What "direct cremation" means

Direct cremation is the simplest arrangement on every price list: the funeral home transfers the deceased, files the paperwork, holds the body for the legally required period, and cremates — no embalming, no viewing, no ceremony. The prices below are for the standardized comparable every GPL must offer: direct cremation with a container provided by the family (or the funeral home's alternative container, typically $50–$200 more). Any memorial you hold afterward — at home, at church, graveside — costs whatever you choose to spend on it, not what a funeral home charges.

Direct cremation: median price in every state we covered

Medians of published GPL prices, July 2026. "n" is how many price lists sit behind each median — read single-digit rows as indicative, not definitive:

The cheapest and most expensive states

Limiting to states where we parsed at least 3 price lists:

The pattern is consistent with everything else in funeral pricing: competition, not cost of living, sets the price. Florida and Arizona — retirement states dense with cremation societies — post medians under $1,000, while upper-Midwest and Northeast markets with fewer discount providers run 3× that. Note the low-n states in the full table: a single full-service firm can dominate a small sample.

How to pay the low end of your state's range

Ask for the GPL price, not the package price. The direct cremation line with your own container is the legally comparable number. Call a cremation society — the sub-$700 prices in our sample all come from them, and they serve wide areas. Skip the funeral home's urn and container upsell — the Funeral Rule guarantees your right to provide your own. And if the family wants a gathering, hold it separately: the moment a viewing enters the arrangement, embalming, facility, and staffing fees convert a $1,963 cremation into a $5,000+ funeral.

Covering it

Even at the low end, cremation arrives as a same-week bill of a thousand dollars or more — at the median, $1,963, plus an urn, certificates, and any memorial. A $5,000 final expense policy comfortably covers a cremation arrangement in every state in this table; here's how to size coverage properly, and what a policy that size costs monthly at your age.

Source: 305 General Price Lists published online by U.S. funeral homes — the itemized price disclosure the FTC Funeral Rule requires every funeral home to provide — collected and parsed July–October 2026, covering 51 states and Washington, D.C. Figures are medians of listed prices; "n" is the number of price lists behind each number. Small samples are shown as-is, not hidden — treat any figure with n under 3 as indicative only. Prices change; always request the funeral home's current GPL.