UK Haircut Price Index 2026

The typical skin fade costs £19 in a UK town, £22 in a big city and £26.50 at an independent London barber, going by about 150 barbers' own price lists read on 28 September 2026. Premium central London shops charge £43 to £56.

The headline figures

• Skin fade: typical £19 in towns (range £15 to £27), £22 in big cities (£16 to £30) and £26.50 at independent London shops (£20 to £42).
• Dearest and cheapest big city: Birmingham and Bristol at £25 for a typical skin fade, Leeds at £18.50.
• Skin fade and beard: typical £29 in towns and £30 in big cities.
• Kids skin fade: typical £16 in big cities (range £12 to £21).
• Liverpool, shop by shop: 14 of 27 barbers list an adult skin fade, with a median of £20 (£17 to £28). The cheapest plain adult cut at 24 shops has a median of £18.50.

Prices by region

Each cell gives the lowest and highest price we found for that service in that kind of place, with the typical (median) price where we had enough prices to call one.

Scroll the table sideways to see every region.

Prices read on 28 September 2026 from barbers' own websites and their Booksy, Treatwell and Fresha price lists. A blank typical means the prices were too spread out, or too few, to call a median.

Typical skin fade price by city

Birmingham and Bristol came out the dearest of the eight big cities we read, and Leeds the cheapest. The gap inside any one city is wider than the gap between them: in Liverpool alone, published skin fade prices ran from £17 to £28.

The median of the skin fade prices we read in each city on 28 September 2026. Example shops and their prices are listed in our skin fade price guide.

Liverpool, shop by shop

For Liverpool we went further and listed every barber we could confirm was trading, with the prices each one publishes. That gives 27 shops. Not every shop lists every service, so each figure says how many shops it comes from.

"Adult haircut" is the cheapest plain adult cut a shop lists (for example a standard cut, clipper cut or gents cut), not student, pensioner or kids' prices. Where a shop gives a range we show it. One shop showed only what looks like a booking deposit, so it is left out. Full listings with hours and ratings are on our Liverpool barbers page.

How we built the index

• Included: the standard adult price for each service as the shop lists it. Where a booking site showed a discounted price, we used the full price.
• Excluded: student, pensioner and loyalty prices, booking deposits, tips, and shops whose price lists we could not find.
• Typical means the median: half the prices we read were above it and half below.
• London premium means central London shops such as Pall Mall Barbers, Ted's Grooming Room and Jack the Clipper. London independent is everything else in our London sample.
• Liverpool was listed in full: 27 shops confirmed as trading on 28 September 2026 by recent Booksy or Treatwell reviews or current prices on their own site. The city's typical skin fade, £20, is the same in the city table and in the shop-by-shop count.

Limitations

• This is a reading of published price lists, not a survey of what customers paid. Walk-in deals, add-ons and tips are not captured.
• The sample is about 150 shops, so the London and town figures rest on fewer shops (about 15 and 17) than the big-city figures (about 110). Treat the London and town typicals as a guide rather than a precise average.
• Barbers found online are more likely to be in the sample than shops with no website or booking page.
• Very few shops date their price lists, so some prices may have been set months before we read them. Shops change prices without notice.
• This is the first edition. We plan to read the same kinds of shops again so the index can show change over time.

More on how we work, and what we do not do (nobody pays to be listed or ranked), is on our how we research page.