and small massage shops. Running out of baht in the wrong place costs you a taxi to a cash machine.
National park entry fees on island trips are usually collected separately on the day and in cash, and are not always included in the price you were quoted.
The first hour after landing. The airport taxi counter, the airport SIM and the airport exchange desk are each the worst-value version of that purchase available on the island.
Sources
4 sources behind this guide. The places were last checked on .
Photography is licensed stock, credited to Jean Papillon on Pexels. Some images show the named place; where no photograph of a venue exists, the picture shows Thailand rather than that venue.
You’ve read it
4 minutes well spent. 6 places, all with a map link.
