How much cash to take to Egypt, and what to bring it in

Build the number from the bottom up

On a guided trip the large costs are settled before you arrive. Hotels, transport, the entrance fees written into the itinerary and most meals are already paid, so day-to-day cash goes on tips, drinks, taxis, small shops and the occasional site or camera fee. That is less money than most people expect. What it is not is occasional: it is a steady drip of small payments all day, every day, and running out of small notes at four in the afternoon is the failure mode.

So do not pick a round number and hope. Tipping is the largest predictable part of your cash spending and the only part you can calculate in advance, so start there and add a float on top. Everything else — the taxi you did not plan, the bottle of water, the man who steadied you onto a boat — is noise around that figure rather than a separate budget.

One thing this page will not do is give you an exchange rate. The pound has moved sharply in recent years and any figure written here would be wrong by the time you read it. Check the Central Bank of Egypt, linked at the foot of this page, a few days before you fly and again when you land.

Work the total out from the tipping

Tipping in Egypt, baksheesh, is part of how people in tourism are paid rather than a bonus for good service, and it is the largest single line in your cash budget. A guided day with a private Egyptologist and a driver runs to 15 to 20 euros per person, and each cruise night adds 5 to 10 for the crew box. Over ten days with four nights on the river that is roughly 180 to 220 euros per person. Multiply your own days by that and you have the backbone of the figure you are looking for.

The breakdown matters, because the money does not all move at the same time. A private Egyptologist guide is the largest single share at 10 to 15 euros per person per day, less in a group. Drivers take 5 euros per person per day. On a cruise there is usually a communal crew box handed over at the end, at 5 to 10 euros per person per night. Hotel porters and housekeeping take small notes rather than coins, and restaurant service is often already added to the bill.

Two adjustments before you write the number down. Guides, drivers and boat crew are normally settled at the end rather than daily, so that share has to survive the trip intact instead of being spent down on taxis. And the going rates shift with inflation, so ask your operator what is current when you book rather than trusting a figure from an old article, this one included if you are reading it some years from now.

What else genuinely needs cash

Cash covers everything the package does not, and everything is a longer list than it sounds: taxis and tuk-tuks, juice bars and bakeries, market stalls, village shops, boatmen, toilets, and every tip. Outside Cairo — in Luxor, Aswan, the oases and the Red Sea towns once you step off hotel grounds — assume cash first and treat a working card terminal as luck rather than a plan.

Then there are the extras that get bought at the gate rather than in advance. Several of the things people most want to see are ticketed separately and at a premium: the inner chamber of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of Seti I, Tutankhamun's tomb, and photography permits in some places. Check which of those are already in your package. The tourist visa is a fixed fee bought online or on arrival and is rarely included in a tour price.

Ask one more question before you leave home. Many Egyptian operators take a deposit by transfer or card and then the balance on arrival, in cash or by card at their office, and card payment frequently carries a surcharge. Paying a balance in cash is normal in Egypt and is not a warning sign in itself, but you need to know it is coming, because it changes the size of the envelope you are carrying through the airport.

Bring euros, dollars or sterling, and bring them clean

The Egyptian pound is a closed currency in practice. Banks and bureaux outside Egypt rarely stock it, and where one does the spread is punishing, so you bring hard currency and change it after you land. There are also legal limits on how much cash may be carried in or out, set by the central bank and revised from time to time, so check the current figure if you are moving a large amount.

US dollars are the most widely recognised and the most likely to be taken by a small exchange office in a provincial town. Euros are close behind. Sterling is fine in the cities, but there are fewer counters for it and the spread is a little worse, so if you are coming from Britain and already hold euros or dollars, take those instead. Ignore anyone offering a special street rate: since the 2024 float that gap has narrowed to the point where what you are being sold is a short-count, not a bargain.

Condition matters more than people expect, and it is the thing that goes wrong at the counter. Banks and exchange offices refuse foreign notes that are torn, written on, marked or badly creased, and older-series US dollar bills — the small-portrait designs — are often rejected outright or taken at a discount. Ask for new, clean, high-denomination notes when you buy your currency at home. Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes are frequently turned away, so bring Bank of England ones.

Change it in stages rather than all at once

There is no prize for arriving with a brick of Egyptian pounds. Change a small amount at the airport to cover the first transfer and a few tips, then do the rest in town, where the rate is better. Hotel desks are worse again than either. Changing in stages also means you are not carrying more than you need, and it is the simplest way to avoid the other end of the problem, which is a pile of pounds on the last morning.

