Funeral Costs Item by Item, With a 1984 Federal Rule on Your Side

A funeral with a viewing and a burial had a national median price of $8,300 in 2023, according to the National Funeral Directors Association’s survey of its members’ price lists. A funeral with a viewing and a cremation came to $6,280. Neither figure includes a cemetery plot, a headstone or flowers.

You don’t have to buy either total as a package. A federal rule from 1984 lets you price each piece on its own, keep what you want and leave the rest off.

Burial or cremation, at the median

The cremation figure isn’t a bare cremation. NFDA’s $6,280 assumes you hold a viewing and a ceremony first, then adds a $400 cremation fee, a $160 cremation container and a $295 urn.

National medians from NFDA’s 2023 General Price List study, which drew answers from 809 member funeral homes. Cemetery charges sit outside all three bars.

A burial usually needs one more piece. Many cemeteries require an outer container around the casket, and NFDA lists a separate median of $1,695 for a vault, which brings the burial total to $9,995.

If the cemetery you have in mind has that rule, plan from $9,995.

NFDA’s December 2023 release says the burial median climbed 5.8% from $7,848 in 2021, while overall inflation ran 13.6% over the same two years. That 2023 survey is the latest NFDA price study this guide could verify.

The charges on the price list

NFDA builds its burial median from 10 lines, and you’ll find each one on a funeral home’s General Price List. Here they are with the 2023 national median for each. Medians for single items don’t add up exactly to the $8,300 median for the whole funeral.

Line item	2023 median	Can you decline it?
Basic services fee	$2,459	Usually not
Moving the body to the funeral home	$395	Yes
Embalming	$845	In most cases
Other preparation, such as dressing	$295	Yes
Staff and rooms for a viewing	$475	Yes
Staff and rooms for the ceremony	$550	Yes
Hearse	$375	Yes
Service car or van	$175	Yes
Printed memorial package	$195	Yes
Metal casket	$2,500	Yes, or buy one elsewhere

The basic services fee, $2,459 at the median, is the one charge most homes won’t let you turn down. The FTC says it covers planning, permits, copies of the death certificate, notices, holding the body and coordinating with the cemetery or crematory.

If you choose direct cremation or immediate burial, the home has to fold this fee into the single price it quotes, so you shouldn’t see it twice.

Embalming and the services in between

Embalming, at $845, is the line you’re most likely to assume you must buy. According to the FTC, no state law requires routine embalming for every death, and refrigeration is usually an acceptable alternative. Many homes still insist on it before a public viewing. Ask whether you can hold a private family viewing without it.

The $295 for dressing and other preparation tends to follow the same choice.

The services in the middle of the list are where you have the most room to trim. A viewing costs $475 at the median, the ceremony $550, the hearse $375, the trip to the funeral home $395, the service car $175 and the printed cards $195. A memorial service at your place of worship or at home, held after the burial or cremation, avoids the funeral home’s charges for its rooms and staff. On the price list, check whether the home prices a graveside service separately from a chapel ceremony.

Casket and vault prices

The metal casket, $2,500 at the median, is often the single most expensive item you’ll buy for a traditional funeral, the FTC says. The agency puts an average casket at slightly more than $2,000 and notes that some mahogany, bronze or copper models sell for as much as $10,000.

The average and the top price come from the FTC’s consumer guide to funeral costs; the median comes from NFDA’s 2023 survey. The FTC notes that pine caskets cost less but are rarely on display.

Outer containers aren’t required by state law anywhere in the U.S., per the FTC, though many cemeteries want one so the grave doesn’t sink. A grave liner covers only the top and sides of the casket and satisfies many cemeteries’ requirements, so ask the cemetery whether a liner will do. A vault surrounds the whole casket and costs more.

The cemetery sends its own bill

Everything above comes from the funeral home. The cemetery bills you separately for the plot, for opening and closing the grave, for setting the marker and sometimes for long-term upkeep, called perpetual care. The FTC says opening a grave usually costs hundreds of dollars, with more to fill it in, and that a grave liner runs several hundred.

