🕊️What a Funeral Costs

The two national medians

• Funeral with viewing and burial

  $8,300 — the survey median

  What that figure does not include

  • Cemetery costs, including the grave space or crypt
  • A monument or grave marker
  • An outer burial container or vault, where the cemetery requires one
  • Cash advance items the funeral home buys on your behalf, such as flowers, obituary notices, clergy honoraria and death certificates

  Those are bought separately, usually from the cemetery rather than the funeral home, and they can add thousands of dollars. The cemetery has its own price list; ask for it.

• Funeral with cremation

  $6,280 — the survey median

  What that figure does not include

  • An urn, unless the funeral home includes one in the package quoted
  • Cemetery or columbarium niche costs, if the cremated remains are interred
  • Cash advance items the funeral home buys on your behalf, such as flowers, obituary notices, clergy honoraria and death certificates

  Those are bought separately, usually from the cemetery rather than the funeral home, and they can add thousands of dollars. The cemetery has its own price list; ask for it.

What the Funeral Rule entitles you to

• A written price list, yours to keep

  Every funeral home must give you an itemized General Price List when you visit and talk about arrangements. You keep it. Comparing two or three of them side by side is the whole technique, and it is where most of the money is saved.

• Prices over the telephone, without giving your name

  A funeral home must answer price questions by telephone and may not require you to identify yourself first. That means the comparison can be done from a kitchen table rather than in a showroom on the worst week of a family's life.

• Only the goods and services you want

  You may buy items individually rather than as a package. A funeral home may not refuse to handle a casket or urn you bought somewhere else, and may not charge you a fee for handling it.

The rule itself is written and enforced by the Federal Trade Commission: the FTC Funeral Rule ↗. The FTC writes the rule but publishes no prices, which is why the figures above come from an industry survey instead.

Which median most families need

In 2025, about 63.4% of Americans were cremated and 31.6% were buried, and the survey projects cremation reaching about 82.3% by 2045. Cremation is now the ordinary choice rather than the unusual one, which matters when a family is being shown options in an order that starts with the most expensive.

Stored with the figures

• •This page is education only. The Wise Senior does not sell, quote, broker or refer final expense insurance, burial insurance or preneed policies, and takes no referral fee from anyone who does. These figures exist so you can walk into a funeral home already knowing what the middle of the market looks like.
• •The FTC Funeral Rule gives you the right to a written, itemized General Price List that is yours to keep when you visit a funeral home, to price information over the telephone without giving your name, and to buy only the goods and services you want rather than a package. A funeral home may not refuse to handle a casket or urn you bought somewhere else, and may not charge you a fee for doing so.
• •These are national medians from a survey of funeral homes, not an official government rate and not a quote. Half of funeral homes charge more and half charge less, and prices vary widely between neighboring towns. Ask three funeral homes for their price lists before you decide anything.
• •The burial median does not include cemetery costs, a grave marker, or a vault. Those are bought separately, usually from the cemetery rather than the funeral home, and they can add thousands of dollars. Ask the cemetery for its own price list.
• •NFDA publishes the two package medians above on its public statistics page. The line-by-line breakdown of what makes up those medians (the basic services fee, embalming, use of facilities, hearse, casket and so on) is published only inside its member-only General Price List Report, so this pack carries no itemized figures. The itemization you should rely on is the General Price List of the specific funeral home you are talking to, which is the document the Funeral Rule entitles you to.
• •Prices were collected for 2023 and are the most recent NFDA has published. Treat them as a floor for planning purposes.