Calculators
Cost per cocktail calculator
Pick a cocktail, enter what you paid per bottle for each ingredient, and see the cost per serving and for a full batch.
Search for and pick a cocktail, then enter a price per bottle for each ingredient.
How this works
Cocktails at home are far cheaper than most people assume, and the reason is that a bottle makes many drinks. The useful number is not what the bottle cost but what one serving cost, and that changes the answer to questions like whether a better gin is worth it.
Cost per serving, not cost per bottle
The arithmetic is: bottle price ÷ bottle volume × the amount the recipe uses. A £30 bottle of gin at 700ml is 4.3p per millilitre, so the 50ml in a Martini costs £2.14.
This is why upgrading a spirit is usually cheaper than it feels. Going from a £20 gin to a £30 gin adds about 71p to a drink — less than the price difference between two coffees.
The ingredients that quietly dominate
For long drinks, mixers often cost more per serving than the spirit. A 150ml pour of premium tonic can cost more than the 50ml of gin it goes with.
Fresh citrus is the other one. A lime at 40p for 25ml of juice is 1.6p per millilitre, which is more expensive per millilitre than a mid-range vodka.
What to do with the number
Compare it to what the same drink costs in a bar — usually five to ten times more — and to the other drinks on your list. If one cocktail on a party menu costs three times the others, it is usually one specialist liqueur doing it, and that bottle will sit unused afterwards.
A worked example: a Negroni
- Gin, £25 for 700ml: 30ml costs £1.07.
- Campari, £18 for 700ml: 30ml costs 77p.
- Sweet vermouth, £12 for 750ml: 30ml costs 48p.
- Orange peel and ice: call it 10p.
- Total: about £2.42 a drink, against £12 or more in a bar.
What it does not account for
- Waste. An open bottle of vermouth oxidises within a couple of months, so if you make two Negronis a year the real cost per drink is the whole bottle.
- Equipment, which is a one-off rather than a per-drink cost and disappears entirely after twenty drinks.
- What you actually paid. Offers, duty-free and bulk sizes move these numbers a long way.