New England · beach

What a trip to Cape Cod costs

A week in Cape Cod for eight people works out around $11,900 before flights — $375 a night for a place sleeping four, scaled for the group, plus $87 per adult per day for food. From Atlanta, Chicago and New York it is cheaper for a family of four to drive than to fly.

A hook-shaped peninsula of beach towns, dunes and salt marsh reaching into the Atlantic. Cape Cod National Seashore protects roughly 40 miles of shoreline, and Provincetown sits at the far tip.

with children goodadults-only trip okstroller / limited mobility good

What a week costs

Lodging and food only. Seven nights, whole-property rental, all fees in.

Group	Lodging	Food	Total	Per person
4 people	$2,620	$2,440	$5,060	$1,270
8 people	$7,060	$4,870	$11,900	$1,490
12 people	$9,660	$7,310	$17,000	$1,410

Note the per-person column does not simply fall. A place sleeping four is the efficient unit; going to eight means changing property class, which costs more than double. Past eight it improves again — each additional person adds roughly half what they did over the first jump. The expensive step is condo to house, not the people you put in it.

How Cape Cod compares

Cape CodNew England median of 3Beaches median of 14All destinations median of 40

Nightly lodging for a property sleeping four, month by month. Medians are taken across the seeded destinations in each group, so they are the middle of that group rather than any one place.

Averaged across the year, Cape Cod runs $258 a night for a property that sleeps four. That is 12% below the median for all 40 destinations in the library ($295), making it the 13th cheapest of 40 destinations. Against its own kind it is 7% below the typical beach ($277), the 4th cheapest of 14 beaches.

The same week costs $980 more in July than in January on lodging alone, before anyone has bought a flight.
Within New England (3 destinations here), it is 22% below the regional median of $333 a night.
Driving beats four seats from Atlanta, Chicago and New York. The longest of those is Atlanta — 1,063 road miles and 17.3h each way, and only $88 cheaper than four seats — thin enough that most groups would fly anyway.
The cheapest seven nights of the year fall in January, at $1,645 for the whole property — $2,625 for the same week in July.
The sharpest single step is between August and September: moving the same week across that line changes the lodging bill by $980.
The closest thing to it on price is Moab, UT, a park-gateway town: $12,034 for a week for eight against $11,937 here, $97 apart — the same money for a completely different trip.

When to go

Cape Cod is at its most expensive in July and cheapest in January — a 60% swing on the same property.

Month	Per night, sleeps 4
January	$235
February	$235
March	$235
April	$235
May	$235
June	$235
July	$375
August	$375
September	$235
October	$235
November	$235
December	$235

Getting there

The two halves are not priced the same way, which is the whole point: a seat costs per person, a car costs the same whatever the headcount.

	Flying		Driving
From	Round tripper person	Each wayhours	Round tripper car	Each wayhours	Cheaperfor four
Atlanta	$426	4.8h	$1,616	17.3h2 days	driving
Chicago	$422	4.7h	$1,543	16.5h2 days	driving
Dallas	$483	7.9h	$2,656	28.2h3 days	flying
Denver	$502	8.4h	$3,003	31.9h4 days	flying
Los Angeles	$579	10.2h	$4,425	47.0h5 days	flying
New York	$358	3.2h	$363	4.6h	driving
Seattle	$570	10.0h	$4,255	45.1h5 days	flying
Phoenix	$551	9.5h	$3,900	41.4h5 days	flying

Drives over ten hours are shown in days as well: nobody drives that in one go. The nights on the road are not counted here, so a long drive is cheaper on this page than it would be in life. All fares are modeled from distance — no published average covers this airport. Driving uses the IRS standard mileage rate, which includes running costs, not just fuel.

See all 14 beaches in the library →

Compare Cape Cod against other destinations →

Where these numbers come from

Lodging is indexed from the US federal per-diem schedule (GSA) for this county, calibrated against real rental listings. Food uses this location's own federal meal tier. Fares come from the DOT Consumer Airfare Report where that airport pair is published, and from a model fitted to 2,089 real DOT fares otherwise. Everything here is an estimate for planning, not a quote — check real prices before booking.