A budget simulator that makes the trade-offs real
Most budget simulators let you move one slider and watch a number change. This one gives you a country with a €54bn hole, five colleagues who want money, and a bond market that reprices you every month.
What a budget simulator should actually teach
A budget is not a spreadsheet you balance once. It is a sequence of decisions taken under time pressure, with incomplete information, by people who each own a different piece of the problem. The interesting part is not the arithmetic — it is the order of operations.
In Budget Battle you start each season with a draft budget in deficit at 5.9% of GDP. The arithmetic is simple: every €30bn of deficit is roughly one point of GDP. The hard part is that the measures which fix the arithmetic fastest are also the ones that end careers.
- Twenty spending measures and revenue raisers, each with a fiscal yield, a political cost and a growth effect.
- Five indicators: deficit, debt, 10-year bond yield, political capital and popularity.
- Twelve monthly episodes per season, five seasons to reach the 3% target.
The measures, and why they are not interchangeable
Freezing benefit indexation buys you €9bn and costs you nine points of popularity. A tax-fraud crackdown buys €2bn and gains you three. Both reduce the deficit; only one of them is survivable in year three of a mandate.
Every measure also moves growth, and growth moves revenue next season. Cutting operating costs has no growth cost at all. A corporate surtax raises €8bn this season and shaves growth next, which quietly hands part of the money back.
What happens after you decide
Once the package is tabled, the year does not pause. Parliamentary committees ask whether your forecast is sincere. The European Commission asks for a multi-year trajectory. Ministers refuse to sign their spending letters. The rating agencies publish.
Each month closes with a market reaction: if your deficit is still drifting up, the yield on your debt rises, which increases the interest bill, which makes the deficit worse. That feedback loop is the actual subject of the game.
Free to play, no account required
The standard mandate and all twelve episodes are free. Premium dossiers (energy shock, coalition collapse, debt crisis) add harder starting conditions and season-by-season analytics.
Runs are scored on deficit, debt, seasons played, survival and popularity, then ranked on the public leaderboard.
Preguntas frecuentes
Is the budget simulator free?
Yes. The standard twelve-episode mandate, the leaderboard and every explainer are free and need no account. A one-off premium unlock adds hard-mode scenarios and saved-run analytics.
How long does one run take?
About ten minutes for the first run covering a single season, and roughly forty-five minutes to play all five seasons through to the final vote.
Are the numbers realistic?
The frame is anchored on a €3,060bn economy, debt near 118% of GDP and deficit starting at 5.9%. Measure yields are in the same order of magnitude as published budget documents, and the mechanics (indexation, refinancing cost, growth feedback) are the ones real treasuries use.
Can I use it in a classroom?
Yes — teachers use the twelve-episode structure as a semester exercise. The scoring makes it comparable between groups, and there is a dedicated classroom guide on the blog.