Money in Italy: currency, ATMs, cards and tipping

Italy is a card country in the places travellers spend most: hotels, supermarkets, chain cafés, museum ticket desks, high-speed trains and most city restaurants take contactless cards and phone wallets without comment. The gaps are predictable. Small neighbourhood cafés, market stalls, rural trattorias, taxis you flag on the street and some bed-and-breakfasts still prefer cash, and a few will say the card machine is broken.

Carry a modest cash float rather than a large one. €30–50 per person covers a market lunch, a coffee at the bar, a bus ticket from a tabaccheria and the city tourist tax, which hotels usually collect on arrival even when you prepaid online. Top up from a bank ATM when you run low rather than carrying a week's spending at once.

Two rules save money at every machine. When an ATM or card terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline and choose euros: the conversion rate is set by the machine, not your bank, and is usually worse. And prefer ATMs attached to a bank branch over the standalone machines that cluster near train stations and major sights, which often add their own fee on top of your bank's.

Tipping in Italy is optional and smaller than in the US. In restaurants, a service charge is not standard, but many places add a coperto, a cover charge of roughly €1.50–3.50 per person that appears on the menu and covers bread and table service. It is legal, listed and not a scam; do not treat it as the tip. If service was good, round up the bill or leave a few euros in cash. If it was poor, leaving nothing is normal and no one will chase you.

At cafés, the price difference between standing at the bar and sitting at a table is the real cost, often two or three times more for the same espresso. Tipping is not expected at the bar; drop your small change in the tray if you like. Taxi drivers are usually given a rounded-up fare rather than a percentage. Hotel housekeeping, tour guides and drivers appreciate €1–2 or a few euros for a half-day, but nothing is obligatory.

The one place to be careful is the restaurant bill itself. Check that a service charge (servizio) has not been added on top of the coperto before you add a tip, and ask for the receipt (ricevuta) if you need one for expenses.

Italy's prices split sharply between the big tourist cities and everywhere else. Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast and Lake Como run 30–50% above the national average; the south, the interior and smaller cities are noticeably cheaper. The figures below are 2026 estimates for the common small purchases you will make in a day.

Budget travellers who stay in dorms, eat at bars and pizzerias and use regional trains can hold to roughly €70–100 per person per day. Mid-range travellers in a 3★ hotel with trattoria dinners and a couple of paid sights sit around €150–250. Comfort travel with 4–5★ hotels, restaurant dinners with wine and private transfers runs €350–600. City tourist tax of about €3–10 per person per night is charged on top of the room rate.

Keep a few coins for public toilets, which often charge €0.50–1, and for luggage lockers and some church candle stands. Tabaccherie sell bus tickets, stamps and phone top-ups, and many are cash-first for small amounts. If you are changing money, use a bank or post office rather than a bureau de change at a station or airport, where the spread is wide.

Contactless is the default on Italian transport in the big cities: tap your card or phone on the reader for buses, metro and trams in Rome, Milan, Florence and Turin, which avoids hunting for a ticket machine. Keep the card you tapped separate from other contactless cards in your wallet so the reader does not charge the wrong one.

If you are travelling on from Italy, remember that some neighbours use different currencies: Switzerland uses the Swiss franc, and the UK uses the pound. Euro notes and coins work across the eurozone, so leftover cash is still useful in France, Spain, Germany and Greece.