Fish and Seafood in Montenegro: Prices per Kilo, Explained

Fresh fish in Montenegro’s coastal restaurants costs from €55 a kilo, and €80–90 a kilo in the tourist spots. Fish is sold by weight, so the number on the menu is not what you pay: a 400-gram fish, a normal single portion, comes to about €22 at the lower price and €36 at the upper. Anything from 300 to 500 grams lands somewhere between €17 and €45.

Those figures come from real menus in Budva, Pržno and Perast. Most people who feel overcharged have simply misread the menu. Some restaurants print the price per 100 grams, which looks ten times cheaper than it is, and the sea bream and sea bass on most menus are farmed, while wild fish costs several times more. Below are the menus, a glossary of fish names and the questions to ask before anything goes on the grill.

In short

• First-class fish: €55 a kilo in Budva, €79–89.90 in Perast, €82 in Pržno (2024 menu).
• A fish of 300–500 grams: roughly €17–45. A 400-gram fish at €55–90 a kilo is €22–36.
• “Za 100 g” means per 100 grams: multiply by ten. €8.20 per 100 g is €82 a kilo.
• Sea bream and sea bass are usually farmed: Montenegro farmed 120 tonnes of them in 2023.
• Seafood on a budget: fish soup €5–6.20, a pot of mussels €15.90–18.
• Kuver is a cover charge on the bill: €2 in Pržno.

How much does fish cost in Montenegro? Prices from real menus

We went through menus that give a price per kilo. Not all of them are dated, and the table says which are not.

Where	First-class fish	Also on the menu	Source of the price
Budva, Jadran, Slovenska obala 10	€55 a kilo	“extra” class €65 a kilo, “extra” cooked home-style €80 a kilo	restaurant website, September 2026; menu undated
Pržno, Langust konoba	€8.20 per 100 g, i.e. €82 a kilo	second class €70 a kilo	2024 menu
Perast, restaurant of the Hotel Konte	€79 a kilo, grilled	baked €84.90, in a salt crust €89.90 a kilo	restaurant website; menu undated
Budva town market, retail	from €50 a kilo	lobster from €150 a kilo	June 2024

The last row is the one to remember. In summer 2024 first-class fish cost from €50 a kilo raw, at the market, so no restaurant is going to cook it for you for less. We could not find menus with per-kilo prices in Kotor, Herceg Novi, Bar or Ulcinj; assume the same range there and ask before you order.

For orientation: Budva is the resort town on the central coast, 22 kilometres from Kotor. Pržno is a small bay 6 kilometres from Budva, next to Sveti Stefan. Perast sits on the Bay of Kotor, 14 kilometres and about 20 minutes from Kotor.

What does that come to per plate?

If you are used to a fixed price next to each dish, the per-kilo system takes a moment. Here is the arithmetic (ours, not a menu price):

Price per kilo	300 g fish	400 g fish	500 g fish
€55	about €17	€22	about €28
€80	€24	€32	€40
€90	€27	€36	€45

Dishes priced per portion work differently. In Budva a fish dish costs €15–30 (June 2025); along the coast the range ran from €15 for fish baked in salt to €50 for a mixed fish platter (July 2024). A main course, salad and drink in an ordinary restaurant comes to €15–25 a head, and easily twice that on the smarter seafront terraces (July 2026). How food fits into the whole holiday budget is in what a week in Montenegro costs, and the rest of the local cooking in what to eat in Montenegro.

How to read a Montenegrin fish menu

Per kilo or per 100 grams. Prices are given “za 1 kg” (per kilo) or “za 100 g” (per 100 grams), and you will see both. If it says 100 g, multiply by ten before you decide it is a bargain.

A class, not a species. Menus often do not name the fish at all. Instead you see “riba I kategorije” (first-class fish), “II kategorije” (second class) or “extra kategorije”. That is a price band. Ask the waiter which fish they have today, and ask to see it.

The total before it is cooked. Ask them to weigh the fish and tell you what it will cost before it goes to the kitchen, not when the bill arrives. Two phrases do the job:

• Koliko košta kilogram? (KOH-lee-koh KOSH-tah kee-LOH-gram) — how much is a kilo?
• Koliko je teška ova riba? (KOH-lee-koh yeh TESH-kah OH-vah REE-bah) — how much does this fish weigh?

More phrases, with pronunciation, are in Do they speak English in Montenegro?

Kuver. A cover charge for bread and cutlery, shown as a separate line on the bill. At Langust in Pržno it is €2.

Is the fish wild or farmed?

