What 2 Weeks in Alaska Actually Cost (Budget Breakdown)

I’m going to be upfront with you: As a budget traveler this was the most expensive trip I’d taken to date. Alaska isn’t a budget destination, and we don’t need to pretend otherwise. But my trip to Alaska didn’t end up costing as much as the internet was telling me it would, not even close. So here’s to budget breakdowns of real lived trips and what 2 weeks travel in Alaska actually cost me.

In my opinion for what you pay, Alaska packs a TON of value. I tracked every single dollar I spent over two weeks. I would actually call this more of a budget to mid-range style trip, as we didn’t skimp on experiences, and splurged on a few stays.

Total spent: $2,925.61. That’s $225.05 per day. This number is including my flight. The daily total without flight was: $2,278.61. Per day without flight: $175.28.

That’s my individual share, traveling as part of a 7-person group of friends. So let’s break down exactly where that money went, and how traveling with friends changed the math. In some ways it really brought the cost down and in some ways it brought the cost up.

Trip Snapshot – Dates: August 30 to September 12 (13 days) – Route: Anchorage → Seward → Denali (Healy) → Fairbanks (North Pole) – Group size: 7 people, split all shared costs – My total individual spend: $2,925.61.

The Full Breakdown

Here’s every category, from biggest to smallest.

Let’s go through each one, because the “why” behind these numbers matters.

Flights: $647

I’ll be honest, this is slightly more than I would have liked to pay for this flight. I did find some flights from my home airport round trip for ~ $450 but it was round trip through Anchorage and we were flying into Anchorage and out of Fairbanks. With group trips sometimes comes a little less flexibility, which is totally the nature of the game and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way. In the end, by the time you add the cost for backtracking, this made a lot of sense to do it this way. I also flew out of and into Traverse City, Michigan, which isn’t exactly a major hub.

In the end I ended up booking two separate one-way flights, American Airlines out, United Airlines back, because pricing it that way came in cheaper than the multi-city option I found with either airline.

For some destinations like Alaska, where you’re covering a lot of distance and ending somewhere different than where you started it is often worth it to look into multi-city ticket or two totally separate one ways like I did here.

Money-Saving Tip – Before booking a round trip or multi-city, price out two one-way tickets on different airlines. Alaska in particular tends to have different carriers dominating different routes (in our case, into Anchorage vs. out of Fairbanks), so mixing airlines can genuinely save money instead of forcing one carrier to cover both legs.

Accommodation: $1,169.98 (40% of the trip)

This was, unsurprisingly, the single biggest chunk of the budget. We stayed in a mix of VRBO style rentals, hotel lodging and a Resurrection Bay yurt stay.

Here’s how that broke down across the trip:

• Anchorage (VRBO, Rabbit Creek): 3 nights, $171 total individual share
• Shearwater Cove (Seward): 1 night, $278 total individual share
• Sourdough Lodging (Seward): 2 nights, $103 total individual share
• Denali (VRBO, Healy): 3 nights, $334.98 total individual share
• Fairbanks/North Pole (VRBO): 4 nights, $283 total individual share

The Shearwater Cove night is the outlier here, and intentionally so. It’s one of the bigger splurges of the trip, and I talked through exactly why I thought it was worth it in a separate post.

Local Transportation: $405.95

We rented a Toyota Sienna through Turo rather than a traditional rental car company, which I’ve written about in more detail in my group trip to Alaska planning post. This category includes the split rental van cost and gas. Gas didn’t cost as much as I thought it would.

Tours: $305.15

Two things make up this whole category: the Kenai Fjords cruise out of Seward ($271.65) and the Denali Tourist Bus ($33.50). The Kenai Fjords cruise was the single most expensive individual activity of the whole trip, and also one of the best things we did: glacier calving, wildlife everywhere, genuinely worth the price tag. I’ve got a full writeup on that tour coming.

Food: $250.23

This is where I think a lot of people overestimate what a trip like this costs. We kept food costs down by buying premade items from the grocery store and treating restaurant meals as something to be intentional about rather than a default. We frequently did grocery runs at Fred Meyer and Safeway. We actually didn’t cook meals all that often. We made sandwiches, and bought pre-made salads and similar. I’ve always heard how the food in Alaska is expensive and while I did find restaurants to be a bit more than back home, the grocery store prices were definitely higher but not like what the internet made it out to be.

Activities: $105.93

Alaska Sealife Center, Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, Chena Ice Museum, and Chena Hot Springs. None of these are expensive on their own, they add up to just 3.6% of the total trip, but they were great things to do. Budget travel doesn’t mean skipping the fun stuff, it means being deliberate about which fun stuff you pay for.

Alcohol: $41.37

Included here for full transparency. A couple of beers at Anchorage Brewing Company, a glacier margarita on the boat tour, some cider and wine along the way.

What This Doesn’t Include

In the interest of full transparency, here’s what’s not in that $2,925.61 total:

• The National Park Pass. I already own an annual America the Beautiful pass that I use back home, so it wasn’t a new expense for this trip. If you don’t already have one, budget roughly $80 for the annual pass, or check individual park entrance fees if you’re only visiting Denali. Depending how many people are on your trip this can be a shared expense. Each one can be used for up to 4 people.
• Gear I bought ahead of the trip. I bought a pair of Stio Pinedale hiking pants and a secondhand pair of rain pants off Poshmark (which I never even ended up using). Those were the only gear pieces that I didn’t already have that I felt like I needed for the trip. Gear costs are highly personal depending on what you already own, so I left them out of the day-to-day trip total. If you’re starting from scratch, budget separately for that, and I highly recommend finding used gear if you’re on a budget.

The Bottom Line

I’m not going to sit here and tell you Alaska is a secret budget destination, because it isn’t. But it’s also not some wildly unattainable, mystery-priced trip either.

A big chunk of what kept this number from being even higher came down to keeping accommodation on the more budget side for Alaska, splitting transportation 7 ways, and eating from grocery stores. We also did the paid activities that we thought were super key. Day tours is where you can really go crazy in Alaska, there are some awesome ways to spend money here, but you can have a fanatic trip to Alaska without doing absolutely everything this time around.

I hope this Alaska trip cost and budget breakdown post has helped you in planning your own trip!

If you’re planning something similar, and want to see how we structured this group trip, check out my full Alaska DIY Group Trip post.

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