Ten budget party cities where your money goes further

The maths of a night out has become grim in most western capitals, where two rounds and a taxi can swallow a day's wages. Head east and the equation flips: in the ten cities below, a proper evening — dinner, several bars, a club, the essential 3am snack — still costs less than twenty pounds if you drink what the locals drink. None of them are cheap-and-nasty; these are handsome, historic cities with serious scenes that simply haven't inflated yet. The stag parties have found some corners; this list routes around them.

Kraków packs cellar bars, cocktail dens and clubs into a compact medieval core where vodka comes in flights and beer undercuts bottled water. The stag-do gravity centres on ulica Szewska — simply drink elsewhere: Kazimierz's mismatched-armchair bars for atmosphere, the club cellars off the main square for dancing until it's light. Weeknights are wonderfully calm and just as open. Whatever happens, finish with a zapiekanka from Plac Nowy.

The ruin-bar capital remains staggering value if you sidestep the obvious: Szimpla Kert deserves its fame but charges for it, while the seventh district around it hides courtyard kerts pouring fröccs — wine spritzers at pocket-change prices — to a mostly Hungarian crowd. The Instant-Fogas complex handles the multi-dancefloor club shift under one roof. Sunday morning, return to Szimpla for its farmers' market and watch the hangover economy at work.

Belgrade parties harder than anywhere at these prices, and the rakija makes sure you know it. Beyond the summer river clubs, the year-round action fills Cetinjska Street — a former brewery compound of courtyard bars and stages — and the arty warehouses of Savamala. Dinner first in cobbled Skadarlija with tambura bands between tables sets the tone. Nothing meaningful starts before midnight; a full night rarely clears twenty euros.

Yes, the Old Town has become a stag-party theme park — so leave it after one riverside beer and climb to Žižkov, the district with reputedly more pubs per capita than anywhere on earth, where a half-litre of the world's best lager still costs little more than a euro. Vinohrady next door adds craft-beer rooms and cocktail bars at gentler volume. Traditional pubs seat you communally; toast 'na zdraví' and make eye contact.

The EU's cheapest capital hides a genuinely fun night behind its brutalist face. Vitosha Boulevard's terrace bars point straight at the mountain, the lanes around Shishman Street hold the indie bars and craft-beer rooms, and Studentski Grad — an entire suburb of student clubs — keeps prices at pocket money. Rakia arrives with salad, by law of custom. Taxis are cheap but use an app; the ones idling outside clubs freelance creatively.

Riga's medieval Old Town looks the part but pours tourist prices at weekend-break volume; the locals drink along Miera iela, a scruffy-cool street of bars, and in the converted zeppelin hangars and yards around the Central Market, where Latvian craft beer costs a fraction of the old-town rate. Try Riga Black Balsam — a tar-dark herbal liqueur — in a cocktail rather than neat, at least initially. Summer brings 10pm sunsets; winter, blissfully warm cellars.

Bucharest's Old Town packs an improbable number of bars into a few pedestrian streets, and the bills still read like typos: cocktails for a fiver, local Ursus lager for barely more than one. Lipscani's strip does the loud, easy fun; the cooler crowd drifts to the garden bars around Piața Amzei and to Control Club for indie and electronica. Wednesday student nights go surprisingly hard. Late-night covrigi — hot pretzels — cost pennies and fix most things.

Vilnius keeps its nightlife charmingly self-contained: the baroque Old Town's bars fill from Thursday, Vilniaus gatvė runs the reliable crawl, and the self-declared 'independent republic' of Užupis — an artists' quarter with its own tongue-in-cheek constitution — supplies riverside beers at artist prices. Lithuanian craft brewing is quietly excellent, so order whatever šviesusis is on tap, and let Kablys handle the club shift. In summer the sky barely darkens, which makes 3am feel like a clerical error.

Warsaw hides its best nights in courtyards: the Pawilony, a scruffy warren of a few dozen micro-bars tucked behind Nowy Świat street, where beers cost a third of the western rate and every doorway plays a different genre, and the summer food stalls of Nocny Market on a disused railway platform. Praga, across the river, adds post-industrial clubs in old vodka factories. Start at the Pawilony on a Friday around 9pm and let the warren decide the rest.

Europe's cheapest capital nightlife might also be its friendliest. Blloku — once the sealed compound of communist party officials, a fact the cocktail bars enjoy enormously — is now Tirana's going-out district, dense with terraces, rooftop bars and clubs where a properly made cocktail costs three or four euros. Start with a raki and join the xhiro, the evening promenade that sweeps past Skanderbeg Square. Weeknights stay lively year-round; Tirana's students don't appear to observe Mondays.