9 Things to Do When Travelling to Iceland on a Budget
Wanting to travel to Iceland on a budget? I’ve written multiple posts on travelling to Iceland now and the one theme which is present throughout is that Iceland is perceived to be expensive. You can travel to Iceland on a budget, you just need to know how!
Research Flights Before Booking Them
It's very easy to go onto one website and book your flights through the one website, or just from your nearest airport
There are multiple websites which compare flights, and ones you can go to individually. I’ve linked to a few below. But when we booked our flights to Iceland, they were around £400 in the height of summer – Iceland’s busiest time, and what I thought a good deal
We booked our flights by using multiple different websites and travelled with 2 different airlines to get the best deal. One of the cheapest deals we have seen is with WOW airlines where you can get return flights from as little as £93!
For those in the US, it is more popular to travel to Iceland in the summer. Whereas for us in the UK it is more popular to go in the winter. A few airlines offer up to 4-day layovers in Iceland for free! A great way to travel to Europe from the US or from Europe to the US and not pay any extra to stop in Iceland.
Why You Should Rent Your Own Vehicle
It's easy to go on TripAdvisor or other independent websites and book some trips where you’re out all day, they take you to a few different places and give you time somewhere before driving to other destinations, it is often so much more expensive!
Renting a Car
When you want to travel to Iceland on a budget, we believe it is cheaper to plan yourself, with your own vehicle. For around only £30 a day to rent a car, you can drive as far as you want
When going on trips in the past I find they give you too long in some places and not long enough in others and you’re always just keeping to a schedule rather than fully exploring yourself
Therefore, when we’ve done it by ourselves we use our guidebook – lonely planet every time! And plan the day ourselves. The easy way to save money but seeing as much as you can all at the same time!
Accommodation AND Mode of Travel
We booked a Suzuki Jimny 4x4 with a roof tent. This meant we had accommodation and transport all in one and was perfect for what we needed! We stayed in it for 10 days and couldn't have had something more comfortable if I'm honest.
We got a kitchen box with pans, cutlery, cleaning equipment and everything in. They also gave us sleeping bags - which we weren't charged for, and all over an amazing car and company. They let us pick up the car and drop it off at any time too and dropped us back off at the airport. Check them out here!
Carry Out Excursions Yourself!
The most popular trip on TripAdvisor is the tour of the golden circle, it costs £50 per person and you go to the Thingvellir national park, Gullfoss waterfall and the Geysir. Therefore if there were 4 of you it would cost you £200 for the day.
You could rent a car for the day for £30 for 4 of you and therefore, only cost you £7.50 for the whole day. Obviously have to fill up petrol, which would be about £40. So £17.50 for a whole day out I think is a pretty good deal and saving each person £32.50. A great way when saving money and wanting to travel to Iceland on a budget! Could easily save that money for something else, or spend the evening relaxing at the secret lagoon or looking out for the northern lights!
Where to Rent Campers or Cars
Happy Campers: small camper vans from 2-5 people
Northbound: compare 4x4s with roof tents
Kuku Campers: varying size campers all with funky designs
Rental Cars: rent a car to do your own excursions
Don’t Pay for Something You Can Do Yourself
If you go onto TripAdvisor, some of the top trips for Iceland are seeing the northern lights. They advertise these trips to make them sound extra special when I believe you can make it an amazing experience yourself and an excellent way to travel to Iceland on a budget.
All they do is drive you to a low populated area, therefore, less light pollution, making it clearer to see the northern lights and charge you £40 upwards. I believe you can easily do this yourself.
When renting a car, it is much easier to drive on the roads in the autumn or springtime, and when the northern lights can still be seen. By renting a car to see some of Iceland’s other amazing sites you can spend an evening/night looking for the northern lights too. However, seeing the northern lights is never 100%. There are forecasts, but they are only based on predictions. If you go about booking a trip or doing it yourself you still may not see them
You can also pay for tours of Reykjavik, but really it isn’t a very big city. You can walk around it very easily and since we love exploring the surrounding area, we have a guide book anyway!
Accomodation in Iceland
Camping in Iceland is great. Campsites are open late spring to the end of summer so you can’t camp in the winter, but then again, why would you want to! Very very cold weather and you would be absolutely freezing! But visiting in the spring or summer is totally different.
Yes, it isn’t ‘hot’, but it is so much cheaper than staying in hotels. Especially if you’re travelling around, and for us, it felt like more of an experience, and obviously a great way to save money and travel to Iceland on a budget.
A Camping Card
We hired a Suzuki Jimny with a roof tent and camped for 10 days and it was great! We had a camping card which allowed us to turn up to 41 campsites across a 28-day period and camp without any hassle. Even in the busier summer months we had no problem just turning up and getting a spot in any.
May I mention not every campsite has a 24/7 reception. Some have someone that comes around every evening for about 2 hours and swipes your card or takes the fee and that’s all. So, if there’s no one there when you get there, don’t worry!
A camping card only costs 159 €, and if you compare this to buying each night individually, the campsite at Vik would have cost £40 just to stay 1 night for 4 people. So buying a camping card is so much cheaper!
