Student Life in Tbilisi: What Medical Students Actually Spend in 2026

What does a medical student in Tbilisi actually spend per month in 2026?

Between 1,437 and 3,301 GEL a month, roughly 473 to 1,086 EUR, depending almost entirely on where you sleep and how often you eat out. The typical middle column sits at 2,206 GEL, about 726 EUR: a room in a shared flat, all bills, food, transport, insurance and normal social life. Tuition, flights and the day-one deposit sit outside it.

Three columns, because students in the same lecture hall live very differently. The lean column is a room in Gldani, cooking every night, the annual transport pass. The comfortable column is Vake, a gym membership, dinner out twice a week. Both are real.

The average net salary in Tbilisi was 1,687 GEL a month in September 2026, so a student on the typical column spends more than a working Georgian earns. Not everything here is cheap.

How much is rent in Vake, Saburtalo, Didube and the Old Town?

A whole one-bedroom flat runs from about 250 US dollars a month in Gldani to about 900 in Vake in 2026. A room in a shared two-bedroom, which is what most students take, runs from about 200 to about 700. The gap between the cheapest and the priciest district is a factor of three, and it is the single biggest lever you have over your budget. Pick the district first.

Galt & Taggart and TBC Capital put average Tbilisi asking rent at 10.0 to 10.1 US dollars per square metre in February 2026: Vake 13.8, Mtatsminda and Saburtalo 11.7, Gldani and Samgori 8.4. Geostat median sale prices for the fourth quarter of 2025 follow the same ladder, from 5,874 GEL per square metre in Vake to 4,054 in Didube. Renters feel that ladder every month.

Saburtalo is where the arithmetic usually lands: two metro lines, a dense cluster of teaching hospitals, housing from 1970s blocks to glass towers. Didube is cheaper and louder, built around the country's biggest marshrutka terminal. The Old Town is old in the literal sense, which means charming balconies and heating never designed for January.

One note that catches people out. Tbilisi landlords very often quote rent in US dollars and collect it in lari at the day's rate, so what you pay moves with the exchange rate. Ask at the viewing which currency the contract uses.

What do utilities and heating cost through a Georgian winter?

About 55 GEL a month for a shared two-bedroom flat in summer and about 160 GEL from November through March, so roughly 1,265 GEL over a year, about 105 GEL a month each split two ways. Winter is the whole story. Tbilisi gets properly cold, most flats heat with a gas boiler, and the meter notices.

The Georgian National Energy and Water Supply Regulatory Commission raised household electricity tariffs from 1 April 2026. In Tbilisi the first 101 kWh a month now costs 20.04 tetri per kWh, up from 15.04; 101 to 301 kWh costs 24.05 tetri; above 301 kWh, 28.54 tetri. Rises of 33, 26 and 21 percent. Residential gas runs at roughly 0.55 GEL per cubic metre in 2026, water at 5 to 10 GEL per person, rubbish at 3 to 4 GEL per household.

Geostat put annual inflation at 5.6 percent in August 2026, with housing, utilities and fuels up 7.2 percent over the year to June and electricity and gas alone up 10.1 percent. Prices here move. Read every figure on this page as a September 2026 snapshot.

What do the metro and the marshrutka cost in 2026?

One lari. That single fare buys ninety minutes of unlimited travel across the metro, the municipal buses, the yellow minibuses and the ropeways, with transfers included, paid by Metromoney card or contactless bank card. The card itself costs 2 GEL and is non-refundable. For most students transport is the smallest line in the budget and it barely moves.

The Tbilisi Transport Company publishes passes: 3 GEL for a day, 20 for a week, 40 for a month, 100 for three months, 150 for six and 250 for a full year. The annual pass works out at 20.83 GEL a month, roughly seven euro, and pays for itself in about ten weeks. Very few students buy it, mostly because nobody tells them it exists.

Two metro lines cover the city, and the Akhmeteli-Varketili line threads through Didube, Station Square and Isani, which is exactly why those districts work on a student budget. Marshrutkas fill the gaps.

What does food cost, at the supermarket and eating out?

Around 550 GEL a month for groceries if you cook most nights, 30 GEL for a meal in an inexpensive restaurant, about 100 GEL for a mid-range dinner for two. Georgian produce is genuinely cheap; imported packaged food is not. The gap between a 400 GEL month and a 720 GEL month is mostly how local your basket is. Shop at the markets.

September 2026 Tbilisi prices, converted to metric: a litre of milk 5.74 GEL, twelve eggs 7.31 GEL, a kilogram of chicken fillet about 17.55 GEL, local cheese about 23.92 GEL a kilogram, apples 4.32, potatoes 2.16, rice 4.28, a 500 gram loaf about 2 GEL. A cappuccino is 8.96 GEL, a half-litre of draught beer 7.02.

The Deserter's Bazaar near Station Square and the neighbourhood markets undercut the supermarket chains on fruit, vegetables, cheese and herbs by a wide margin. Buy there once and the grocery line drops.

What do mobile, internet and health insurance cost?

Roughly 170 GEL a month for all three if you share the internet. Magticom's unlimited package costs 45 GEL for thirty days in 2026, with 50 GB at full speed and 5 Mbps after that, or 129 GEL for ninety days; a 10 GB plan is about 34 GEL. Home internet at 60 Mbps or better averaged 51.34 GEL a month in September 2026, about 26 GEL each in a two-person flat.

