Hostels in Uzbekistan: Where to Find Them
Hostels in Uzbekistan city by city, with named options and dorm prices from around $4, plus why a guesthouse often beats a hostel here.
Dorm beds in Uzbekistan start around $4 and top out near $13. That's the entire price range, and it means the money you save on a hostel here is measured in single dollars rather than in the double digits it might save you in western Europe.
Which is the first thing to understand about hostelling in this country: you are choosing it for the people, not the price.
Tashkent
The capital has the deepest choice, and the established name is Topchan Hostel, in a quiet residential area with metro access, a shared kitchen, free breakfast and an airport shuttle. It has mixed dorms and a women-only dorm, and it's the place most long-haul travellers through Central Asia end up.
Tashkent is also where a hostel earns its keep in a way it doesn't elsewhere: the city is spread out, you will want advice on the metro and the train booking site, and a common room full of people who crossed the Kazakh border last week is genuinely useful.
Samarkand
A reasonable spread of small hostels, with Old Radio Hostel, Heartland Hostel and Azaliya Hostel among the names that come up. Dorms and privates in most of them.
Location matters more here than in Tashkent, because Samarkand's monuments are strung out across the city. Check how far the hostel is from Gur-e-Amir before booking on price alone; see our one-day route for the geography.
Bukhara
Around seven hostels at the time of writing, with dorms from roughly $4, which is about as cheap as accommodation gets anywhere.
Bukhara is also the city where we'd most seriously question the choice. The old town's converted courtyard houses run from around €30 with breakfast, and the difference between a $5 dorm and a €30 room in a nineteenth-century house with a painted ceiling is, for most travellers, the best €25 they'll spend in the country. Our comparison of guesthouses and hotels goes into why.
Khiva
Fewer options and they matter more, because the walled city is small and being inside it after five in the afternoon is the whole reason to stay overnight.
Central Park Hostel lists dorms from around $13 and Besqala Guest House from around $8 (last checked: September 2026). Check the address against the walls before booking, because where to stay in Khiva explains why that single detail matters more here than anywhere else in Uzbekistan.
Everywhere else
Thin. Nukus, Termez, the Fergana Valley and the smaller towns have hotels and guesthouses but very little in the way of dedicated hostels, and what exists is usually a guesthouse with a dorm room in it.
This isn't a problem, because the budget guesthouses in those places cost roughly what a dorm does elsewhere.
What to expect inside
Uzbek hostels are small. Twenty or thirty beds is a large one, and several of the best are converted houses with four dorms and a courtyard rather than purpose-built blocks.
That size shapes the experience. There is no bar, no events programme and no reception desk staffed at three in the morning. What there is instead is a kitchen, a courtyard with a topchan, the raised platform with cushions that Uzbeks sit and eat on, and a small number of other guests who you will end up talking to whether you meant to or not.
Practical points worth knowing. Lockers are not universal, so bring a padlock and check. Bathrooms are usually shared and usually clean. Heating in winter can be patchy in older buildings, and a dorm in a courtyard house in January is colder than the price suggests. And the wifi is generally fine, because Uzbek internet has improved sharply in recent years.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a hostel cost in Uzbekistan?
Dorm beds run from about $4 to $13 a night depending on the city and the season, with Bukhara at the cheap end and Khiva at the higher one. Private rooms in hostels sit between that and guesthouse rates. Breakfast is included more often than not.
Are there hostels outside the main cities?
Very few. Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva have a proper hostel scene; Nukus, Termez and the Fergana Valley largely don't. In those places, look for budget guesthouses instead, which cost about the same and are frequently better.
Do hostels in Uzbekistan handle registration?
Licensed hostels register you like any other accommodation and give you the slip. Keep every one until you leave the country, because our guide to tourist registration explains why it matters at departure.
Is Uzbekistan good for solo travellers?
Yes, and hostels are the main way solo travellers meet each other here, because the country doesn't have the backpacker infrastructure of South-East Asia. Tashkent's hostels in particular function as the meeting point for people crossing Central Asia. See our guide to solo female travel in Uzbekistan for the wider picture.
Should I book hostels in advance?
A few days ahead is generally enough, and in spring and autumn a week is safer. The pool of hostel beds in this country is small, so a single tour group or a festival can absorb most of a city's supply. Navruz week is the one time to book well ahead.
The honest case against
Uzbekistan is a country where the mid-range is unusually good value and the budget end saves you very little.
If you're travelling for six months and every dollar is a day, hostel all the way and don't think about it. If you're here for two weeks, the arithmetic changes: fourteen nights in dorms against fourteen nights in family guesthouses is a difference of a few hundred dollars across the whole trip, and what the guesthouses give you back is breakfast, a courtyard, and a host who will fix your problems.
Our own split would be hostels in Tashkent for the company and guesthouses everywhere else. The full range of options is in where to stay in Uzbekistan, and current listings and prices are on Hostelworld's Uzbekistan pages and Hostelz.
Featured image: Jean Housen (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.