Advanced options
Cartridge razors are the textbook razor-and-blades business model: the handle is cheap because the cartridges are where you live for the next decade. The double-edge safety razor inverts it: GBP 25-40 once for the handle, then blades at 10-20p that shave as close (closer, most converts say, after the fortnight learning curve): 100 blades for a tenner is years of shaving. Electric heads/foils want replacing yearly (GBP 20-35): the shave is faster and kinder to skin, less close.
What The Razor Blade Cost Calculator Works Out
- Cost per year: shaves per week x 52, divided by shaves per blade, multiplied by the price of a blade or cartridge. A five-shaves-a-week face on GBP 2.60 cartridges changed every five shaves spends about GBP 135 a year; subscription cartridges at GBP 1.20 roughly halve that without changing the model.
- vs the DE safety razor: the same shaves on double-edge blades at 12p each, the yearly saving, and how many months it takes a GBP 35 handle to pay for itself. A handle that never wears out then saves the difference every year.
- The razor-and-blades model: cheap hardware plus captive consumables, the pattern shared with printers and ink, pod coffee and water filters. The defence is to price the consumable per year before buying the hardware: a GBP 10 handle with GBP 160 a year of cartridges is a GBP 170 first-year razor.
- Your actual blade and handle prices (advanced): override the dropdown's typical prices with what you really pay, for own-brand compatibles, multipacks or a premium handle.
- Years to compare over (advanced): the period for the total-cost cards. Five years is enough for hardware to stop mattering and consumables to dominate.
- Foam, gel, soap and aftershave (advanced): yearly spend on products, added to both systems. A brush and a puck of soap costs pennies a shave and improves any system's results.
- DE blade and razor prices (advanced): change the comparison blade price (10p to 20p is the normal range, 100 blades for about a tenner) and the handle price (GBP 25 to GBP 40 for a good one) that the switch calculation uses.
- Totals over the period and all-in cost per shave (advanced): hardware plus blades plus products for your system and for the DE alternative, and the resulting true cost of each shave.
- Blades used per year (advanced): how many you get through, and how long a 100-pack of DE blades would last at your rate. Coarse beards and daily shaving spend edges faster than the packaging suggests; drying the blade after use is the free life-extender for every system.