Advanced options
The per-minute rule is the trade's honest metric: a GBP 40 "compound cake" firing 60 seconds is GBP 40/min, and a box of small fountains stretches further than one showpiece rocket. Category F2 fireworks (garden, 8m safety distance) only for home displays: check garden depth first. The law bits: over-18s only, 11pm curfew (midnight on Bonfire Night, 1am NYE), and pets nationwide would like you to consider the quiet ranges, which are genuinely decent now.
What The Firework Display Cost Calculator Works Out
- Firework budget: display minutes x the spend per minute for your ambition level. Garden selection boxes and fountains deliver a minute of sky for GBP 10-15, multi-shot cakes and barrages GBP 20-30, and compound cakes GBP 40-plus, so a 15-minute show spans GBP 200-600.
- Per watcher: the firework budget divided by the people watching, the figure to compare with a ticket price.
- vs the organised display: what your group would pay at the gate at around GBP 8 a ticket. The organised show buys professional shells no garden category reaches; the home show buys proximity to your own kettle.
- Stretch the budget: multi-shot cakes over single rockets (a rocket's four seconds cost more per airborne moment than anything else sold), a planned firing order with the finale genuinely last, and the 6 November half-price clearance for next year.
- Custom spend per minute (advanced): overrides the dropdown with a quote from your own basket, for example GBP 300 of cakes timed at 10 minutes is GBP 30 a minute.
- Sparklers, food, drink and bonfire (advanced): the rest of the evening's cost. Sparklers are pence per hand, and the mulled wine and hot dogs often cost more than the garden-classics box.
- Households chipping in (advanced): splits the whole evening between the families sharing it, the arithmetic that makes a street party's GBP 400 display cost each household GBP 50.
- Organised display ticket (advanced): change the GBP 8 default to your local show's price (GBP 5-10 is typical, children often less) for the per-head comparison and the break-even group size.
- Group size where home wins (advanced): the whole-evening cost divided by the ticket price: the number of watchers at which the garden show becomes cheaper per head than the organised one.
- Safety distance check (advanced): enter your garden length. Category F2 garden fireworks need 8m clear, F3 need 25m, and anything shorter means fountains and sparklers only. Over-18s only, 11pm curfew (midnight on 5 November, 1am on New Year's Eve).