Casket Prices: What They Cost and Why the Markup Is Legal

Nobody comparison-shops a casket the way they comparison-shop a car, and the industry knows it. You buy one in an hour, once or twice in your life, usually within days of a death. This story gives you the real numbers, verified in July 2026, and the federal rights that come with them.

The casket is usually the single most expensive item on a funeral bill. The National Funeral Directors Association's most recent price study puts the median price of a metal burial casket at $2,500.^[5] The Federal Trade Commission tells consumers that the average casket costs slightly more than $2,000, and that mahogany, bronze, and copper models sell for as much as $10,000.^[1]

That one box sits inside a median bill of $8,300 for a funeral with viewing and burial, or $6,280 for a funeral with viewing and cremation.^[4] For the full bill broken down line by line, read How Much Does a Funeral Cost in 2026?

Now the retail side. Titan Casket, one of the largest direct-to-consumer casket sellers, currently lists its 20-gauge steel Orion series at $1,199 to $1,599. Its main casket page carries 297 models in 20-gauge steel and 62 in heavier 18-gauge, with military and premium designs topping out near $2,499.^[6] That is $900 to $1,300 below the NFDA's funeral home median for the same category of box. The FTC's own shopping checklist points out that you can buy a casket from a third-party dealer or website instead of the funeral home.^[1] Costco and Amazon sell them too, and like the specialty retailers, they ship straight to the funeral home.

The short version: a comparable steel casket sells at retail for roughly half to two-thirds of the showroom price, and federal law says you are allowed to use it.

No law caps what a funeral home can charge for a casket. The FTC Funeral Rule, the only federal regulation aimed at funeral pricing, is a disclosure law, not a price control. It requires the funeral home to hand you a printed casket price list before showing you any caskets. In the FTC's words to funeral homes, consumers "should not first learn of casket prices by entering the casket showroom."^[3]

That is the whole federal scheme: you must be told the price up front. Nothing limits the price itself, and nothing requires the funeral home to tell you what it paid its wholesaler. A funeral home can charge whatever its local market bears, and its customers are grieving, on a deadline, and almost never comparison-shopping. Most people buy the casket in the same building where the body is lying, from the person quoting the price.

Funeral homes will tell you the casket margin subsidizes everything else: the building, the staff, the hearse, the 2 a.m. transfers. That may be true, and it is also not your problem. You are not required to fund their overhead through the casket, because the law lets you bring your own.

Congress and the FTC answered the imbalance not by capping prices but by handing you an exit. We cover the whole regulation in The Funeral Rule: The Federal Law Funeral Homes Hope You've Never Heard Of.

Under the Funeral Rule, three things are settled law:

• You can supply your own casket or urn. The FTC says this directly in its consumer guidance.^[2]
• The funeral home must accept it. It cannot turn away a casket because you bought it somewhere else.^[1]
• No handling fee. The FTC's compliance guide tells funeral homes they "cannot charge an additional fee or surcharge to consumers who purchase a casket elsewhere."^[3]

In practice: order the casket online, give the retailer the funeral home's address, and confirm the delivery date in writing before you schedule the service. If the funeral director discourages the idea, hints at liability problems, or quotes a "receiving" or "handling" charge, that charge is illegal. Say so. If it does not disappear, file a complaint with the FTC and your state funeral board.

One honest caveat: the funeral home's basic services fee still applies. The FTC's compliance guide states that the fee "must be added to the total cost of your funeral arrangements if you provide the casket."^[3] Buying your own box saves you the casket markup, not the service fee.

A coffin is six-sided and tapered, wider at the shoulders and narrower at the feet. A casket is a rectangle, usually with a split lid so the top half opens for viewing.^[7] That is the entire difference. American funeral homes sell caskets almost exclusively, so if you are searching for coffin prices in the United States, casket prices are what you will find. A few retailers, Titan among them, sell tapered coffins as a separate specialty category.^[6]

If you want a viewing followed by cremation, you do not have to buy a casket at all. The FTC's checklist lists renting one from the funeral home as a standard option for the visitation and ceremony, which keeps the purchase price off the bill entirely.^[1] Rental caskets are built for reuse. The body rests in a simple insert inside the shell, and the insert is what goes to the crematory.

The NFDA's 2023 price study did not publish a national median for casket rental, so the price is whatever your funeral home sets. If the funeral home offers rentals, the price belongs on the general price list you are entitled to receive, so get the number in writing before you commit.^[3] For what happens after the viewing, read our guide to the cremation process and its real costs.

No casket preserves a body. Not a $10,000 bronze one, not a "gasketed" steel one, not anything. Federal law prohibits funeral providers from claiming that any funeral good will "delay the natural decomposition of human remains for a long term or an indefinite time," because no product does.^[3]

You will still see metal caskets marketed as "protective," "sealer," or "gasketed." Those words mean a rubber gasket around the lid. The FTC's consumer checklist is blunt about what the gasket buys you: these features "just add to the cost of the casket."^[1] Sellers also cannot claim that a casket or vault will protect the body from water, dirt, or anything else in the grave when that is not true.^[3]

A casket has one job: to hold a body with dignity through a service and a burial. Every dollar past that job is decoration. Decoration is a legitimate thing to want at a funeral. Just know that decoration is what you are paying for.

If you choose direct cremation with no viewing, the funeral home is required to offer an alternative container: an unfinished wood box or a receptacle of fiberboard, pressed wood, or similar material.^[3] The 2023 NFDA median price for one was $160.^[5] It does the job.

Between the $160 container and the $2,500 showroom casket sits a wide middle. Plain pine boxes and biodegradable caskets are sold by the same online retailers that sell steel; Titan lists pine box caskets and an eco-friendly line alongside its metal models.^[6] If the burial itself is the part you want to change, read our complete guide to green burial, which covers biodegradable caskets, shrouds, and cemeteries that skip the concrete vault.

Six rules, all of them backed by the numbers and the law above:

• Get the price lists first. The general price list and the casket price list are yours by federal right, before you see a single casket.^[3]
• Do not pick the box in the room with the boxes. Take the list, step outside, and decide with the numbers in front of you.
• Check one retail price before deciding. Five minutes on a casket retailer's site tells you whether the showroom number is fair.^[6]
• Viewing plus cremation? Ask for the rental price. It exists so that you do not have to buy.^[1]
• Direct cremation? Ask for the alternative container. The funeral home must offer one.^[3]
• Ignore every preservation pitch. The claim is banned because it is false.^[3]

The casket decision is one piece of a hard week. How to Arrange a Funeral walks through the rest of it, step by step.