During my year living in New Zealand, I took two epic road trips. Both were for approximately six weeks: the end of March to the beginning of May 2024, and the middle of February to the end of March 2025. I wrote a complete New Zealand budget guide for my 2024 trip, sharing exactly how much money I spent. As the circumstances were a bit different, I wanted to do the same for my second trip! Here’s how much it cost to travel New Zealand for 6 weeks in 2025.

My New Zealand Road Trip (Part 2)

There were three major differences between my first road trip in New Zealand and my second. In the first one, I traveled with a friend, meaning a lot of our expenses were shared; in the second, I traveled solo. I rented a campervan for my first trip, whereas I bought my own car for my second trip. And while there was still a lot of driving on both trips, I covered more ground on the second trip – I drove from tip to tip in New Zealand, from Bluff at the south end of the South Island, to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point on the North Island.

My New Zealand Trip Itinerary (Part 2)

My trip started when I left Twizel, where I’d been living for the past few months working at a cafe, on 12 February. It finished when I arrived back in Auckland on 19 March, leaving the city (and New Zealand) on 26 March. I set off first for Dunedin, and drove through the Catlins before arriving in Bluff and traveling to Stewart Island. From there, I drove up to Queenstown, doing some hikes around the city and in Arrowtown before a wild day exploring Poolburn Reservoir in Central Otago and driving up the West Coast. I revisited Franz Josef, detoured to Arthur’s Pass, and backtracked to Nelson Lakes. From there, I went to Kaiteriteri in Abel Tasman National Park before taking the long way to Picton via Queen Charlotte Sound. Then it was time to say goodbye to the South Island, and embark on the last part of my trip in the North Island!

I arrived in Wellington, and stayed with my friend John and his family before visiting a few spots around the city I’d missed on my first trip: Upper Hutt, Kaitoke Regional Park, and Putanguira Pinnacles. Then it was a loooong drive up to Napier for a hike, before returning to Taupo for an awesome cruise on the lake. I visited new places in Tongariro National Park, then headed across to Mount Taranaki and New Plymouth. From here, it was a lot of driving to get up to Raglan, before going back to the Coromandel Peninsula, finally visiting Cathedral Cove and hiking the Pinnacles. After another long stretch of driving, I arrived in Northland, visiting Whangerei Heads and the Bay of Islands – with an epic cruise from Paihia – and then hiking Duke’s Nose and spending my penultimate night at Maitai Bay. The following day, it was Cape Reinga or bust – and I made it! I spent the next day driving back down to Auckland, in awe of this wild adventure.

New Zealand Budget: Category Breakdown

I categorize my trip expenses into six main expenses: accommodation, transportation, fuel, food, sightseeing, and miscellaneous. For this trip, my miscellaneous expenses were mainly laundry, showers, and buying a few random things (mainly for my car) at Kmart. Wondering how much money I spent in each category?

Accommodation: $766 NZD

(£341 GBP // $458 USD)

Transportation: $1417 NZD

(£630 GBP // $847 USD)

Fuel: $1150 NZD

(£511 GBP // $687 USD)

Food: $520 NZD

(£231 GBP // $311 USD)

Sightseeing: $1009 NZD

(£449 GBP // $603 USD)

Miscellaneous: $136 NZD

(£60 GBP // $81 USD)

New Zealand Budget Analysis

New Zealand is very expensive. This is a simple fact – even for those of use privileged enough to have pounds, euros, or dollars, it’s an expensive country. Food is expensive, fuel is expensive, hostels and hotels aren’t cheap. While yes, there are plenty of ways to save money traveling New Zealand, it’s still tough on the bank account.

I was SHOCKED by how low my trip costs were and how well I did as a budget traveler on this trip! I expected to spend approximately $3500-4000 on the road trip alone, and then add my car expenses on top of that. Before I left, I was very apprehensive not having anyone to split costs with, especially for gas as I was doing a lot driving. But overall, what surprised me most is that the total isn’t far off from what I spent on my first trip. A huge part of this is, of course, buying a car and selling it afterwards.

My car expenses, included in the transportation category, were a gamble that paid off. After having a horrific time selling my car on a short timeframe in Australia, I was understandably very stressed about selling my car at the end of my time in New Zealand. I got very, very lucky with a super easy sale for the car in the end. I bought my car for $3500, and sold it for $3000 – so a $500 loss. Overall, I made approximately $70 from selling unwanted camping gear that I got with the car, so the overall cost of buying my car was $430. Insurance ($86.29), rego ($40.47), and getting my car serviced ($330.98) before the trip were additional expenses.

Looking at my transportation expenses, $888 out of $1417 was on my car. I only spent $529 on other transportation expenses. These expenses were mainly the two ferries I took: the return ferry to and from Stewart Island, and the ferry from Picton to Wellington. I also paid for parking a few times, but nothing that was out of the ordinary.

Fuel costs were high as I had no one to split this with. BUT they were very similar to the costs from my first trip. On my first trip in New Zealand, my friend and I spent $1144 on fuel; on this trip, I spent $1150. Obviously, it sucks not having anyone to split these costs with. But what’s surprising is that I spent almost the same, but covered a lot more ground in my second trip than my first – roughly 6000km compared to 4500km. This is most likely due to having a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle for my second trip: a Mazda6 station wagon versus a Toyota Estima van. I was also much more conscious of high fuel costs on my second trip, and made an effort to plan out fuel stops more – getting gas when I knew it’d be cheaper. The app Gaspy is a lifesaver!

