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January 14, 2025updated 16 Jan 2025 10:49am

Newsflation: UK cover prices up by 12% in past year

National newspaper cover prices up 135.8% in a decade.

By Charlotte Tobitt

UK national newspaper cover prices have increased by 12.1% compared to the start of 2024 as publishers continue to offset falling sales.

Daily newspapers’ Monday to Friday editions were up by an average of 11.9% between January 2024 and 13 January 2025, Saturday papers cost 12% more and Sunday titles were 12.6% more.

For comparison, consumer price inflation in the UK was at 3.5% in the year to November with the cost of food and non-alcoholic beverages up 2%. Inflation was no higher than 4% throughout 2024.

News publishers were more likely to keep their online paywall prices steady in the past year.

Press Gazette reported last year that between January 2023 and January 2024, every Fleet Street newspaper raised its cover price. However, in the past year to January 2025, several kept their prices the same: the weekday Times, all editions of The Guardian and The Observer, and the FT Weekend (which remains the most expensive title costing £5.10).

How UK national newspaper cover prices are going up

The biggest price increases were at all the Telegraph titles, the Saturday edition of The Times and The Sunday Times, which all went up by 50p in the past year.

Second most expensive behind the FT Weekend are The Sunday Times and the Saturday edition of The Daily Telegraph, both of which have gone from costing £4 to £4.50.

In percentage terms, the Daily Star’s cover price rose the most in the year: by 22.2% from 90p to £1.10.

It would now cost £159.20 to buy a copy of every UK national newspaper on each day for one week, compared to £144.80 a year ago and £129.85 two years ago.

(Press Gazette’s comparison is for the main UK-wide national newspapers, excluding Scottish papers like the Daily Record.)

Some cover price increases are routinely implemented at the start of the year. Reach's national titles including the Mirror, Express and Star went up from 4 January with the Federation of Independent Retailers claiming this was accompanied by a cut in terms for retailers.

Its president Mo Razzaq said: "Reach and its shareholders need to understand that with their declining sales, their titles are no longer the cash cows they used to be."

Some of the Reach nationals - for example the Sunday People and Daily Star Sunday - are routinely seeing their print circulations fall by a fifth on a year-on-year basis each month. Despite this print still makes up three-quarters of Reach's revenue, with cover price rises offsetting the falling readership in a pattern replicated across most of the market.

In the past decade, national newspaper cover prices have gone up by an average of 135.8%.

The average daily price change across the decade is higher, at 150.4%. It would now cost £20.70 to buy every daily national newspaper at once, up 118% compared to ten years ago when it cost £9.50. Compared to a year ago, the dailies are together up 10%.

Across the ten Saturday papers in the market (including the FT Weekend and i Weekend) the price increase was an average of 12% compared to January 2024 and 159.4% compared to 2015.

The highest ten-year change was at the i Weekend (up 350%) although the title had yet to be launched in its current form in 2015. The lowest increase was at The Guardian (up 60%).

It would cost £29.20 to buy every Saturday paper together, up 9.8% from £26.60 last year and £13.15 in 2015 - meaning growth of 122% over the past decade.

Among the nine Sunday titles, there was cover price growth of 12.6% in the past year and of 93.5% across the past ten years.

The highest ten-year change was at the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People (both up 133.3%) and the lowest was at The Observer (up 37.9%).

The Sundays would now cost £26.50 to buy together, up 11.8% from £23.70 last year and up 82.8% compared to 2015 when it cost £14.50.

See below for the full dataset showing the price changes of the past ten years:

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