The roasters with the lowest per-kilo prices on Bean Clarity have median prices from £15.00 to £22.20 a kilo, against a market median of £38.00. This compares 424 UK and Irish roasters pricing in pounds, each with at least 5 priced coffees in stock, measured on the cheapest bag each coffee is sold in and worked out per kilo.
It is one slice of the price picture. What speciality coffee should cost walks through the rest, from the median to what a bigger bag saves.
The 15 roasters with the lowest median per kilo
| Roaster | Median per kilo | Cheapest coffee per kilo | Priced coffees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon Roastery | £15.00/kg | £15.00/kg | 9 |
| Insurgence Coffee | £16.50/kg | £16.50/kg | 15 |
| Hawkins Coffee | £17.50/kg | £15.25/kg | 15 |
| Spiller & Tait | £17.99/kg | £16.92/kg | 12 |
| Lalico Coffee | £18.09/kg | £15.57/kg | 22 |
| Terra Coffee | £18.50/kg | £14.50/kg | 10 |
| Blindman Coffee | £19.95/kg | £18.75/kg | 16 |
| Teifi Coffee | £19.98/kg | £19.45/kg | 6 |
| White Rose Coffee Roasters | £20.05/kg | £17.58/kg | 37 |
| Cafe Rico | £20.50/kg | £15.60/kg | 11 |
| Deluxe Coffeeworks | £20.50/kg | £12.00/kg | 8 |
| Kokebi Coffee | £21.45/kg | £20.80/kg | 9 |
| Herbert and Ward | £22.00/kg | £17.00/kg | 57 |
| Pollards Coffee | £22.00/kg | £18.00/kg | 30 |
| Smith's Coffee | £22.20/kg | £13.50/kg | 131 |
Ordered by price alone, on the cheapest bag each roaster sells. It says nothing about which roaster is better: Bean Clarity does not rank coffee by quality.
Roasters with fewer than 5 priced coffees in stock are left out, so a single listing cannot stand in for a range.
Why a roaster can be cheap per kilo
The catalogue shows three things behind a low per-kilo figure, none of them a judgement. Bigger bags: the bag, the label and the postage cost about the same whatever goes inside, so a kilo bag spreads them over more coffee, which why a bigger bag costs less puts a figure on. Blends and espresso ranges, which roasters often sell in 1 kg bags. And fewer single farm lots, which tend to be sold in small bags at higher prices. 93% of the cheapest bags in the table above are 1 kg or larger.
What a low price does not tell you
The price says what a kilo costs, not how the coffee tastes or how it was sourced. Some of these roasters state the farm on every coffee and some state none: the count of coffees whose roaster names the farm shows how uneven that is across the whole catalogue. For coffee under a price ceiling rather than by roaster, see speciality coffee for under £25 a kilo.
How to read these numbers
The market median is £38.00 a kilo, and the cheapest priced coffee is £10.79. Every figure is read from the roaster’s own shop, and the method page explains each step. For the whole price picture, from the median to what a bigger bag saves, read what speciality coffee should cost.
No roaster can pay to change a figure or the order of a list; any paid placement is labelled Sponsored.