How much does four days in Lisbon cost for a group of friends?

Budget around 545 euros a head for four days and three nights with eight people, flights included: 130 euros of flights from London, 110 euros of accommodation, 30 euros of local transport, 145 euros of food, 85 euros of activities and 45 euros of groceries and extras. Travel outside school holidays and cook one evening in the apartment and the total drops to roughly 400 euros.

Where should a group stay in Lisbon?

Príncipe Real is the best compromise for a group of adults: quiet, well connected, ten minutes on foot from Bairro Alto. Baixa and Chiado work if you want everything walkable without thinking about it. Alfama is the prettiest but full of steps, so arriving with suitcases is hard work. Avoid sleeping in Bairro Alto itself, which is loud until three in the morning.

How many days do you need in Lisbon?

Four days and three nights is the right shape for a group: one day for the centre, one for Alfama and a fado night, one for Sintra, one for Belém and the river. Three days means sacrificing either Sintra or Belém. Beyond five days, add a beach day at Caparica or Cascais rather than stacking up museums.

Do you need to book Pena Palace in Sintra in advance?

Yes, it is now required: entry runs on timed slots booked online, about 20 euros, and the morning slots go a week ahead in high season. Aim for 8.30 or 9am and you avoid both the queue and the crowds. A group of eight arriving without tickets at 11am has lost the morning.

What is the best way to get around Lisbon with a group?

Walking covers most of it, but the city is steep. The metro is 1.80 euros a journey, and tram 28 at 3.20 euros is an attraction to do once, early in the morning. The real tip for a group is Uber and Bolt: 6 to 9 euros a ride, so about 2 euros each for eight people across two cars. Tuk-tuks, at 60 to 90 euros an hour, are not worth it.

Lisbon with friends: a 4-day itinerary and the real budget for a group

Lisbon is the city everyone in the group suggests and nobody manages to organise. It is cheap, it is under three hours away, everyone says yes within minutes, and then the chat goes silent on the question of where to stay. Here is the opposite of that: a four-day plan tested on groups of six to eight, with real 2026 prices, the neighbourhoods that suit a group, and the two or three traps that turn a good idea into an exhausting weekend.

Why Lisbon works so well for a group

There is a very practical reason. The city is compact enough to walk home from dinner, and varied enough that people do not all need to want the same thing at the same time. In a group of eight there will always be two who want a nap, two who want to keep walking and two who want a beer in the sun. In Lisbon all three happen in the same neighbourhood, and everyone meets up an hour later without anyone getting on a train.

The second reason is price. A full dinner with wine runs about 22 euros a head in a neighbourhood restaurant, a beer on a terrace is 2.50 euros, and an apartment for eight costs less than four hotel rooms in almost any other European capital. It is one of the few city breaks where a group with uneven budgets can travel without anyone feeling awkward about it.

The real budget, for eight people over four days

Take a specific case: eight friends flying out of London on a Thursday morning and back on Sunday evening, so four days and three nights, with flights booked two months ahead.

Return flights from London: 130 euros a head (closer to 190 if you book three weeks out, around 70 midweek in November)
Apartment for eight, three nights, central: 880 euros in total, so 110 euros a head
Local transport, including the airport metro and the Sintra train: 30 euros a head
Food, three dinners and three lunches: 145 euros a head
Activities: Pena Palace entry, a sunset boat on the Tejo, a fado night: 85 euros a head
Groceries for breakfasts, beers, the unplanned bits: 45 euros a head

That comes to 545 euros a head, flights included. This is the number that belongs in the very first message to the group, before anything is booked. A cap announced early brings people in. A price discovered two weeks before departure loses you two of them.

If money is tight, two levers get you to roughly 400 euros: travel outside school holidays, and swap one restaurant dinner for a proper meal cooked in the apartment with market shopping. The levers that are not worth it are the ones that trade comfort for fifteen euros: a flat out in the suburbs, or a flight that lands at half past eleven at night.

Where to stay when there are eight of you

This is the only genuinely hard decision of the trip, because Lisbon's neighbourhoods do not affect a group in the same way at all.

Baixa and Chiado: the flat centre, everything on foot, perfect if the group would rather not think about getting anywhere. The trade-off is noise at the weekend and a touristy feel. Alfama and Graça: the prettiest part of the city, and a maze of stepped lanes. Arriving there with eight suitcases is a workout. Príncipe Real: the best compromise for a group of adults, quieter, good food, ten minutes on foot from Bairro Alto. Bairro Alto: fine to visit, bad to sleep in, unless the whole group plans to be out every night, because the streets are loud until three in the morning.

For six to eight people a whole apartment beats hotel rooms every time, and not mainly on price: it has a living room. That is where the trip actually happens, in the hour between getting back from dinner and going to bed. Check three things before booking: how many real bathrooms there are (two minimum for six), how many real beds there are against the sofa beds in the listing, and which floor it is on, because plenty of Lisbon buildings have no lift.