Ignore signs advertising no commission, because the margin sits in the rate rather than in a fee. Look up the day's rate from a neutral source before you walk in, compare it with what you are offered, and keep your receipts: converting pounds back is possible at banks and airport counters, sometimes only if you still hold the original exchange receipt, and the rate going the other way is poor.

Count what you are handed, openly, before you walk away. The common moves are small and opportunistic rather than threatening: counting your change quickly and closing a hand around it, or handing back a twenty when you gave two hundred. Paper and plastic notes of the same value look different, which makes fast counting easy to get wrong, and that is exactly what the speed is for.

Where cards actually work, and where they leave you stuck

Cairo takes cards far more than it did five years ago. Hotels, supermarkets, pharmacies, chain cafes and most mid-range and upper restaurants will run a Visa or Mastercard, and a growing number of major sites sell tickets by card at the window or online in advance. American Express is patchy. Contactless is normal in the capital and much less so outside it.

The catch is that terminals drop offline for hours when the connection goes, and in the smaller towns a card reader is the exception rather than the rule. Never run your cash to zero on the assumption that a machine will work. Treat the card as the thing that saves you from a bad ATM week, not as the way you pay for your day.

Two card details worth getting right in advance. The multi-currency travel cards British and European travellers carry do not hold Egyptian pounds, so a payment converts from your home balance at your provider's rate, which is usually fine — what is not fine is accepting the terminal's offer to charge you in sterling or euros, because that rate is set by the machine's operator and it is always worse. Choose pounds. And tell your bank your dates before you go, because Egypt trips fraud rules on plenty of cards; carry a second card from a different provider, stored somewhere other than your wallet.

ATMs are a top-up, not a plan

ATMs are common in cities and tourist areas, and they are the sensible way to replenish rather than the way to fund a trip. Use one attached to a bank branch where you can. Standalone machines in tourist strips, particularly those branded by international ATM operators rather than Egyptian banks, charge more and convert worse. Expect a fee from the Egyptian machine on top of your own bank's, and a per-transaction cap lower than you would like, which can mean two withdrawals in a row and two sets of fees.

Machines also run dry. Around long public holidays, Eid in particular, and across the Friday to Saturday weekend, popular ATMs empty and are not always refilled quickly. Withdraw before a holiday rather than during it, and use a machine during branch hours where you can: one that swallows a card in the evening leaves you waiting until the branch reopens, and there is nobody outside to open it for you.

That is the argument for carrying enough hard currency to be independent of them. A bad ATM week in Aswan should cost you an inconvenience, not your tipping money.

The small-note float is the part that changes your week

This is the detail almost everyone underrates. Notes in general circulation run from five pounds up to two hundred, and the ten and twenty exist as both paper and plastic with different designs. Egypt runs on the small ones: a few pounds for the man watching the cars, the porter, the bathroom attendant, the person who fetches a chair. Nobody has change, or nobody admits to it, and handing over a two hundred note for a small service buys you a long negotiation or a shrug.

So build the float on purpose rather than hoping it accumulates. Break big notes where you are already spending — supermarkets, hotel bars, cafes — and ask for fives, tens and twenties. Keep them separate from your main wallet so you are not fanning a thick stack out in the street. Guides and drivers can usually swap notes for you, and most will, because they would rather you had them.

Carry roughly a day's worth and leave the rest in the hotel safe. You are also allowed to decline: a firm la, shukran ends most approaches without any friction, and Egyptians use it constantly themselves. Deciding your own limit before you land is what stops the constant small payments from wearing you down by day four.

Putting a figure on it

Add four things. Your tipping total — 15 to 20 euros per person for each guided day, plus 5 to 10 for each cruise night. A modest daily float for taxis, drinks and small shops. Whatever balance your operator expects on arrival, if any. And a reserve for the premium tickets and permits you might decide to buy at the gate. That total, in clean euros or dollars, is what to bring.

Then plan how it moves. Change a little at the airport and the rest in town, in stages. Keep a day's worth on you in small notes and the remainder in the safe. Hold a card and a backup card from a different provider for the things cards are good at. If you overshoot, spend it down in the last few days rather than converting it back, because the rate going the other way will take a bite out of it.