Funeral costs are rising: dying is becoming more expensive

Rent, gas, food and now dying is becoming more expensive. Funeral services and cemetery fees have recently risen above average in price. Consumers had to pay an average of 3.2 percent more for this in 2025 than a year before, as the Federal Statistical Office announced. Overall consumer prices rose by only 2.2 percent in the same period. Coffins, urns, gravestones and other funeral items also became more expensive. Prices here rose by an average of 1.9 percent compared to the previous year.

Around 32,000 people work in the approximately 4,200 companies in the funeral trade. In 2024 they generated sales of 2.37 billion euros. And as society ages, demand is growing.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, around a million people died in this country last year. That was around nine percent more than ten years earlier.

The number of trainees in the industry has more than doubled since 2015, reaching a new high of 900 young people last year. Women now choose dual training to become funeral specialists more often than men, accounting for 61 percent.

Cemeteries are also a source of income for municipalities. Cities and municipalities in the regional states received around 951.9 million euros from fees and similar fees in the cemetery and funeral services in 2024. That was 2.4 percent more than a year earlier and a good third more than in 2014.

If relatives cannot cover the costs of a funeral from the estate or their own funds, social assistance can step in under certain conditions. In 2025, social welfare providers spent a gross amount of 51.6 million euros on such social burials. That was 16.3 percent less than ten years earlier. In 2015, expenditure was 61.7 million euros. Around 15,400 people received reimbursement of requested funeral costs in 2025. Ten years ago there were just under 23,400.