Greece has a reputation for being cheap, and a growing number of visitors leave convinced it is not. Both are true, because the country runs two price levels at once: what it charges people who live here and what it charges people who are here for six days in August with a view of the sea.
The gap is not small. A plate of grilled fish is nine euros in a mainland town and thirty on a caldera terrace; a coffee is €1.80 at a neighbourhood counter and €6 on a square. Neither number is a scam. They are two different products, and only one of them is food.
This is a working set of figures for 2026 — what things cost, where, and what a day actually adds up to.
What does a day of eating cost?
The honest range on the mainland and the larger islands is €30–45 a head per day for someone eating out for two meals and buying coffee. That covers a bakery breakfast, a street or market lunch, a taverna dinner with a drink, and the odd bottle of water.
In a busy island resort in August the same day is €45–70, mostly because dinner doubles. Under €25 a day still buys two meals out if you make lunch the big one — the day's pots at a market cook-house are the cheapest cooked food in the country — and put the evening table in a quiet hour.
What are restaurant prices, by what you order?
Greek menus are cheaper than northern European ones at the bottom and comparable at the top. The savings live in the middle of the card — the vegetable dishes, the pulses, the fried things and the shared plates — which is also where most of the good cooking is.
Prices below are per plate rather than per person, because a Greek table is shared. Four people ordering five plates between them eat better and pay less than four people ordering four main courses.
- Ladera and pulses (gigantes, fava, briam, fasolakia): €5–8 a plate.
- Dips and fried starters (tzatziki, courgette balls, small fish): €4–9.
- Grilled meat (chops, chicken, kebab): €10–16 a plate, enough for two to share.
- Fresh fish: €45–90 a kilo, so €25–45 for a whole fish for two.
- Half a litre of house wine: €4–7. A large beer: €4–6.
Read nextWhat to eat in Greece: twenty dishes worth ordering
What does a table cost, by the kind of place?
Eating out in Greece is not one price level. It is six distinct kinds of room, each with its own economics, and the useful question is never whether restaurants in Greece are expensive but which kind of place you are walking into — that decides the bill far more than the city does.
The ranking by price is also not a ranking by cooking. The cook-house beside the market and the mezedopoleío two streets back from the square routinely cook better than the modern restaurant charging twice as much for the same fish, because what the expensive room is selling is the room.
| Where you sit | What arrives | Per head with a drink |
|---|---|---|
| Cook-house near a market | The day's pots, lunchtime only | €9–13 |
| Souvlaki shop | A pita, or a plate with chips and salad | €5–12 |
| Neighbourhood taverna | Five shared plates and house wine | €15–22 |
| Mezedopoleío or ouzerí | Six to eight small plates for the table | €14–20 |
| Fish taverna | Fish by the kilo, salad, wine | €25–45 |
| Modern restaurant | À la carte plates, a wine list | €35–55 |
| Table with a view, peak hour | The same menu plus the view premium | €50–80 |
Where does the price stop being the price?
Four things reliably move a Greek bill away from the number you expected. The first is location: a table with a view of something famous carries a premium of thirty to sixty per cent, applied to every plate on it. The second is the season — island prices in August run a quarter to a half above May and October.
The third is the extras, which are small individually and add up: bread and cover at €0.50–1.50 a head, bottled water at €1–3, imported spirits at €8–12 a glass. The fourth is fish sold by weight, which is the only line on a Greek menu that can genuinely surprise you if you do not ask what it weighs before it is cooked.
So is Greece expensive?
For food, no — provided you eat where the country eats. Mainland Greece is among the cheapest places in western Europe for a proper sit-down meal, and the produce is better than the price suggests. What has become expensive is a narrow band of postcodes in high season: the caldera villages of Santorini, parts of Mykonos, the rooftops around the Acropolis and any harbour front with a photograph attached.
The practical version: eat like a resident on five days out of six, spend properly on the sixth, and use the off-peak hours when you want a restaurant meal at a neighbourhood price. A booked early table — on Filotimo, or any platform that sells off-peak hours — takes fifty per cent off the food bill, which turns a €40 dinner for two into something closer to €25 with drinks.
Greece is cheap to eat in and easy to overspend in, and the difference is almost entirely a matter of where you sit and what hour you sit down. Learn six numbers — the pita, the pie, the coffee, the plate of magirefta, the shared dinner and the fish per kilo — and you will know within a euro or two what any menu in the country should be charging you.
How this guide is kept honest
Written in Athens by the team behind Filotimo, from the menus, prices and bookings we see across our partner restaurants. Prices move with the season and the street, so every figure here is a working range rather than a quote.