Insurance changed on 1 January 2026. Under the Law of Georgia on Tourism, people entering the country must hold health and accident insurance with a minimum insured sum of 30,000 GEL covering the whole stay, shown on paper or on a phone, in Georgian or English. Diplomatic passport holders and a few treaty categories are exempt. That guidance is written around visitors and does not spell out how it lands for a study residence permit holder, so confirm your case with the Georgian authorities before you fly.

Local Georgian policies for foreigners start at roughly 250 US dollars a year for a basic plan in 2026, about 800 GEL, with comprehensive packages from providers such as GPI Holding and Irao Insurance at 500 to 1,000 US dollars depending on age and cover. That is the 65 to 180 GEL line in the budget table. Buy it.

What does a full twelve months cost, itemised?

26,249 GEL in living costs, about 8,636 EUR, for a student sharing a two-bedroom flat in Saburtalo at September 2026 prices. Add flights home and the money handed over on move-in day and the first full year lands between 29,149 and 30,049 GEL, roughly 9,590 to 9,886 EUR. This is a model, not a person. Every line below is a figure from this article multiplied out. Nothing here is guessed.

The move-in line surprises people. Tbilisi landlords normally take one month's rent as a deposit, and an agency commission is usually another month, paid by the tenant. The first month costs three times a normal one. Budget for it before you land.

Flights are the loosest figure here. On the Berlin route in 2026 a return sat near 115 pounds at the low end, one-ways from about 52 pounds in December, returns nearer 190 in August, Georgian Airways direct from around 136. Those are aggregator estimates rather than published tariffs, so treat the flight line as a planning range. Tuition varies by university — see our university overview.

When does the academic year actually run?

Later than you would guess, and later than the bachelor calendar at the same institution. European University Tbilisi in Georgia publishes a 2026-2027 calendar for MD, nursing and PhD students: registration 10 August to 10 September 2026, lectures 12 October 2026 to 6 February 2027, mid-terms 30 November to 12 December 2026, finals 8 to 20 February 2027.

The spring half follows the same rhythm: lectures 22 March to 10 July 2027, mid-terms 10 to 22 May, finals 12 to 24 July. Bachelor students at the same university start on 21 September 2026 and finish in late June, which is why the campus empties while the MD cohort is still on the wards in July.

The practical consequence is a rent question. Most contracts start in September, when the general student wave arrives, so an MD student pays September and half of October before teaching begins.

Do you need Georgian, and from when?

Not for the lectures, yes for the patients. International MD programmes in Georgia are taught in English end to end — lectures, seminars, materials and examinations. Georgian becomes a working requirement when clinical rotations start and you are in front of a patient who speaks Georgian and nothing else. Most universities in Tbilisi run Georgian courses alongside the curriculum. Start in year one.

Russian is widely understood among older patients in Tbilisi and it helps, but it does not replace Georgian on a ward round. The alphabet has thirty-three letters and no capitals, which looks worse than it is. Reading a pharmacy sign is a realistic first goal.

Outside the hospital, English carries you a long way in central Tbilisi. Cafes, banks, the university office and most landlords in Vake and Saburtalo manage in it. Bazaar traders and marshrutka drivers mostly do not, which is its own daily lesson. Other students' accounts of that first year sit in our student stories.

Can an international student work part-time in Georgia in 2026?

Only with a work permit, as of 1 March 2026. Georgia's amended labour migration law and Government Resolution No. 70 took effect that day, making a permit a condition of legal employment for foreign nationals. Permits come from the State Agency for Employment Promotion, under the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons, Labour, Health and Social Affairs. Plan around that.

The mechanics matter to anyone planning to top up a budget. A permit is tied to a named employer and a named position, so it is not a general licence for casual work. Standard decisions arrive within 30 calendar days, expedited within 10 working days, and initial permits outside the IT sector run six months to a year. The published exemption list covers refugees and holders of international protection status, diplomatic personnel, accredited foreign media workers and holders of active investment residence permits; students on a study residence permit are not named on it.

The planning assumption for 2026 is that a Tbilisi medical degree is funded from home, savings or a scholarship rather than shift work. English tutoring, remote freelance work billed abroad and university assistantships sit in different regulatory boxes. The rules are new, so check your case with the agency.

What does going home cost, and when should you book?

Roughly 500 to 950 GEL for a return flight to central Europe in 2026, so 1,000 to 1,900 GEL for two trips a year. December and January are the cheapest months on the Berlin route; August is routinely three times the winter fare. Tbilisi International Airport handles the direct services, and Kutaisi, four hours west by bus, takes a share of the low-cost traffic. Book in autumn.

The academic calendar and the fare calendar cooperate for once. MD finals end around 20 February and the spring semester starts in late March, a five-week window inside the cheapest flight season. The July break falls in peak season, so that is the trip to book early. Two a year is the common pattern.

What the cost-of-living numbers leave out

Four things, and each has moved a real budget. The headline monthly figure quoted for Tbilisi is almost always a summer figure, calculated when the heating is off. Apply it to January and you are short by 100 GEL on utilities alone.

Inflation is the fifth. Georgian consumer prices rose 5.6 percent in the year to August 2026, transport by 16.5 percent. A budget built on 2024 numbers is already wrong.