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Buying guide · 2 min readHow to compare coffee prices without fooling yourself
Shelf prices are built to resist comparison. Four steps put every coffee you are looking at on the same footing.
A £9 bag and a £22 kilo are not obviously comparable, and that is not an accident. Pack sizes, formats and multibuys all exist partly to make comparison hard work. The fix is mechanical: pick one unit and convert everything to it before you judge anything.
Step one: pick one unit and stick to it
Use price per kilo when you are choosing between two bags, and price per cup when you are choosing between two ways of making coffee. Per kilo is the honest unit for beans and ground coffee because it strips pack size out entirely. Per cup is the honest unit across formats, because it is the only way a 200g jar of instant, a 1kg bag of beans and a box of ten capsules can sit in the same list.
| Product | Pack price | Per kilo | Per 18g cup |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250g bag of beans | £7.00 | £28.00 | £0.50 |
| 1kg bag of beans | £19.00 | £19.00 | £0.34 |
| 227g tin of ground | £4.50 | £19.82 | £0.36 |
The 250g bag looks like the cheap option on the shelf. It is also the most expensive coffee on the table. That inversion is the single most common way people overpay, and it disappears the moment you divide by weight.
Step two: hold the dose constant
A per-cup figure only means something if everyone is working from the same dose. Ours is 18g for beans and ground coffee, which is a standard double espresso and close to what most people actually put in a cafetière per mug. Pods are priced per capsule, because the factory has fixed the dose for you. Instant is priced per 2g serving.
If a site quotes a per-cup price without telling you the dose, the number is decorative. Halve the dose and you halve the price.
Step three: adjust for what you will actually drink
Two coffees priced the same per cup are not always the same drink. A very dark, high-robusta blend and a light single origin are not interchangeable, and nor are a lungo pod and a ristretto pod. Pull two shots per coffee and you should double the per-cup figure before you set it against a single-shot pod. Drink milk-based coffee at home and the milk is often a bigger line on the bill than the coffee.
- Espresso drinker: compare per 18g dose, and count doubles as two.
- Cafetière or filter drinker: compare per kilo, then divide by roughly 55g per litre.
- Pod drinker: compare per capsule, and check the capsule size. A 40ml Vertuo pod and a 25ml Original pod are different drinks.
- Instant drinker: compare per 2g serving, not per jar.
Step four: judge the shelf price last
Once everything sits on one unit, the shelf price becomes what it should always have been: the last thing you look at rather than the first. Bulk usually wins on price per kilo, but only if you drink it before it goes flat. Beans are past their best around four to six weeks after roasting, and ground coffee much sooner.
Cheapest per cup right now
Live from the catalogue, priced on the same 18g dose.
Prices are the last we fetched and can move. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. It never changes the order, which is always cheapest per cup first.
What this looks like on We Try Coffee
Every comparison page here does the four steps for you. Products are converted to price per cup and price per kilo, sorted cheapest first, and the format hubs keep like with like, so you never end up weighing a capsule against a kilo unless you ask to.
Compare by format