In 2023 Montenegro’s boats landed 670 tonnes of fish, and its fish farms produced another 120 tonnes, all of it sea bream and sea bass. Mussels and oysters added about 260 tonnes. Montenegrins themselves eat around 6 kg of fish per person a year. Fishermen and fishmongers say the restaurants buy up most of the catch in advance, and there is less fish on the market than there used to be.

Farmed fish is perfectly good to eat; the only question is what you pay for it. Wild fish costs several times more. We found no Montenegrin figures, but across the border in Croatia’s fish markets in August 2024 wild sea bass cost €100–120 a kilo and wild sea bream €90–100, which gives you the order of magnitude. So ask directly:

• Da li je riba divlja ili iz uzgoja? (dah lee yeh REE-bah DEEV-lyah EE-lee eez OOZ-goh-yah) — is the fish wild or farmed?

What to order besides grilled fish

Dish	On the menu	Price
Fish soup	riblja čorba	€5 (Budva), €5.50 (Pržno), €6.20 (Perast)
Mussels	mušule, dagnje	€15.90 for 500 g (Perast), €17 (Pržno), €18 for 800 g (Budva)
Black risotto	crni rižot	€15 (Budva), €21 (Pržno), €21.60 (Perast)
Squid	lignje	€18 for 300 g (Budva), €18.40 for 250 g (Perast), €19 (Pržno)
Octopus	hobotnica	€22 for 180 g (Budva), €32 (Pržno and Perast)
Prawns	gambori	€25 for 300 g (Budva)
Lobster	jastog	€189 a kilo (Perast)

Black risotto is rice cooked with cuttlefish and its ink; in Perast it comes with cuttlefish and prawns. Na buzaru is how mussels and scampi are often done here: stewed in a sauce. Recipes differ, so ask what goes into it.

Oysters from the Bay of Kotor deserve a trip of their own: at Budva market in summer 2024 they cost €2.50 each. Where to eat them at the farms is in oysters and mussels in the Bay of Kotor.

Fish names on a Montenegrin menu

On the menu	In English
orada	gilt-head sea bream
brancin, lubin	sea bass
zubatac	dentex
škarpina	scorpionfish
kovač	John Dory
list	sole
grdoba	monkfish
skuša, srdela	mackerel, sardine
sipa, lignje, hobotnica	cuttlefish, squid, octopus
škampi, gambori	langoustines (the Dublin Bay prawns sold as scampi at home), prawns
mušule, dagnje	mussels
kamenice	oysters
jastog	lobster
divlja / iz uzgoja	wild / farmed

Where to eat fish in Montenegro

This is not a ranking: these are places whose addresses we could confirm from their own websites or restaurant directories.

• Budva: Jadran, at Slovenska obala 10, and Porto. The town and its seafront are covered in Budva: old town, beaches and evenings.
• Pržno and Rafailovići: Langust, Il Brodetto (Pržno obala 24) and Tri Ribara in Rafailovići, which publishes no prices: you choose your fish on the spot. Pržno is next door to Sveti Stefan.
• Kotor and Perast: Galion (Šuranj bb) and Bastion in Kotor Old Town; Konte in Perast, see Perast and the islands.
• Deeper into the bay: Ćatovića Mlini in Morinj and Stari Mlini in Ljuta, near Dobrota. We could not find menus with prices for either. Both are easiest by car: car hire in Kotor.
• Bar: Fish Bar Cvijo, beside the green market, covered in markets in Montenegro.
• Ada Bojana: restaurants on stilts by the river, such as Kod Ranka and Fiore di Mare, on the river island at the country’s southern tip: see Ada Bojana.

How not to overpay for fish

1. Check the unit: per 100 grams or per kilo.
2. Ask the species and the weight before it is cooked, not afterwards.
3. Ask whether it is wild or farmed.
4. Look for the kuver on the bill.
5. If you only want a taste of the sea, order the fish soup and the mussels rather than a whole fish by weight.

Or catch it yourself

If you would rather catch your dinner than order it, a sea-fishing trip out of Budva costs from €295 for the whole boat, and the fish you catch is yours to take away. Fishing on Lake Skadar costs from €185 per boat. Both are run in Russian, English or Serbian. The details are in sea fishing in Montenegro and fishing on Lake Skadar.

The group trips on the bay and the lake, the Bay of Kotor by ship and the Lake Skadar day trip, cost from €53 per person, run in season and do not operate from October to May. They are listed under tours, but they run only with Russian-speaking guides; if that is no use to you, the fishing trips above can be run in English: say so when you book. Services are provided by independent companies; you book and pay directly with them.

Prices checked in September 2026. Sources: menus of Jadran (Budva), Konte (Perast) and Langust (Pržno, 2024), Radio Free Europe’s Balkan service, RTV Budva, Kurir, 021.rs, Telegram.hr.