How much should I pay for coffee beans?
What speciality coffee should cost
Published 5 November 2026. Figures recomputed on every build, checked 6 November 2026.
The short answer
Somewhere around £39.00/kg. Half the speciality coffees priced in pounds cost more than that and half cost less, and the middle 80% of that market sits between £26.00 and £62.00 per kilo. If you are paying inside that band you are paying a normal price, and the difference between £26.00 and £62.00 buys you scarcity and processing far more than it buys you quality.
The mean is £42.98, which is £3.98 higher than the median. That gap is one long tail of competition lots and geishas pulling the average up, and it is exactly why this site quotes medians everywhere. An average price in a market with a tail like this describes almost nobody.
Why per kilo, and not per bag
Because the bag is not a unit. Roasters in this catalogue sell 200 g, 227 g, 250 g, 340 g, 500 g and 1 kg, and a few sell 125 g. A £12 bag might be any of those, so two bag prices side by side tell you nothing at all. It is the single easiest way for a shop to look cheaper than it is, and it does not even require any intent — the industry simply never standardised.
Every price on this site is therefore a price per kilo, taken at the cheapest bag the roaster sells, because that is what a kilo of their coffee actually costs. On most coffees that is the 1 kg bag. Comparisons against similar coffees are a different question and use a different basis: the standard 200 g to 350 g bag, so that every coffee in a cohort is priced on one size and a roaster who sells kilos is not measured against a cohort built from 250 g bags. Where the two differ, a coffee’s own page says so.
The two medians are £39.00/kg at the cheapest bag and £48.00/kg on the standard bag. Both are published, each under a label saying which it is: the price we show · the comparison basis
The bigger bag really is cheaper
Of the coffees sold here in more than one size, the bigger bag is cheaper per kilo on 94% of them, by a median of 20%. The pattern holds right across the catalogue rather than being a few generous roasters, and the reason is not generosity either: the bag, the label and the postage cost roughly the same whatever goes inside.
| Bag size | Coffees | Roasters | £10.00 to £130.00 per kilo | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 g | 163 | 26 | £49.00 | |
| 120 g | 69 | 4 | £56.25 | |
| 125 g | 338 | 22 | £27.28 | |
| 150 g | 76 | 27 | £98.17 | |
| 200 g | 1,102 | 110 | £56.38 | |
| 220 g | 119 | 8 | £43.18 | |
| 225 g | 184 | 17 | £42.22 | |
| 227 g | 371 | 28 | £44.49 | |
| 240 g | 59 | 2 | £49.79 | |
| 250 g | 4,200 | 351 | £47.80 | |
| 300 g | 24 | 3 | £53.17 | |
| 340 g | 41 | 3 | £43.97 | |
| 350 g | 26 | 4 | £50.71 | |
| 400 g | 42 | 8 | £53.13 | |
| 450 g | 55 | 4 | £35.44 | |
| 454 g | 38 | 2 | £33.04 | |
| 480 g | 40 | 1 | £50.00 | |
| 500 g | 1,694 | 144 | £39.00 | |
| 750 g | 29 | 5 | £34.00 | |
| 908 g | 28 | 1 | £30.84 | |
| 1 kg | 4,935 | 402 | £38.00 |
The bar is the middle 80% of each row, from the 10th to the 90th percentile; the tick is the median. Rows with fewer than 20 priced coffees show a count but no figures, because a median of a handful of coffees is one roaster’s pricing. A coffee with more than one bag size is counted under each, so the rows do not sum to the catalogue.
The thing that makes this less of a bargain than it looks is staleness. Coffee is noticeably better in the first month after roasting, and a kilo is four to eight weeks of drinking for most households. Buying a kilo to save 20% and then drinking the last third of it flat is not a saving.