An Airbnb
Airbnb is another cheaper option when travelling to Iceland. For as little as £39 a night for an entire flat you can rarely go wrong with an Airbnb. There are flats and rooms spread right around Iceland and not far from the ring road. This is also one of the cheapest and most convenient ways of staying in accommodation once the campsites have shut in autumn to early spring.
Shopping for Food in Iceland
Supermarkets
If you’ve already read my post on buying food in Iceland, you’ll know that Bonus is by far the cheapest. There is a range of supermarkets across Iceland including 10-11 (most expensive), Kronan (not too bad, good deals with 4 burgers for £2!) Netto, and Bonus.
We’d read that 10-11 was expensive and we had no intention of shopping there, and we found they weren’t that popular. It wasn’t until we went to Reykjavik that we saw a few. Bonus was by far half the price of everything. Every single thing in 10-11 was double the price of anything in Bonus. There are lots of 10-11s around especially near the capital, but waiting for a little and driving a little further to a Bonus is definitely recommended. Once out of the capital you probably won’t even see a 10-11 either!
Fast Food
It is also possible to get a takeaway when in Iceland! Subway is still pretty popular, as well as KFC and dominos, but no McDonalds! We got a dominos for lunch after whale watching and it was the best dominos we’d ever had.
Not sure if that’s because we were soaked wet through with seawater, or because they put cream cheese on pizza. But buying 2 medium pizzas and 2 bottles of coke was about £25, and easily what we would spend at home. So we were pretty happy about that, and as I said, it was amazing.
We have since often put cream cheese (or more recently oatly spread) on home made pizzas, and if you haven’t done it, fully recommend every time
Take Some Items With You
We didn’t think of this until just before we went (ed thought of it). We knew buying food would be a little more expensive to what we're used to, and that why we were camping. So why not take some cheap and easy little meals from home?
We took some dried pasta packets such as the Bachelor Pasta n Sauces. We took 10 of these with us which we cooked on the camping stove and took about 10 minutes. Considering normal pasta we bought was cooking for an hour (but think our camping stove was broke) these were so quick and easy. Could also take cereal bars and some biscuits but don’t need to take loads! Especially if it has to go in a backpack.
Use Discount Cards
If you do rent a car or buy a camping card you’ll receive a discount card for a petrol station or 2. By swiping or tapping this card you can get money off when filling up with fuel. We used ours multiple times for Orken and received 8 Krona off a litre and every little helps!
Petrol in Iceland costs 194 ISK (at time of writing). Without the use of any discount cards, we would have spent £375 on petrol. If we always used our discount card we would have spent £354 for the 1763 miles we drove around Iceland. Petrol stations got pretty sparse over the east side of Iceland, so I would always recommend filling up when you see one.
Don’t Go to Blue Lagoon… There’s Others!
I feel like Blue Lagoon is on everyone's wish list. But is that because it is the one you have seen pictures of the most? There are many other cheaper alternatives to Blue Lagoon when wanting to travel to Iceland on a budget.
Just for reference, Blue Lagoon costs 1 adult £49/$64, and every other option here is so much cheaper!
Myvatn Nature Baths
The Myvatn Nature Baths are near the Myvatn Lake in the north of Iceland. It is so similar to the blue lagoon for much cheaper and it is quieter! It has the light blue hot water with ranging temperatures naturally heated by hot springs, drinks are served to you, and steam rooms. For only £28-£32 and $37-$41 depending on the season, is much cheaper than blue lagoon for the same, if not better experience.
Secret Lagoon
The Secret Lagoon is a naturally heated lake where you can lie and bathe in, where they also provide swimming floats! It is so hot in some spots but so nice to lie with 4 floats under your arms like you’re in a gigantic bath. It was lovely. Especially after visiting Skogafoss and got soaked by cold waterfall water.
The secret Lagoon costs only £19/$25! And if you stay at the Skjol campsite just along the road, they give you a money off voucher!
The Secret Lagoon is in the Golden Circle area of Iceland and not difficult to get too from Reyjavik.
The Hot River
The Hot River is also in the south of Iceland. It's situated further along the road from Skogafoss and can take an hour to walk to it from the car park. But the best thing, it is free to use! The problem with these is that even if the quieter periods, Iceland's tourism is forever increasing and you will never be alone.
Glacier Water is Tap Water… Bring a Bottle!
All water in Iceland comes straight from the glaciers. Whether it's from a tap or a bottle, it all comes from the same place, and it tastes amazing! Don’t fall for the trap of buying bottled water which for 2l could cost you 599 ISK (£4.06/$5.28) in a 10-11!
Bring a water bottle and fill it up every day straight from the tap. We had the chance - while glacier walking, to fill up our bottles on the glacier full of icy cold glacier water and tasted so good. Which seems stupid considering water usually tastes awful but really was that good.
Iceland is maybe a little bit more expensive than you’re used too, but there are things you can do to cut costs. We pride ourselves that we can travel to nearly every destination on a budget, and you definitely can in Iceland!
