Prague wins a 48-city solo travel index at €134.33 a day, while another index crowned Madrid

Prague tops a newly released ranking of 48 European cities for travelling alone, ahead of Kraków and Istanbul, according to the Solo Travel Index from Radical Storage. Euronews and IndexBox reported it on November 2, 2026. A mid-range day in the Czech capital is priced at €134.33, and its safety score is the eighth-highest in the table.

Eleven scores, one average

Radical Storage looked at the 48 most visited cities in Europe against 11 factors. Each factor was rated from one to 10 by comparison with the other cities, and the 11 scores were averaged into an overall result. Euronews names three of the factors: average daily spend per person, the safety score from Numbeo, and the number of hostels, "a mainstay of solo travel". We could not find a Radical Storage page with the full table, so the other eight factors stay unnamed here. That matters, because an average of 11 scores is only as informative as its inputs: if the unnamed eight also lean on price, the winner is simply the city where a person on their own spends least without feeling unsafe. If they measure something else, such as how easy it is to meet people, the ranking says more than its headline. The coverage does not settle it, and Radical Storage's own table would.

The top ten reads Prague, Kraków, Istanbul, Lisbon, Gdansk, Berlin, Porto, Seville, Barcelona and Riga. Poland, Portugal and Spain each place two cities in it: Kraków and Gdansk, Lisbon and Porto, Seville and Barcelona. Berlin is the only German city to make it, and Riga closes the list at tenth.

Prague is not the cheapest city in the table, and it is not the safest. Kraków is the second-cheapest. Istanbul has the lowest hostel dorm bed prices of any city examined. Prague wins by being decent at everything: its €134.33 sits under the €153 average that Radical Storage gives for the top ten, and its safety rank is eighth, not first.

That is how an average works. A scoreboard built from eleven shrugs can still crown a clear winner.

One caution about the safety column: Euronews describes the factor as the perception of safety, taken from Numbeo, not a count of incidents. A city can rank eighth on perception and still be a place where a first-timer keeps a hand on the bag. The score tells a visitor what other people feel about a city, which is useful, and different from what will happen on a given night.

The price of arriving alone

The bottom of the table is where the money shows. Zürich is last, with accommodation at €168.13 a day, the highest in the study, the second-highest food costs and the third-highest transport costs. Reykjavík is second from last, followed closely by Venice. Euronews makes the point that both Reykjavík and Venice were held back by higher prices, "which affect solo travellers who will not be splitting accommodation costs". A couple shares one room and one bill. A person on their own pays for the whole room.

The gap between the two ends is large. According to Radical Storage, a day in the bottom ten costs an average of €252, nearly €100 more than in the top ten, where the average is €153. The rest of the bottom ten is Aarhus, Cologne, Geneva, Frankfurt, Nice, Marseille and Dublin, so readers in Ireland, France or Switzerland will not find the table flattering to their capitals and their ports.

The cost sits in the daily prices on the ground. Flights are not among the factors the coverage names, so the ranking says nothing about what it costs to get to Prague from New York or London.

A second index, ten cities, another winner

This is not the first 2026 ranking to crown a city for solo travellers. Quotezone, which Cyprus Mail describes as a travel insurance comparison platform, published its own Solo Travel Index in the spring, and Time Out reported it on March 25, 2026. Cyprus Mail covered it again later in the year.

The result differs, and it differs on a city the two share. Quotezone describes Prague as budget-friendly, with plenty of historic attractions and a vibrant social scene. That is a friendlier portrait of Prague than a bare cost figure, and it comes from the same kind of public data: Numbeo for safety and transport, Hostelworld for the hostel count.

Madrid came first, Prague second, Lisbon third, Paris fourth and Reykjavik fifth. Madrid earned top marks for its choice of hostels, its cheap public transport and its internet speed of 263.31 megabits per second, with a safety score of 71.3. Prague scored 75.2 on safety, which Cyprus Mail calls exceptional.

The method explains much of the difference. Quotezone scored public transport, hostels, organised tours and internet speed, and doubled the points for safety. Radical Storage averages 11 factors with equal weight, and the named ones lean on cost.

Then there is the field. Quotezone's methodology note says its ten cities are all taken from the Condé Nast Traveller 2025 Readers' Choice Awards list of best European cities. Madrid won a contest of ten pre-selected favourites. Prague won a contest of the 48 most visited.

Reykjavík shows the split most clearly. Quotezone ranked it fifth, with the highest overall safety rating on its list, despite the highest public transport costs. Radical Storage ranked it second from last, on price. Of the two top tens, only Prague and Lisbon appear in both, and Madrid is absent from Radical Storage's.

What an index cannot score

Cyprus Mail reports that, in the research compiled by the firm, global online searches for "solo travel" rose by 223 per cent over the last decade. Quotezone also opens its index with figures about why people go alone: 74% do not want to wait for companions, 57% want to do what they want when they want, and 54% want to get out of their comfort zone. The page footnotes these shares to two outside pages, one of them a ferry operator's solo travel statistics page, and the coverage gives no sample size. Treat them as a mood, not a measurement.

Still, the third number is the one that matters for choosing a city. Getting out of a comfort zone means doing something that nobody has approved in advance. Neither index's named factors measure how forgiving a city is when a first-timer takes the wrong tram, eats alone for the first time or finds the dorm full.

The nearest research looks at a narrower kind of solo. A paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, published on July 26, 2021 by Evi Petersen and colleagues, analysed the debrief responses of 40 people (26 of them women, aged 19 to 64) after a solo period in nature in Norway, Germany and New Zealand. The most frequent findings were positive emotions and a connecting process. Expectations and earlier solo experience had a minor effect.

The limits are plain, and they are the paper's own to a large degree. The people were on outdoor programmes, where a solo typically lasts 24 to 72 hours, not on a city break with a hostel and a metro pass. The data are their own accounts, and the paper notes that earlier work on solo experiences is also limited to self-report. A forty-person qualitative study cannot say how many travellers would feel the same.

The paper also does not promise pleasure. It cites an earlier study by Maxted in which participants feared aspects of nature, unexpected encounters with other people, and being alone. Maxted concluded that "romanticising longer solos as spiritual growth opportunities for everyone might be misleading".

That caution fits what Reflets has covered before. Another brief followed Zahirah Munjit, whose first solo trip was a low-cost kayak trip, and the start looked small there too.

What it means for readers in the US and UK

Quotezone is a UK firm, and its closing advice to readers is plain: "it’s important to plan ahead and take safety precautions". That is a sentence from its expert, Helen Rolph, and it is the part of any index worth keeping.

For a reader in the US or the UK, the practical reading is narrower than the headline. The Radical Storage table says which of 48 cities spread a solo budget furthest on the ground. The Quotezone table says which of ten well-liked cities has the easiest logistics and the highest safety scores. Neither says which one will feel right on a first night alone.

Search interest and actual trips also diverge. Another brief this fall found a gap between where US travellers search for solo trips and where solo bookings land, which is a reminder that a ranking measures a list, not a decision.

The two lists agree on little beyond Prague and Lisbon, and on one figure that no method changes: a mid-range day in Prague at €134.33, set against €168.13 for accommodation alone in Zürich.

Sources

• Europe's top solo travel destinations revealed, Quotezone, 2026
• How Does Being Solo in Nature Affect Well-Being? Evidence from Norway, Germany and New Zealand, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Petersen et al., July 26, 2021