What actually moves the price
Processing method moves it most. These are medians over hundreds of coffees each, so they are not one roaster’s opinion about what a process is worth.
| Process | Coffees | Roasters | £20.00 to £110.00 per kilo | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washed | 2,874 (2,306 priced) | 394 | £40.00 | |
| Natural | 1,183 (831 priced) | 285 | £41.50 | |
| Anaerobic | 483 (328 priced) | 135 | £54.00 | |
| Honey | 289 (222 priced) | 98 | £44.85 | |
| Pulped Natural | 90 (70 priced) | 47 | £34.25 | |
| Wet Hulled | 59 (38 priced) | 32 | £36.38 | |
| Carbonic Maceration | 41 (28 priced) | 21 | £46.25 | |
| Anoxic | 25 | 19 | £55.50 |
The bar is the middle 80% of each row, from the 10th to the 90th percentile; the tick is the median. Rows with fewer than 20 priced coffees show a count but no figures, because a median of a handful of coffees is one roaster’s pricing. A coffee with more than one process is counted under each, so the rows do not sum to the catalogue.
What moves it less than you would expect is traceability. A coffee traced to a named farm has a median of £44.28/kg; one whose roaster states no origin at all has a median of £36.50/kg. That is a gap of £7.78 a kilo — real, but small against the processing spread. Knowing where your coffee came from is, on this evidence, one of the cheapest things you can ask for. The full analysis breaks this down by origin, variety, roast purpose and roaster.
When a cheap bag is a warning
Below about £26.00 a kilo, something is usually different rather than simply better value: an older crop, a blend built for milk, a clearance line, or a shop whose own price list has an error in it. We reject anything that works out below £10 per kilo outright, because at that level it is nearly always a data fault.
One real example, since it is the kind of thing a comparison site should admit to: a blend in this catalogue carried the same £3.40 tag on its 100 g, 227 g and 340 g bags, which made the 340 g look like £10.00 a kilo and put it top of our own cheapest-first list. It was the shop repeating one number, not a bargain. We now believe a repeated price only at the smallest bag it appears on.
The cheapest coffees in stock right now
In stock, below the 10th percentile of £26.00 per kilo at the cheapest bag the roaster sells, cheapest first. Shown because they are cheap, not because they are good — we hold nothing that could tell you whether they are good. A price this low is sometimes a warning about our reader rather than about the coffee: anything here whose name does not read like a bag of roasted coffee is a listing we classified wrongly, and the cheap end is where those collect.
Questions
How much should I pay for speciality coffee beans?
The median across 6,807 priced coffees from 486 UK and Irish roasters is £39.00/kg, taken at the cheapest bag each roaster sells and worked out per kilo — usually the 1 kg bag, because that is what a kilo of their coffee actually costs. The middle 80% runs from £26.00 to £62.00 per kilo. At the median a 250 g bag is about £9.75 and a double espresso costs about £0.70 in beans. Comparisons against similar coffees use the standard 200 g to 350 g bag instead, so that every coffee in a cohort is priced on one size; that median is £48.00/kg. Delivery is not included in any of these figures.
Why compare coffee by the kilo instead of by the bag?
Because bag sizes are not standard. Roasters sell 200 g, 227 g, 250 g, 340 g, 500 g and 1 kg, and a £12 bag can be any of them. Price per kilo is the only figure that lets two coffees be compared at all, which is why every price on this site leads with it.
Is a 1 kg bag of coffee cheaper than four 250 g bags?
Usually. Of the coffees sold here in more than one size, the bigger bag is cheaper per kilo on 94% of them, by a median of 20%. The table of bag sizes on this page shows each size with its own median. The catch is staleness: a kilo is only cheaper if you drink it while it is still good.
Do coffees traced to a single farm cost more?
A little. Coffees traced to a named farm have a median of £44.28/kg per kilo against £36.50/kg for coffees whose origin the roaster never states — a gap of £7.78. That is smaller than most people expect, and smaller than the gap between processing methods.
Is cheap coffee always worse?
Not always, but below about £26.00 per kilo you are usually buying something other than fresh speciality coffee: an older crop, a supermarket-style blend, a clearance bag, or a shop that has made a mistake in its own price list. We reject anything below £10 per kilo outright, because at that level it is almost always a data error rather than a price.