How Much Is a Funeral.

Their own posted prices, dated and sourced. Every funeral home, as we reach them.

Comparing two funeral price lists

For families · US · Last reviewed Aug 29, 2026

Two funeral homes can quote a direct cremation a thousand dollars apart and mean the same thing, or quote the same number and mean very different things. The difference is almost never honesty. It’s packaging.

This page is the method for comparing two lists so the totals are actually comparable. For a line by line walk through one list, read how to read a funeral home’s price list first.

What the document actually is

A general price list is a list of individual charges, printed in a fixed set of categories set by federal law, with a name and address and an effective date on it. That effective date matters. A list from three years ago can still be the list they’re handing out, and prices move.

The document is a menu, not a quote. What you’ll actually pay is the menu items you choose, added up, plus the costs the funeral home pays out on your behalf and passes through. Federal law calls those cash advance items (16 CFR 453.1).

You get a printed copy to keep, at the start of any in-person conversation about arrangements or prices, and you get prices over the phone whenever you ask (16 CFR 453.2(b)(4) and (b)(1)). You don’t have to ask nicely, you don’t have to be a customer yet, and you don’t owe anybody an explanation for wanting it.

The one line you can’t decline

Near the top there’s a charge called the basic services of funeral director and staff. Sometimes it’s called the basic services fee, sometimes professional services, sometimes something else. Read the description, not the label.

That fee is non-declinable, and it’s the only one that is. It gets added to whatever else you select. It covers what happens no matter what you choose: the arrangement conference, the paperwork and permits, staff available around the clock, the building, the record keeping.

It’s already inside the price of a direct cremation, an immediate burial, or a forwarding or receiving of remains, so it shouldn’t appear a second time on top of one of those. The list itself usually says so in small type.

The size of that fee tells you little on its own. Some homes run a low basic services fee and higher prices on everything else. Some do the reverse. Comparing two basic services fees and stopping there will point you the wrong direction.

Itemization, and what a package really is

You may buy only the items you want. A funeral provider may not condition what it will furnish you on your buying something else from it (16 CFR 453.4(b)(1)). If a funeral home tells you that you have to take a package, that isn’t the law talking.

Packages still exist, and they aren’t a trick. A package is a bundle the home has priced as a set, usually below the sum of its parts. Where it gets slippery is that two homes will bundle different things into packages with the same name. One direct cremation price includes the transfer into their care and refrigeration. The next one down the road charges for both separately. The headline numbers can be a thousand dollars apart and mean the same thing, or look identical and mean very different things.

So read the package description word for word. It tells you exactly what is inside the price, and anything not named in it is an addition.

Some homes price a package on the condition that you buy the casket from them, and the package pricing is withdrawn if you bring your own, which can leave the family-supplied-casket line costing more than the with-their-casket line on the same document. That’s a pricing decision rather than a typo. See it before you plan around it.

The casket is on its own list

Caskets aren’t priced on the general price list. They get their own casket price list, and outer burial containers get another one. A provider has to offer you the casket list when caskets come up and in any event before showing you caskets, and the same for containers (16 CFR 453.2(b)(2) and (b)(3)). You’re entitled to the prices before anybody walks you into a room full of caskets.

A service price is a service price. This site never folds a casket into a service figure, because the casket is whatever you choose and folding it in hides both numbers. Hold the same line when you read a list. Find the service total, then find the casket separately, then add them yourself.

You can also buy a casket somewhere else, and the funeral home can’t charge you a handling fee for using it (16 CFR 453.4(b)(1)). They have to accept it.

Comparing two lists without getting fooled

Pick the service you actually want first, before you look at any price. Then, on each list, build that same service out of that list’s own line items and package descriptions. Same contents on both sides.

Then check the four things that hide outside the service price.

The transfer into their care, and how many miles it covers.

Refrigeration, if there’s no embalming.

The cremation or crematory fee, which is sometimes inside a package and sometimes a separate line.

The pass-through costs: the county permit, death certificate copies, anything the medical examiner charges. Those aren’t the funeral home’s money, but they’re your money.

Sales tax is its own question. It varies by state and by what gets taxed, so treat any tax number as approximate and ask the funeral home for the real one.

If a list won’t answer one of those questions, that gap is information. Write it down and ask.

Check it yourself

Every price on this site links to the funeral home’s own price list, with the date it took effect. Opening the document and reading the sentence yourself beats taking anybody’s word for a number, including this site’s.

A survey of 7,315 funeral provider websites run for this site in August 2026 found one that explains how to read a price list. That absence is the reason this page exists.

If you read a source document and think this site got it wrong, say so. It will be checked against the document.

Sources

  1. 16 CFR 453.2(b)(4) The printed general price list you get to keep, and the categories every one of them must contain
  2. 16 CFR 453.2(b)(1) Telephone price disclosure: a provider must give price information over the phone when you ask
  3. 16 CFR 453.2(b)(2) The casket price list, offered when caskets come up and in any event before showing caskets
  4. 16 CFR 453.2(b)(3) The outer burial container price list, offered before showing containers
  5. 16 CFR 453.4(b)(1) A provider may not condition furnishing one funeral good or service on the purchase of another, and may not charge a fee for goods bought elsewhere
  6. 16 CFR 453.1 Cash advance item: anything obtained from a third party and paid for by the provider on your behalf