How much does a funeral cost in the United States, read off three providers' own published price lists

How to price a funeral from a general price list rather than a package

1. Ask for the general price list before you discuss anything else. 16 CFR 453.2(b)(4) obliges the provider to give you a printed list to keep the moment discussion of prices, of the type of service, or of any specific item begins, in the funeral home or anywhere else. You do not have to be a customer and you do not have to explain why you want it.
2. Find the basic services fee and treat it as the floor. One line on that list is the only fee for services, facilities or overhead the Rule allows a provider to make non-declinable. It is charged whatever you choose. On the three lists read here it is $1,795, $2,195 and $3,145, so the floor at one provider is nearly double the floor at another before a single item is picked.
3. Read the package price for what it leaves out, not what it includes. Hodapp's Traditional Funeral package is $4,995 and its own list says it does not include the casket, the vault, the register book package, the clergy honorarium, the casket flower spray or any cemetery charge. With caskets on the same list running $150 to $52,275 and vaults $1,195 to $15,995, the package figure is a starting point rather than a total.
4. Ask whether embalming is being assumed. Both itemised lists read here carry the Rule's own sentence: except in certain special cases, embalming is not required by law, and you usually have the right to choose an arrangement that does not require you to pay for it. It is $750 at Sanders and $800 at Hodapp, and it is what a viewing quietly adds.
5. Price the same disposition at three providers, not three packages. Direct cremation is the one line every general price list must carry with a price for the case where you supply the container, which makes it the only genuinely comparable number in the trade. Read across three lists it runs $1,345, $2,150 and $2,445 for what is substantially the same service.

The fee you cannot decline is the fee that varies most

Every general price list carries a line called the basic services of the funeral director and staff. Under 16 CFR 453.2(b)(4)(iv) it is the only fee for services, facilities or unallocated overhead a provider is permitted to make non-declinable, and the Rule requires the list to say so in terms: this fee will be added to the total cost of the funeral arrangements you select. It buys the arrangement conference, the permits and death certificate filing, the coordination with cemetery or crematory, sheltering of the deceased, and the provider's own overhead.

Boulger Funeral Home in Fargo publishes it at $3,145.00. Sanders Funeral Care publishes it at $2,195. Hodapp Funeral Homes in Cincinnati publishes it at $1,795.00. That is a spread of $1,350 on the one charge a family has no ability to refuse, and it is settled before anyone has looked at a casket. Nothing else on these lists moves that much in absolute terms except the merchandise, which is the part you can actually choose.

What a package price is not

Hodapp publishes four packages. A graveside service with a private half hour viewing beforehand is $2,850. A conventional funeral, meaning visitation, service and burial all in one day, is $4,495. A traditional funeral, with an evening visitation and the service and burial the following day, is $4,995. A direct cremation with a memorial afterwards runs $3,550 during business hours, $3,800 on a weekday evening, $4,050 on a Saturday and $4,300 on a Sunday.

Each of those figures is printed beside a list of what it does not include, and the exclusions are the expensive part: casket, vault, register book package, clergy honorarium, casket flower spray and every cemetery charge. On the same list caskets are quoted as a range of $150 to $52,275 and vaults as $1,195 to $15,995. A family reading $4,995 and budgeting for a funeral is reading the labour and the building, not the burial.

Sanders takes the opposite approach and prices the parts: visitation Monday to Friday $350, funeral ceremony $450, memorial service $450, graveside service $225, transfer of remains to the funeral home $350, hearse $325, flower car $125, and $3.25 a mile beyond a thirty mile radius. Priced item by item like that, the service element of a funeral is a few hundred dollars a time and the basic services fee dwarfs it.

Direct cremation is the one line you can compare

The Rule requires every general price list to carry the price range for direct cremation, and specifically a separate price for the case where the purchaser provides the container. That last requirement is what makes it comparable: it strips out the merchandise and leaves the service.

Boulger publishes $1,345.00 for a direct cremation with a container provided by the purchaser and $1,445.00 with an alternative container the funeral home supplies. Hodapp publishes $2,150.00 with the purchaser's container, and packages a no service direct cremation at $2,300 by adding a $150 cremation casket. Sanders publishes direct cremation from $2,445, its range topping out at $8,540 once caskets and urns are chosen.

The Cremation Association of North America puts the US cremation rate at 62.8% in 2025 and projects 69.1% by 2030, so this is now the majority disposition rather than the budget alternative. It is also the line where the published numbers sit closest together, which is what you would expect of the one item the Rule forces every provider to quote the same way.

What this page is not

This is a price record. It says what three named providers published on their own websites and the date each list took effect, and it does not say what a funeral should cost, which provider anyone should use, or what any reader ought to do. The prices here apply at those three businesses and nowhere else.

It is also not a good faith estimate. Under the Funeral Rule a provider owes you an itemised written statement of the goods and services you selected at the end of the arrangement conference, with the total. That document is the provider's obligation and this site does not stand in for it.

Questions patients ask before they book

Do I have to visit a funeral home to get its prices?

No. The Funeral Rule requires a provider to answer price questions over the telephone from its price lists, and to hand over the printed general price list to anyone who asks in person, whether or not they intend to buy anything. Some providers, including the three quoted here, also publish the list on their website.

Which charge on a general price list can I not refuse?

One: the basic services of the funeral director and staff. 16 CFR 453.2(b)(4)(iv) makes it the only non-declinable provider fee for services, facilities or overhead unless some other law requires otherwise. It is already built into the quoted price for direct cremations, immediate burials and forwarding or receiving remains.

Is embalming required?

Not usually. Both itemised lists read here carry the Rule's own wording that embalming is not required by law except in certain special cases, and that a family usually has the right to choose an arrangement that does not require paying for it, such as a direct cremation or an immediate burial. Sanders prices it at $750 and Hodapp at $800.

Why do the three providers here differ so much?

Because a funeral price is mostly labour, premises and overhead recovered through one fee, and those differ by market and by business. Boulger's basic services fee is $3,145.00 in Fargo and Hodapp's is $1,795.00 in Cincinnati. Merchandise then widens the gap again: the same Hodapp list ranges caskets from $150 to $52,275.

Do these prices include the cemetery?

No, and no general price list does. Cemetery and crematory charges, flowers and newspaper notices are cash advance items bought from third parties, and both lists read here say so in as many words. A grave, its opening and closing, and a marker are all separate purchases from the cemetery itself.

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