What does weed cost you a year?
Most people know exactly what they hand over each time. Almost nobody knows
the yearly number, because nobody sits down and multiplies it out. That's
the bit this does: tell it what you pay and how long that lasts, and it
works out the cost a day, a week, every four weeks and a year — plus what
each joint and each gram is costing you.
It's free, there's nothing to sign up for, and your answers are worked out
in your browser. They're never sent to us or stored on our servers.
How it's worked out
Two numbers do nearly all the work — what you pay, and how long it lasts.
- Cost a day = what you pay ÷ days it lasts
- Cost a week = cost a day × 7
- Cost a year = cost a day × 365
- Cost a joint = what you pay ÷ (joints a day × days it lasts)
- Cost a gram = what you pay ÷ grams you get
A year is always 365 days here, never 52 weeks. Fifty-two weeks is 364
days, and that missing day quietly shaves a few pounds off every annual
figure. Nothing gets rounded part-way through a sum either — rounding
happens only at the point a number is shown to you. Open
“How did you work that out?” on the results and every step is
there with your own numbers in it.
UK street prices, and what they work out at per gram
These are street prices — not prescription or dispensary
prices, which are a different market entirely. They move with strain,
quality, availability and area, so treat them as the usual shape of it
rather than a fixed list.
| What you buy | Price | Cost a gram |
|---|
| A gram tenner bag | £10 | £10.00 |
| An eighth 3g | £25 | £8.33 |
| A quarter 7g | £50 | £7.14 |
| A half ounce 14g | £90 | £6.43 |
| An ounce 28g | £140 | £5.00 |
The discount is steeper than it looks. An ounce works out at half
the price per gram of a tenner bag — £5 against £10. Someone
getting through a gram a day pays £3,650 a year buying by
the gram, and £1,825 buying by the ounce. Same weed, same
amount, £1,825 a year of difference in nothing but the size you buy it in.
That only holds if the price actually came down with the weight, mind. A
dear ounce can work out no better per gram than a quarter, and you wouldn't
spot it without doing the sum — which is the sum this does.
On the eighth: an eighth of an ounce is 3.5g, but 3g is what usually turns
up. The prices say the same thing — at a genuine 3.5g an eighth would cost
£7.14 a gram, exactly what a quarter costs, and a discount ladder with a
flat step in it isn't a discount ladder. Worth weighing, if you can.
What different habits add up to
Same formula, 365 days, nothing clever. Buying by the gram at £10, the first
column doubles as grams a week — £30 a week is three grams. The last column
is what the same money could grow to if it were paid into an investment
monthly instead, assuming a 5% return a year.
| A week | A year | Invested, 10 years |
|---|
| £10 | £521 | ~£6,700 |
| £20 | £1,043 | ~£13,500 |
| £30 | £1,564 | ~£20,200 |
| £50 | £2,607 | ~£33,700 |
| £100 | £5,214 | ~£67,500 |
Nothing in that table is an average or a recommendation — it's arithmetic
you can find your own row in. The investment column is an illustration, not
a forecast: investments can go down as well as up.
Questions people ask
How much does the average person spend on weed a year?
There's no reliable UK figure to quote — it isn't the sort of spending
anyone fills in on a survey honestly. The arithmetic is easy enough though.
At the usual £10 a gram, a gram a week comes to £521 a year,
a gram every other day is £1,825, and a gram a day is
£3,650. Your own number is the only one worth knowing,
which is why this asks rather than assumes.
How much does a gram of weed cost in the UK?
Ten pounds is the usual going rate. It moves about with area, quality and
how much you buy at once, but £10 a gram is the number most people in the
UK would give you.
That's the single-gram price, and it's the most expensive way to buy — the
per-gram cost falls as the amount goes up, down to about £5 a gram by the
ounce.
Worth knowing too: a tenner bag isn't always a full gram. If yours is
nearer 0.8g, you're paying £12.50 a gram, not £10 — and
that gap is invisible until somebody works it out. Put in what you actually
get and what you actually pay, and the calculator gives you your real cost
per gram.
How much is an eighth of weed in the UK?
Around £25 street price, for what's usually about 3g —
roughly £8.33 a gram, against £10 buying single grams. See the price table
above for how the rest of the amounts compare.
How much is an ounce of weed in the UK?
About £140 street price for 28g, which is
£5 a gram — half what the same weed costs bought a gram at
a time. It's the biggest single saving on the list, and the reason the
calculator asks what you get as well as what you pay.
How do you work out the cost per joint?
Joints a day × days it lasts gives you roughly how many joints came out of
that purchase. What you paid, divided by that, is the cost per joint. It's
labelled an estimate on purpose — it rests on a remembered number, and
people tend to under-count.
How much weed is in a joint?
If you answer the grams question and the joints question, the calculator
tells you what yours work out at, rather than guessing on your behalf. It
divides the grams you bought by the number of joints you got out of it.
That's a much more honest answer than any general figure, because it's
yours.
Is the weed cost calculator accurate?
The arithmetic is exact and the working is shown. The answers going in are
estimates, though, and the usual direction of error is underestimating —
the forgotten extra bit on a Friday, the one you didn't pay for last month.
If the yearly figure looks too high, the honest check is whether the
weekly figure next to it looks about right.
Do you keep my answers?
No. Every sum runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent to us or
stored on our servers. There's no login, no account and no email box. The
only thing kept on your device is a note that you confirmed you're 18 or
over, so you're not asked again.
Visits are counted — how many people landed on the page, and
roughly where they came from. That's Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets
no cookies, doesn't follow you to other sites and never sees a thing you
typed. It's the difference between a shop counting people through the door
and reading their shopping list.
Why does it show an investment figure?
Because £2,607 a year is an abstract number and it helps to have something
to hold it against. It's not advice and it isn't a nudge to quit — it's the
same money, shown a second way, and what you do with it is entirely up to
you.
Does it include tobacco, papers and everything else?
Not yet. Right now it costs the weed itself. Tobacco is the next big
addition, and papers, pickup costs and munchies are on the list behind it —
all optional, so the quick version stays quick.