Cost comparison of drinking at home vs at bars.

Alcohol at bars costs 3-5x the home equivalent. Pint of lager 6 in pub, 1-2 equivalent in can at home. Glass of wine 8 in restaurant, 1-2 from bottle at home. Cocktail 12 at bar, 3-5 ingredients at home. The markup covers venue, service, and social context.

Over a year, 10 drinks/week at 6/drink is 3,120/year on bar alcohol alone. Same drinks at home cost 700-1,000. 2,100-2,400 annual difference. Over a decade at 7% compound, 35,000-40,000 opportunity cost.

The non-financial value of bar drinking (socialising, atmosphere, specific venues) is real and personal. The calculator surfaces the financial cost so the trade-off is conscious. Many people find a mixed approach (most home, occasional bar) meets social needs while dramatically reducing total cost.

How to use it

Input weekly drinks bought at bars, average bar drink cost, and home equivalent cost per drink (supermarket price divided by servings). The tool shows annual cost of each option and difference.

What the result means

Bar annual cost is direct alcohol spending. Home cost for equivalent consumption shows what same drinks would cost. Difference is the premium paid for bar drinking — often 1,500-3,000/year for regular drinkers.

Run it with sensible defaults

Using drinks per week at bars of 8, bar cost per drink of 6, home cost per drink of 1.5, the calculation works out to 1,872.00. Nudge the inputs toward your own situation and the output recalculates instantly. The defaults are meant as a starting point, not a recommendation.

The levers in this calculation

The inputs — Drinks Per Week at Bars, Bar Cost Per Drink, and Home Cost Per Drink — do not pull with equal force. Two inputs usually tip the answer one way or the other. Identify which ones matter most by flipping each value past a round threshold and watching whether the winning option changes.

How the math works

Weekly drinks × 52 weeks × cost difference between bar and home. The working is transparent — you can verify every step yourself in the formula section below. No black box, no opaque "proprietary model".

What the bill doesn't show

Standing charges, discounts, and usage tiers all blur the effective rate. The calculation here backs out the total so you're comparing apples to apples across providers, regardless of how each one packages the price.

What this doesn't capture

Usage varies month-to-month; tariffs change; discounts come and go. The figure here is a clean baseline — your actual annual bill will fluctuate around it. Use the calculation to benchmark providers, not as a prediction of a specific bill.