I started planning a beach trip this summer. Pulled up the destination data on my site to compare options. Maui was sitting at $170 a day. Cancun was $45. Cartagena was $40. The number that caught me was not the cheapest, it was the gap. A week in Maui at the budget tier runs as much as four weeks in Cartagena. Same beach archetype, four times the spend. That sent me down the ranking. 75 destinations, sorted by daily budget cost in 2026. The cheapest is 12% of the most expensive. How I built the dataset The site has structured JSON files for 75 destinations at vientapps.com . Each file includes a typicalCosts object with three tiers: budgetPerDayUsd , midrangePerDayUsd , and luxuryPerDayUsd . The budget tier is what most cost-of-travel guides quote. It assumes a single traveler staying in hostels or budget guesthouses, eating local food, using public transit, and doing free or cheap activities. For each destination I read the budget field, sorted ascending, and grouped by continent.…