A 50-litre keg of Guinness costs £194.00 before VAT from a free-trade wholesaler today. That's £2.20 a pint for the beer alone, 45p of it duty. Sell it at the £5.27 the average UK pub charged in February and the Treasury takes 88p in VAT, and you keep about £2.19 a pint before wages, rent, gas or a single line clean. That's a GP of under 50%. To get Guinness to 65% at that keg price you'd be charging £7.56 a pint. Here's the full anatomy, the other stouts priced the same way, and what I'd actually do about it.
Everybody has an opinion on the price of a pint of Guinness. Customers think it's a rip-off, the papers count down to the first £10 pint, and behind the bar most of us are earning less on it than on almost anything else on the font. Both things can be true at once. The numbers below are why.
What customers pay
NIQ figures reported by the Morning Advertiser in February 2026 put the average pint of Guinness in UK pubs at £5.27, a penny under the stout average of £5.28, and up 16% from £4.55 in 2023. A separate survey of 138 pubs by the agency Tank put it at £5.41. Diageo then put Guinness Draught up 5.2% for on-trade customers from April 2026. For comparison, the Morning Advertiser's own May 2026 survey had the average pint of anything at £5.34. My average pint price guide has the full breakdown by region and style.
Where £5.27 goes
All keg prices are Inn Express's published ex-VAT web prices, checked on 14 October 2026. Inn Express is a free-trade wholesaler with no minimum order, so a big free house buying direct may pay less, and a tied pub pays whatever its price list says. I've used 88 pints from a 50-litre keg, which is the full liquid with no waste at all.
| Out of a £5.27 pint of Guinness | Per pint | Share |
|---|---|---|
| VAT at 20% | 88p | 17% |
| Beer duty (4.1%, draught rate £19.45 per litre of alcohol) | 45p | 9% |
| The keg, less the duty in it | £1.75 | 33% |
| What the pub keeps for everything else | £2.19 | 42% |
My arithmetic: £194.00 a keg, 88 pints, duty worked from the GOV.UK rate (£39.87 a keg), VAT at a sixth of the shelf price. So the taxman's 88p plus 45p comes to £1.33 a pint, a quarter of the price, before anyone pays rent, wages or business rates. My alcohol duty guide has the rates for everything else.
That £2.19 works out at a GP of 49.8%. Most of us aim for something in the 60s on draught. On Guinness bought like this, you're nowhere near.
Then the keg doesn't give you 88
Nobody sells 88 pints out of a keg. There's the line clean, the pint you pour to check it's right after a change, the surge at the end of the keg and the one handed back. Use 84 sellable, the figure I work to in these guides, and the beer costs £2.31 a pint. At £5.27 you're keeping £2.08, and the GP drops to 47.4%.
Every pint you lose at the cellar end costs the full £2.20 and earns nothing. My draught wastage guide covers what's normal and what isn't.
The other stouts, priced the same way
Here's every stout keg on the same wholesaler's list, against the same £5.27 shelf price so you can compare like for like:
| Keg | Price ex VAT | ABV | Cost per pint | Duty per pint | Cash per pint at £5.27 | GP at £5.27 | Price for 65% GP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guinness 50L | £194.00 | 4.1% | £2.20 | 45p | £2.19 | 49.8% | £7.56 |
| Guinness 30L | £124.30 | 4.2% | £2.35 | 46p | £2.04 | 46.4% | £8.07 |
| Hawkstone Black 30L | £120.00 | 4.2% | £2.27 | 46p | £2.12 | 48.2% | £7.79 |
| Murphy's 30L | £105.76 | 4.0% | £2.00 | 44p | £2.39 | 54.4% | £6.87 |
| Camden Town Stout 30L | £98.01 | 4.0% | £1.86 | 44p | £2.53 | 57.7% | £6.37 |
| Brennan's 30L | £90.03 | 4.2% | £1.71 | 46p | £2.69 | 61.2% | £5.85 |
| Caffrey's Black Stout 30L | £75.99 | 3.4% | £1.44 | 17p | £2.95 | 67.2% | £4.94 |
My arithmetic from the published prices and ABVs, full keg with no waste, GP on the ex-VAT price. Two things jump out.
First, the 30-litre Guinness costs 15p a pint more than the 50. So the 50 is the better buy for any pub that gets through it well inside the time your supplier says a tapped keg stays at its best. Only go small if the 50 would be sitting there past that.
