How we measure funeral costs

Under the FTC Funeral Rule, every funeral home in the US must give consumers an itemized general price list (GPL). Those itemized prices — for direct cremation, a traditional funeral, burial services, and the other lines a family actually pays for — are the raw material for our reports. We compile the per-service prices for named providers and attach each one to its real city and state, so a number in a report always traces back to actual providers in that place, never to a national guess.

For each service in a city or state we report the median — the middle price — rather than the mean. In a small market a single unusually high or low provider can badly distort an average; the median resists that and better reflects what a typical family pays. Where we can, we also show the low–high range so you can see the spread, and we compare the local median like-for-like against the national typical band so you know whether an area runs above or below the rest of the country.

We would rather show nothing than show a number we can't stand behind. Two hard gates enforce that:

• A price for a service is only published when we hold at least 3 priced providersfor it. Each row states the exact count it's based on.
• A full city cost report is only published when the city has at least 10 providers. Thinner places don't get a report at all.

Anything below those thresholds is excluded rather than estimated, so a published figure is never propped up by a guess.

Prices change, so every report shows an “updated” date reflecting the freshest price behind its figures, and that same date feeds the report's structured data. If you spot a price that looks wrong, tell us — see how we handle accuracy and corrections in our editorial standards.