We Checked 56 UK Funeral Directors’ Websites for the Price List the Law Requires

When someone dies, families often choose a funeral director within a day or two. Comparing prices in that time is hard.

That is why the Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA, the UK’s competition regulator) made a rule. Every funeral director must show the same short price list, in the same format, so families can compare like with like.

The rule is five years old. We wanted to know whether a family can actually find that list.

What the law asks for

The Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021 covers England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Article 3 says a funeral director with a website must show its Standardised Price List there:

• as a PDF titled “Standardised Price List”
• on a page no more than one click from the homepage
• with the link “prominently labelled on the homepage”

The list gives a price for six set items: paperwork, collecting the person who has died, care before the funeral, a basic coffin, viewing, and the hearse. It adds them up to one total, the attended funeral price. It also gives the price of an unattended funeral, where nobody goes to the burial or cremation.

These are the funeral director’s own charges. Crematorium and burial fees come on top. That is why these figures are lower than the national averages you may have seen. SunLife’s Cost of Dying report 2026 puts a simple attended funeral at £3,828 including those third-party fees.

The CMA said in January 2023 that over 100 funeral directors, around 5% of providers, appeared not to be following the transparency rules.

What we did

On 31 October 2026 we searched for funeral directors in 12 towns across all four UK nations. We took firms in the order they appeared, up to six per town, and kept only those with their own website. For each one we recorded:

1. whether the homepage had a link labelled with prices that led to the list in one click
2. whether the list was a PDF
3. the attended funeral total and the unattended prices
4. any date shown on the list

We read every price twice with our page-reading tool, or read it on screen in a browser and checked that the six items added up to the total. Four firms were left out because their websites could not be reached or read. Four more could not be fully checked and are counted as “could not tell”, never as “no”.

The full method and its limits are at the end of this page.

Finding one: most independents make the list easy to find

Of the 31 independent and smaller-group funeral directors we could assess, 26 had a link on the homepage, labelled with prices, that led straight to the list or to a page holding it.

Many used plain labels: “Prices”, “Funeral Pricing”, “Our Prices”, or simply “Standardised Price List”. A family could find these in seconds.

Of the other five, four had their list two or more clicks away, including one whose “Price Guide” page did not itself hold the list. The fifth put its list on a branch page reached from a town link, not a price link.

Finding two: the two biggest chains keep the list on branch pages

The two largest UK funeral groups worked differently, and the same way in every town.

Co-op Funeralcare. The national homepage had no link to a price list when we checked it in a browser. Each branch has its own page, reached through “Find a funeral home” and a town search. Every branch page we opened, 10 in 10 towns, had a clearly labelled “Standardised Price List” PDF.

Dignity. On a first visit the national homepage showed no price list link. Once a branch has been chosen, the homepage shows that branch’s name and a “Standardised price list” link. All 11 Dignity lists we reached were PDFs on branch pages.

We call this the branch-page gap: the list exists and is properly labelled, but a family starting at the brand’s homepage has to pick a branch before they can see a price.

Whether a branch page counts as the “homepage” under the Order is a legal question. We have not answered it, and we make no claim that either group is breaking the rule. Either group is welcome to send us its view, and we will publish it here.

Finding three: the same funeral costs very different amounts

Because every list prices the same six items, the totals can be compared directly. Across the 50 lists that showed a total, the attended funeral ranged from £1,150 to £3,985. The middle figure was £2,620.

Funeral director’s charges only, as printed on each firm’s Standardised Price List, read 31 October 2026. Small samples per town: these are the lists we read, not town averages.

The cheapest lists in our sample mostly came from independents. Their middle figure was £2,095, against £2,795 for the Dignity branches we read. With 21 and 11 lists, that is a description of this sample, not a national comparison.

Finding four: same Co-op, different town

Co-op Funeralcare’s lists use the same wording and the same basic coffin everywhere. The coffin was £345 and viewing £25 at all 10 branches. The unattended funeral was £1,495 at all 10.

The attended funeral was not the same. The difference sat in four items: paperwork, collecting the person who has died, care before the funeral, and the hearse.

