Pub · draught lagerShop · pint-equivalent
Drink · Wages · Cost of living
£4.83
a Pint
This analysis covers January 2015 to June 2026. In January 2015, a pint of lager in a British pub cost £3.40. Ten years later it cost £4.83. The cash price rose by half — yet the wage that buys it rose faster, so in minutes of work the pint is actually lighter on the wallet than it was a decade ago.
Sebastian Szopa · 2015–2026 · 6 min read
At a
glance.
The pub price, the shelf price, the gap between them, and the wage that buys the round.
£0
Average pint of draught lager in a pub · Jan 2025 · last of the classic series
£0
Estimated average pub pint · Jun 2026 · the £5 pint has arrived
£0
Pint-equivalent of lager bought in a supermarket · Jun 2026
0
How many times more a pint costs in the pub than on the shelf
The bar, and
the shelf.
Monthly average price of a pint in a pub (draught lager) versus the pint-equivalent bought in a shop. One honest axis — pounds per pint — so the 3-to-1 gap reads at a glance. Toggle each line.
The signal
The pub line and the shelf line both climbed. But they stayed three widths apart the whole way — the room, the glass, the service, priced in.
0
× — the pub premium over the supermarket shelf · Jun 2026
The pay packet
outran the pint.
The counter-intuitive part: put the pint next to the wage that buys it, and the story flips. The National Living Wage rose faster than the pint, so every year a pint cost a little less in working time. The chart shows minutes of minimum-wage work per pub pint — falling across the decade.
Scene 01
· The climb.
Scene 01 · The climb2019 — 2026
The pint crossed
five pounds.
From £3.73 at the end of 2019, the pub pint climbed through pandemic closures and higher energy bills to £4.70 in 2023, £4.82 in 2024 — and past £5 in 2026. The barstool got dearer far faster than the supermarket aisle.
+37% since Dec 2019 · vs +27% on the shelf
The human cost · three to one
The same beer,
three widths apart.
3.1×
In a pub, a pint of lager costs about £5. Bought in a supermarket, the same beer works out at about £1.65 a pint. The difference is not the beer — it is the room, the glass, the staff, and the tax on a sold pint. Drink at home and the round gets dramatically cheaper; drink out and the pint buys the pub too.
Pub · draught lager≈ £5.11
Shop · pint-equivalent≈ £1.65
Pub premium≈ 3.1×
Pub pint · Dec 2019£3.73
Rise 2015 → 2025+42.1%
Minutes of work per pint · 2015 → 202431 → 25
Three signals
to take home.
What a decade of pint prices actually tells us.
1 · The anchor
The cash price rose about half.
£3.40 in 2015 to £4.83 in Jan 2025 — a 42% rise in the pub pint, and the £5 mark passed in 2026. The shelf rose a little less.
2 · The mechanism
The pay packet outran the pint.
Measured in working time, a pint got cheaper: 31 minutes in 2015, 25 in 2024. Wages rose faster than beer — the affordability story is the opposite of the headline.
3 · The weight
The premium is the structure.
The pub is ~3× the shelf and stays that wide because the room, the glass, the staff and the duty on a sold pint are built into the price. The gap is a choice, not a shock.
Sources and
method.
Two official series, one chain, one anchor. Every figure is dated and sourced.
Data sources
ONS — RPI avg price, draught lager, per pint (pub)CZMS · pence · monthly
ONS — Shopping Prices Comparison Toollager draught £ · 2018–2026
ONS — CPI beer index (off-trade)D7DI · 2015=100 · monthly
ONS — AWE whole-economy weekly payKAB9 · £ · monthly
GOV.UK — National Living Wage2015–2026 · Apr-2026 £12.71
Peak pub pint anchors£4.82 (2024) · £5.11 est (2026)
Method note
How to read this?
The pub series is the ONS CZMS average price of draught lager, in pence, monthly 2015-01 → 2025-01 (the ONS discontinued the classic average-price series in Feb 2025). Missing COVID months are linearly interpolated for a continuous line.
- The pub series is chained to the ONS Shopping Prices tool ("Lager – draught") at Jan 2025 with a continuity factor (×1.081) so the £5-plus 2026 numbers continue the same level without a visible jump.
- The shop series is the CPI beer index (D7DI) anchored to the tool's off-trade lager price (£14.65 per 5000 ml at Dec 2025 = £1.66 per 568 ml pint).
- "Minutes of work" = pub pint price ÷ NLW hourly rate × 60. "Pints per week" = AWE weekly pay ÷ pub pint price.
- No inflation deflation; figures are nominal. The 2026 pub pint is an estimate from the chained series.
More from
the library.
One series, one method — each analysis turns a policy decision into a number that lands in someone's wallet.
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