A quiet cemetery on a grassy slope in late-afternoon autumn light, with plain flat grey markers set into the grass, a honey-wood bench under a maple with golden leaves, a hedge and distant hills, and peach flowers in a teal vase beside one marker. — *Perpetual care is sometimes built into the price of a plot and sometimes charged as a separate fee, so the FTC suggests settling which before you buy.*

The Funeral Rule doesn’t reach a cemetery unless it also sells funeral goods and services. Ask the cemetery for its own written prices.

If the person who died was a veteran, look at the national cemeteries before you buy a plot. Veterans can be buried in one for free, with a marker. The FTC says you won’t pay there for opening or closing the grave, for a vault or liner, or for setting the marker. Spouses and dependent children qualify for a plot and marker too.

What moves your total

Where you live moves the median by about $1,500 to $1,600. NFDA’s regional figures put a burial funeral at $8,985 in New England and $7,390 in the Mountain states, with cremation funerals at $7,023 and $5,505 in the same two regions.

The lowest and highest of NFDA’s nine regions in 2023. NFDA’s Mountain region covers eight states, from Arizona and New Mexico north to Montana.

Your choice of service moves it most. Direct cremation and immediate burial happen soon after death, with no viewing, so you won’t need embalming. In NFDA’s cremation median, embalming, other preparation, the viewing and the ceremony add up to $2,165. A direct cremation leaves all four off your bill.

Timing plays a part as well, since some states require embalming or refrigeration if the body isn’t buried or cremated within a set time, the FTC notes. A service you hold weeks later can bring a preservation charge that a quicker one wouldn’t.

Your rights under the Funeral Rule

The FTC’s Funeral Rule took effect on April 30, 1984, and was revised in 1994. In practice, it gives you these rights at any funeral home:

Prices by phone, without giving your name, address or phone number first.
A General Price List that you can keep, once you sit down to talk in person.
A casket price list and an outer container price list before you see the merchandise.
An itemized written statement of what you chose, with each price, before you pay.
Any casket or urn you bought elsewhere, accepted with no handling fee and without you there when it arrives.

A still life on a cushioned window seat: a phone lying face-down next to a small pad of blank paper and a pencil, a cream knit cardigan draped over the cushion, a teal pillow and a peach pillow, with rain on the window glass. — *Funeral homes must quote prices over the phone, but the rule doesn’t require them to mail or email a price list. Many will if you ask.*

A home may still offer you a package, but only next to its itemized prices, never in place of them.

After its January 2025 inflation adjustment, the FTC’s guide for funeral providers lists penalties of up to $53,088 per violation. The rule doesn’t cover separate casket or monument dealers, so you’ll want those prices in writing too.

Sealer caskets don’t preserve

Metal caskets are often sold to you as gasketed, protective or sealer models. The FTC says these terms mean a rubber gasket or similar feature that slows water from getting in and prevents rust. The Funeral Rule forbids any claim that these features preserve the body indefinitely, because they don’t. In the FTC’s words, they “just add to the cost of the casket.”

Funeral homes face a similar limit on vaults. It’s illegal for a provider to tell you a vault will keep out water or dirt if that isn’t true, and neither a vault nor a liner is designed to stop decomposition.

Watch the cash advance items too, such as flowers, obituary notices and clergy. A home that adds its own fee on top of what it pays the vendor has to tell you in writing, though it doesn’t have to say how much.

Social Security pays a one-time lump sum of $255 when an insured worker dies. A September 1954 amendment to the Social Security Act set that cap, and Congress hasn’t raised it since.

You can get it if you’re the surviving spouse and lived in the same household, or otherwise if you’re a spouse or child already eligible for survivor benefits.

The payment beside three NFDA 2023 medians. The law pays the smaller of $255 or three times the worker’s basic monthly benefit amount.

The payment is smaller than any one of those charges, and you have two years from the death to apply for it.

When you make the first calls, you don’t owe anyone your name, and you don’t have to decide anything on the phone. Ask each home for its price for direct cremation, for immediate burial and for its basic services fee, then write the three numbers for each home on the back of an envelope.