Dignity’s lists showed the same pattern. On the five Dignity lists we read on screen, the coffin was £250 and viewing £5 every time, and the totals ran from £2,695 in Newcastle to £3,595 in Croydon. Across all 11 Dignity lists, the lowest was £1,995 in Birmingham.

Finding five: some lists are out of date or incomplete

• 3 lists carried a 2024 or 2025 label, in the title or the file name. The Order does not say lists must be dated, so an old date may simply be an old label. But a family cannot tell.
• 3 lists were web pages rather than PDFs. The Order asks for a PDF titled “Standardised Price List”.
• 1 list printed the six item prices but no attended total. The total is the one number the list exists to give.

What this means for families

What this means for funeral directors

Your price list is now a comparison tool, whether you like it or not. A family can set yours next to three others in minutes.

The simple test: open your homepage on a phone. Can you reach the list in one tap, from a link that says “prices”? If not, fix that first. It is free, and it is what the Order asks for.

Then check the date on the PDF. A list that says 2024 tells a family your prices may have changed, even if they have not.

If you want to see how your website looks to families and to AI assistants, the free Whito Visibility Check takes about twenty seconds, with no email needed. Our funeral cost transparency guide covers what else to publish.

Method and limits

• Date. Every website was read on 31 October 2026.
• Towns. Birmingham, Bristol, Croydon, Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich and Plymouth (England); Cardiff and Swansea (Wales); Edinburgh and Glasgow (Scotland); Belfast (Northern Ireland).
• Sample. Up to six firms per town, taken in the order web search showed them, keeping only firms with their own website. 60 firms were found. 4 were left out because their websites could not be reached or read (two web addresses did not exist). Swansea (2), Glasgow (4), Croydon (4), and Belfast, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Plymouth (5 each) came up short of six because many local firms had no website we could find. The sample leans towards firms with stronger websites.
• Chains. For Co-op Funeralcare we read the first branch its own search showed in each town. Each Dignity branch was the one that came up in search, or the first branch on Dignity’s own town page.
• The one-click test. We counted a firm only if its homepage had a link labelled with prices that led to the list, or to a page holding it, in one click.
• Prices. Taken only from each firm’s own price list. Each was read twice by our page-reading tool with matching results, or read on screen in a browser with the six items adding up to the printed total. Mortons in Birmingham lists seven items, including a separate crematorium transport line; its total includes all seven.
• “Could not tell”. 4 firms could not be fully assessed (a group website that did not reach a branch list, and pages our tools could not read). They are left out of the counts, never counted as “no”.
• What this is not. It is not a legal assessment, not a ranking, and not a measure of the whole UK market. Prices change, and a list can be correct on one day and out of date the next.

Evidence for every firm (page text, browser screenshots of each PDF read on screen, and the full data file) is kept by Whito. The firm-level file is available on request through Whito Data.

Common questions

Do funeral directors have to publish their prices online?

Yes. Under the CMA’s Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021, a funeral director with a website must show a Standardised Price List as a PDF on a page no more than one click from the homepage, with a clearly labelled link. On 31 October 2026, 26 of 31 independent and smaller-group funeral directors Whito could assess did this from their own homepage.

How much does a funeral director charge for a basic funeral?

Across 50 Standardised Price Lists Whito read on 31 October 2026, the attended funeral, funeral director’s charges only, ranged from £1,150 to £3,985, with a middle figure of £2,620. Crematorium or burial fees are extra.

Why can’t I see Co-op or Dignity prices on their homepage?

On a first visit, neither national homepage showed a price list link when Whito checked on 31 October 2026. Both groups put each branch’s price list on that branch’s own page. Choose a branch first and the Standardised Price List is clearly linked. Whito calls this the branch-page gap.

Is the Co-op unattended funeral the same price everywhere?

At all 10 Co-op Funeralcare branches Whito read on 31 October 2026, the unattended funeral was £1,495. The attended funeral varied from £2,195 in Glasgow to £2,995 in Croydon.

Sources

• CMA, The Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021
• CMA, compliance checklist for funeral directors
• CMA, Funeral costs lower for bereaved families following CMA Order (27 January 2023)
• SunLife, Cost of Dying Report 2026
• Whito original research: 56 UK funeral director websites, all read on 31 October 2026.

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