Where every price on this site comes from.

Funeral home listings

A funeral home appears in Cheap Funeral's directory when at least one of the following conditions is met from our enrichment scan:

1. The home has a published direct cremation price below the state P25 (25th percentile) or a published general starting price ≤ 75% of the state median.
2. The home's enrichment record includes one of the budget-direct keywords (budget, affordable, direct_cremation, co_op, society) — markers we apply during a structured scan over the home's public marketing materials, services lists, and FTC GPL filings.

Pricing data — source and verification

Every dollar amount on a home page is sourced from that home's General Price List (GPL), published under the FTC Funeral Rule (16 CFR Part 453). The Rule requires every U.S. funeral home to provide a written GPL to anyone who requests one, free of charge, in person or by phone, before any pricing discussion.

Where a home publishes its GPL on its public website, we extract prices directly from the published document. Where a home does not publish online, we request the GPL by phone or email and record the prices manually. Where a home has not provided a GPL within our enrichment cycle (typically weekly), we mark the listing as "GPL on request" rather than omit the home or estimate prices.

Per-state aggregates

State-level price aggregates (P10, P25, median, P75) are computed weekly across our full set of Cheap Funeral-listed homes. The aggregates power the price-tier classification and the per-home rank shown on each home page.

• P10 — 10th percentile direct cremation price; defines the "Most Affordable" tier.
• P25 — 25th percentile; the budget-tier qualification threshold.
• Median (P50) — divides "Below Median" and "Above Median" tiers.
• State home count — number of Cheap Funeral-listed homes in the state.

The FTC Funeral Rule

Pricing is published under the federal FTC Funeral Rule (16 CFR Part 453), enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. The Rule has been in effect since 1984 and was last amended in 1994. It applies to every U.S. funeral provider that sells funeral services to the public. It grants families six specific rights — itemized pricing, telephone price quotes, refusal of unwanted goods and services, refusal of embalming except in narrow circumstances, use of an alternative cremation container, and use of an outside-supplied casket without handling fee.

Violations are reportable at reportfraud.ftc.gov. The Funeral Rule Offenders Program (FROP) is the standard remediation track for first-time minor violations; serious or repeat violations carry civil penalties up to $51,744 per violation (the 2026 inflation-adjusted maximum).

National benchmarks

National benchmark figures used in our articles are drawn from primary sources:

• NFDA 2023 Member General Price List Study (National Funeral Directors Association, July 2023) — median funeral cost figures.
• Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 16 Part 453 — the FTC Funeral Rule itself.
• Social Security Administration (SSA) — Lump-Sum Death Payment program rules (SSA-8, $255 since 1954).
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — COVID-19 Funeral Assistance program rules and current funding caps ($9,000 per eligible decedent).
• State health code citations — state-specific embalming, transport, and indigent burial program rules.

Family ratings and reviews

Family ratings on home pages are sourced from Google Places. We do not edit, filter, or rewrite reviews and we do not ask homes to submit reviews. The aggregate rating shown is the average across all reviews; the count shown is the total number of reviews on the home's Google business profile.

Distance and ZIP geodesy

Distance from a searched ZIP to a funeral home is computed using haversine geodesy from the ZIP centroid to the home's geocoded coordinates. ZIP centroids are sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau's Gazetteer Files. Home coordinates are geocoded from the home's public address using the Google Geocoding API and verified manually for outliers.

Our open invitation

If you are a funeral home owner and our listing for your home is incorrect, please reach out via the contact page. Include the home name, address, and the specific fact you would like corrected. Updates to GPL prices are reflected within one enrichment cycle (typically one week).