My sightseeing costs were very high due to one experience, but I saved a bit thanks to content creation. My heli hike on Franz Josef Glacier was 72% of my entire sightseeing budget on this trip. It cost me approximately $729 – without this outlier, my sightseeing costs would have been $281. I have absolutely no regrets, as the helicopter ride and glacier hike combo was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Four of my experiences were partly sponsored through GetYourGuide in exchange for content creation:

• Ulva Island tour (from Stewart Island)
• Heli hike on Franz Josef Glacier
• Maori carvings lake cruise in Taupo
• Bay of Islands and Hole in the Rock cruise from Paihia

Thanks to these collaborative experiences, I managed to save a good chunk of money! While it wasn’t all that much for each individual experience, in the long run I saved about $250 NZD. Every little bit helps on a big road trip like this!

I also ended up splurging on my tour to Poolburn Dam. I had no idea, until midnight the night before, that tours here even existed. So, I emailed them around 8:30am, and just a few hours later they called me and we set up a tour! There weren’t spaces in the car for the tour that day, but they agreed to take me for $150; in the end, I joined the main tour and sat in the trunk of the car! It was a little annoying, as I’d agreed to pay a lot of money assuming it’d be a private tour, and I was just grateful they could make it happen on the one day I was available in the area. BUT I would never agree to this kind of arrangement under any other circumstances (aka, if I wasn’t visiting one of my dream Lord of the Rings destinations!).

My food costs were significantly less than on my first trip. On this trip, I spent $520 on food, while on my first trip I spent approximately $685 on food. I barely ate out at all on this trip – I only ate out twice, which was Dominos and Taco Bell (cheap!). My eating out expenses were just $24, compared to $207 on my first trip! As a solo traveler, I’m simply not bothered with eating out by myself. I also barely drank any alcohol at all, and I didn’t even buy any alcohol for this trip.

Traveling with an 18-liter fridge, versus an 8-liter cooler, was also different. I spent $22 on ice over the course of my trip, which wasn’t as expensive as I worried it might be. But it meant I had to buy small (and expensive) food as I went – it’s always cheaper to buy in bulk, but I literally couldn’t do that due to my tiny cooler. In my food category, I spent $474 on groceries, $24 on eating out, and $22 on ice.

I stayed under my budget goal of $500 for accommodation on the road. Thanks to the DOC campsite pass, I saved a lot of money by staying at very basic campsites with minimal facilities. I paid $95 for the pass for one month – I stayed at one DOC site at the very beginning of my trip, and paid the $10 out of pocket for my site. $10 is much cheaper than buying another $95 one-month pass! And as a true budget traveler, I stayed at as many free campsites as possible. My total accommodation costs for my five weeks on the road were $448; the last week in my favorite hostel in Auckland, Verandahs Parkside Lodge, was $318.

How Much Money Did I Spent Traveling New Zealand for 6 Weeks in 2025?!

So, how much did I spend on my epic New Zealand road trip? Here is the total cost of my trip!

GRAND TOTAL: $4998.89 NZD

(Total: £2222.51 GBP // $2986.51 USD)

This total is for the entire six-week trip, which includes my last week in Auckland at the end. Without this last week in Auckland, my five weeks actually on the road cost me $4560.80. In comparison, on my first six-week New Zealand road trip in 2024, I spent $4776.74.

Over the course of 43 days, this equals a cost of $116 NZD per day. This is almost exactly the same amount as I spent on my first six-week New Zealand adventure, which resulted in a cost of $117 per person, per day!

If you take away the car costs, I would have spent $4111 in my six-week trip, or $3673 during my five weeks on the road. I’d originally estimated the road trip would cost me $3500-4000, and a car would cost $4000 on top of that. So, to say I bought (and sold) the car PLUS did the road trip for under $5000, I’m very impressed and pleased!

While portions of my year living in New Zealand were pretty miserable with work – unbelievably hard and demanding long shifts – it allowed me to save up a lot of money fast. Buying a car at the beginning of January opened so many opportunities for me. If my visa hadn’t been expiring, and if my work hadn’t threatened to fire me for speaking up over a grossly unfair pay discrepancy I might have worked another couple of weeks to save up even more money before hitting the road. But the timing ended up being perfect, as I think February and March is the BEST time to travel New Zealand!

I got to live out my greatest dreams on this trip, visiting so many more incredible places around New Zealand. I had bucket-list experiences, and I’m so grateful I was able to make this trip happen for myself. These are memories that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. I hope this budget breakdown post helps planning your trip to New Zealand!

Have you done a road trip in New Zealand? What was your budget like?

You might also like my posts:

How Much Does it Cost to Travel New Zealand for 6 Weeks? (2024 Guide)

How to Save Money Traveling New Zealand on a Budget

Lord of the Rings Film Locations to Visit in New Zealand

Moving to New Zealand on a Working Holiday Visa: How to Start Your Life (2025 Guide)

Free & Budget Campsites in New Zealand for Non-Self-Contained

21 Phenomenal Places You Must Visit in the Mackenzie Region, New Zealand

All of my New Zealand posts!

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