Second, look at Caffrey's. At 3.4% it falls under the 3.5% line, where draught duty drops to £8.58 per litre of alcohol. That's 17p a pint against 45p. The duty band is doing almost as much work as the keg price. My draught vs bottled guide shows the same trick on lager.
Why I wouldn't just whack it up to £7.56
The 65% target is a rule of thumb, not a law of nature, and on Guinness it's the wrong lens. Customers know what Guinness costs. They don't know what Brennan's costs, and most of them don't care. Price Guinness at £7.56 in a wet-led local and you'll sell a lot less of it, and the person who wanted a Guinness will often go somewhere else for the rest of their night.
What pays the bills is cash, not percentages. At £5.27 the Guinness drinker leaves you £2.19 a pint. If that's £2.19 you wouldn't have had otherwise, it's worth having. The question I'd ask is whether the rest of the bar is carrying it. If your house lager makes 65% and Guinness makes 48%, your overall GP drifts down every week your stout sales grow. That's a perfectly good business decision if you've made it on purpose. It's a nasty surprise if you haven't. My guide to GP% moving week to week explains how the mix does this.
What I'd do
Know your own cost per pint. Your invoice price, divided by what you actually sell from a keg, not 88. Your stocktake is the only place that number comes from.
Price it on cash, then check the mix. Pick a Guinness price your customers will pay, then look at what your overall GP does at your real sales mix. If it's dragging you under where you need to be, move other prices, not just this one. My guide to putting drink prices up covers how to do that without losing the room.
Offer a cheaper stout if you're free of tie. A second stout that makes 55% to 60% at the same price gives price-sensitive drinkers somewhere to go without leaving. If you're tied, your list decides this for you, and my tied vs free-trade prices guide shows how far apart the two can be.
Watch the gas. Guinness runs on a nitrogen mix, not straight CO2, and a stout line on the wrong pressure fobs money away. My cellar gas guide has the mixes and what they cost.
My take
Guinness is the pint everyone checks the price of, so it's the one you can least afford to get wrong in either direction. Charge what the street will take, accept it's a lower-margin line, and make sure you know exactly how much lower. The cost per sold pint is four numbers: keg price, pints sold from it, shelf price, and the VAT. Ten minutes with a calculator.
Common questions
How much does a pint of Guinness cost a pub?
From a free-trade wholesaler on 14 October 2026, a 50-litre keg of Guinness costs £194.00 before VAT, which is about £2.20 a pint for the full 88 pints, or £2.31 a pint if you sell 84. About 45p of that is beer duty. Tied pubs pay their pubco's list price, and large accounts may buy for less.
How much profit does a pub make on a pint of Guinness?
At the February 2026 average of £5.27, the pub pays 88p of VAT and keeps about £2.19 a pint after the cost of the beer, a gross profit of about 50%, before wages, rent, energy, gas or waste. At 84 sellable pints a keg that falls to about £2.08 and 47%.
What is the average price of a pint of Guinness in the UK?
NIQ data reported by the Morning Advertiser put it at £5.27 in February 2026, up 16% from £4.55 in 2023, with the stout average at £5.28. A smaller survey of 138 pubs by Tank put it at £5.41. Diageo increased Guinness Draught prices to the on-trade by 5.2% from April 2026.
How much duty is on a pint of Guinness?
About 45p. Guinness in a 50-litre keg is 4.1%, and draught beer between 3.5% and 8.5% pays £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol from 1 February 2026, which comes to £39.87 a keg. A stout under 3.5% on draught pays £8.58 per litre of alcohol, about 17p a pint at 3.4%.
Sources
- Keg prices, ABVs and sizes (all ex VAT, checked 14 October 2026): Inn Express product pages for Guinness 50L, Guinness 30L, Hawkstone Black 30L, Murphy's 30L, Camden Town Stout 30L, Brennan's 30L and Caffrey's Black Stout 30L.
- £5.27 Guinness, £5.28 stout, £4.55 in 2023, Tank's £5.41 from 138 pubs, Diageo's 5.2% on-trade rise from April: The Morning Advertiser, 12 February 2026.
- £5.34 average pint: The Morning Advertiser pint price survey, 21 May 2026.
- Draught duty rates from 1 February 2026 (£19.45 from 3.5% to under 8.5%, £8.58 from 1.3% to under 3.5%): GOV.UK, Alcohol Duty rates, checked 14 October 2026.
- Cost per pint, duty per pint, the £5.27 anatomy, GP%, cash per pint, the 65% prices and the 84-pint figures are my own arithmetic from the figures above, illustrative, not about any real pub.