For eight people, an apartment with a living room beats four hotel rooms. The living room is where the trip happens.

The four-day plan, without the race against the clock

One rule: one big thing per day, and the rest left open. A group can absorb three planned activities across four days, not twelve.

Thursday, arrival and Baixa. Metro from the airport into town, about 1.80 euros and 25 minutes. Drop the bags, then walk up to the Santa Catarina viewpoint for sunset. Dinner somewhere nearby, and one rule: nobody plans anything on the first evening.
Friday, Alfama and fado. The morning in Alfama's lanes, tram 28 early if you want a seat, Portas do Sol for the view. Lunch at a market. In the evening, a fado night in a small room, around 25 euros without dinner and 50 with. This is the part of the trip the group will still be talking about next year.
Saturday, Sintra. Train from Rossio station, 2.40 euros each way, 40 minutes. Pena Palace is about 20 euros and needs a timed slot booked online, which is now compulsory in high season. Leave at 8.30 and the palace is almost yours. Leave at 11 and you will spend the day in a queue.
Sunday, Belém and the river. Tram 15 out to Belém, the custard tarts at 1.40 euros each, the Jerónimos monastery. In the afternoon, a boat on the Tejo, roughly 35 euros a head for two hours. It is the best possible ending, and the only activity where the whole group sits still in one place, which after four days is a relief.

Notice what is not on the list: LX Factory, Cascais, the Gulbenkian museum, the beaches at Caparica. All of them are good, and all of them are exactly what ruins a group trip when they become compulsory stops. Keep them as options for whoever wants them.

Plan Lisbon without becoming the group accountant.
Kobidi keeps it all in one place: everyone proposes a stay, a date or an activity, the group votes, and the per-person price updates with every expense added. Free, and nobody needs to install anything to join.

Start the group trip, it is free Your friends join with a link, from any browser.

Getting around without losing an hour each time

Lisbon is a walking city as long as you accept the hills. A few things worth knowing before you land:

A single metro ticket costs 1.80 euros and the rechargeable Navegante card cannot be shared, so everyone buys their own for 0.50 euros. Tram 28 at 3.20 euros is an attraction, not transport: ride it once, early, then forget it. The street lifts and funiculars like Bica and Glória cost 4 euros return, which is a lot for a hundred metres of climb, though worth it carrying shopping.

One detail changes everything for a group: Uber and Bolt are genuinely cheap, roughly 6 to 9 euros a ride across town. For eight people, splitting two cars works out at about 2 euros each, often less than eight metro tickets, and it saves a fifteen minute climb. Do not make walking a point of principle, especially coming down from Alfama at night.

What to skip: tuk-tuks. At 60 to 90 euros an hour for a guided loop they cost four times an equivalent ride, and a group of eight needs three of them.

Eating out as a group of eight

The real obstacle in Lisbon is not price, it is table size. The best tascas seat twenty people and do not take bookings. Three approaches work:

Book for 7.30pm, which is early by Portuguese standards and leaves room for a group. Book in the newer places in Príncipe Real or Santos, which have tables for eight and take online reservations. Or give in to Time Out Market once, where everyone orders what they want for 10 to 18 euros, which solves the vegetarian and the one who dislikes fish in a single move.

Rough prices: a set lunch is 10 to 14 euros, a full dinner with wine 20 to 26 euros, a terrace beer 2.50 euros, a coffee 0.90 euros. And the thing nobody warns you about: the small plates that appear on the table when you sit down, bread, olives, butter, are charged, usually 1 to 3 euros each. You can wave them away, that is perfectly normal, but it is better to know before the bill arrives for eight.

The classic mistakes

Staying far out to save 20 euros. A flat at Parque das Nações costs you two taxi rides a day and forty five minutes of travel. The maths turns against you by day two.
Putting Sintra and Cascais on the same day. It works on paper, and it is the day the group remembers as an endurance test.
Not booking Pena. Morning slots sell out a week ahead in high season, and a group of eight turned away at the gate has lost its morning.
Relying on one bathroom. With six people, leaving in the morning takes two hours, and that is where the friction starts.
Fronting all the money and writing nothing down. Whoever pays for the flat, the train tickets and two dinners is 800 euros out of pocket by day two, and will not want to chase anyone for it.

When the group is bigger than six

The tiring part of a Lisbon trip is not Lisbon, it is the accounting. One person fronts the apartment, another the train tickets, a third picks up two dinners, and on the flight home nobody really knows who owes what. Most groups give up and round it off, which means two or three people quietly lose fifty euros each.

A shared space fixes both problems at once: everyone proposes a stay, an activity or a restaurant, the group votes instead of arguing for three weeks, and every expense added updates each person's share on the spot. Everyone sees the same number at the same time, and the question "so where are we at?" stops being asked. That is what Kobidi does, and it is free.

Lisbon with friends: a 4-day plan, budget included