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The Funeral Price Index
Funeral prices in the United States have risen 73% in twenty years, faster than inflation over that span. Over the last ten they have risen slower than everything else. Both of those are true, and the second one is not the good news it sounds like.
- Latest reading August 2026, index 417.8. Funeral prices rose 3.0% over twelve months, against 3.4% for everything else.
- Over twenty years, funerals +72.7% against +64.3% for all items, a gap of 8.4 percentage points.
- Over ten years the position reverses. Funerals +30.5% against +39.1%, so funerals have been 8.5 points behind general inflation.
- Source is official and monthly. 259 readings from January 2005, updated here automatically as the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes.
Funeral prices against everything else
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The finding, and why it is not reassuring
The story most people expect is that funeral costs are running away. Over twenty years that is exactly what happened, and the gap is real money. Over the last decade it stopped being true, because the inflation of 2021 to 2023 hit food, fuel, cars and rent far harder than it hit funeral homes.
Here is why that is not comfort. Funeral prices did not fall, they simply rose more slowly than a period of unusually high inflation. Prices are still up 30.5% in ten years while the thing that pays for a funeral, a household’s savings, generally is not. And the index measures the price of a defined basket of funeral goods and services. It does not measure what a family actually hands over, which has moved for a separate reason.
What the index cannot see
The cemetery is not in it. The plot, opening and closing the grave, the vault and the marker are sold by a different business under a separate contract, and they add about $7,095 to a burial. Every figure on this page tracks the funeral home’s side of the bill only. That single omission is why national funeral cost reporting consistently understates what families pay, and it is the reason this site exists.
What a funeral cost, then and now
A typical American burial today runs $15,395 once the cemetery has billed. Deflating that by the funeral index gives what the same funeral would have cost at each point back.
| Looking back | Funeral prices | All items | Gap | Same funeral cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One year | +3.0% | +3.4% | -0.4 pp | $14,940 |
| Five years | +19.6% | +22.4% | -2.8 pp | $12,870 |
| Ten years | +30.5% | +39.1% | -8.5 pp | $11,790 |
| Twenty years | +72.7% | +64.3% | +8.4 pp | $8,920 |
The last column is the one worth sitting with. Someone who priced a funeral twenty years ago and set that amount aside, and never revisited it, is short by $6,475 today. This is the single most common way a prepayment or a savings plan quietly fails.
How prepaid funeral plans handle inflation · What a funeral costs against what households earn
Method
- Source. Bureau of Labor Statistics series CUUR0000SEGD02, Funeral expenses, US city average, all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted. Compared against CUUR0000SA0, CPI for all items.
- Coverage. 259 monthly readings from January 2005 to August 2026.
- Horizons compare the same calendar month across years, so no seasonal adjustment is needed and none is applied.
- The cost translation deflates our own typical burial total of $15,395 by the funeral index, and is rounded to the nearest ten because the index does not justify a dollar-level claim.
- Updates. This page reads the BLS API directly and regenerates itself, so a new monthly reading appears here without anyone publishing anything.
- Limits, stated plainly. The index tracks the funeral home’s basket only, excludes all cemetery charges, is a national average with no state breakdown, and measures price change rather than what families choose to buy.
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Free to quote, chart included, with a link back. If you need a cut we have not published, by region or over a different window, ask and we will run it.
Burial Estimator Funeral Price Index, August 2026. Analysis of BLS series CUUR0000SEGD02. https://burialestimator.com/research/funeral-price-index
Common questions
How fast are funeral costs rising?
Funeral prices rose 3.0% over the twelve months to August 2026, against 3.4% for consumer prices generally. Over twenty years funerals are up 72.7% against 64.3% for everything else, so the long run picture and the recent picture point in opposite directions.
Are funeral costs rising faster than inflation?
Over twenty years, yes, by about 8 percentage points. Over the last ten, no. Funeral prices rose more slowly than general inflation through the 2021 to 2023 spike, because that spike was concentrated in food, fuel, transport and housing rather than in funeral services.
Does this index include cemetery costs?
No, and that is its most important limitation. The BLS funeral expenses index covers the funeral home basket. The plot, opening and closing the grave, the burial vault and the headstone are sold separately by the cemetery and add roughly $7,095 to a burial. Any figure quoting national funeral cost inflation without saying this understates what families actually pay.
What will a funeral cost in ten years?
We do not publish a forecast, because a projection presented as a figure gets quoted as a fact. What the data supports is the direction and the arithmetic behind it: funeral prices have risen every single year in this series, and money set aside for a funeral and never revisited loses ground against them.
How often is this updated?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes CPI monthly, and this page reads the API directly and rebuilds itself, so a new reading appears here shortly after it is released rather than whenever somebody remembers to update a chart.