What a funeral costs, and how to compare
Every funeral director has to publish a standardised price list showing the same items in the same order. Almost nobody reads two of them.
A funeral is the largest discretionary cost most estates carry, and it is chosen in the first week, by people who are grieving, from a provider who is usually the first one somebody suggested. That is not a market working.
Since 2021 the Competition and Markets Authority has required every funeral director in the UK to display a standardised price list: the same items, in the same order, in a prescribed format, on their website and at their premises. It exists precisely so that two quotes can be read against each other, which is a thing that was previously very hard to do and is now merely something nobody knows they can do.
The list separates what the funeral director charges from what they pay to somebody else on your behalf. That separation is the whole point of it. Only the first half is theirs to set, and it is the half where the difference between two firms in the same town runs into thousands.
What you are actually choosing between
The standardised price list is built around these choices, so they are the units two quotes can be compared in. The gap between the first two is the largest single decision about cost.
Where this sits in the sequence
Funeral costs is one step of several, and several of the others are free or can be done without instructing anybody. The order matters more than most people are told: two of these steps cost the estate money if they are taken in the wrong order.
What to do when someone dies sets out all ten in order, with what each one costs.