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Wedding gift calculator: how much money should you give?

How close are you to the couple, are you going alone or as a couple, and will you be there all day? Answer three questions and the calculator shows the usual cash range for your country, with the reason behind it. Nothing you choose leaves this browser.

No sign-up Five English-speaking countries Runs in your browser
The calculator

Your situation

Pick what applies. The range below changes with every choice.

Where the wedding takes place: customs and currency follow the country.
What counts is the relationship, not the family tree.
Who is giving?
Are you attending?

What is usual

Usual range £50 – £100 per person

UK band per guest, as guests report it rather than any published standard (source: our guide). The cover-your-plate rule puts a sit-down meal at roughly £60 to £120 a head: a sanity check, not a minimum.

Guidelines, not rules: travel, a hen or stag weekend and your own circumstances all move the figure, and your budget outranks every number here.

Overview

Every range at a glance

The same figures the calculator uses, per person and for the whole day. For a couple or a family, the calculator above shows the combined range.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Sibling, parent or close family
£150 – £300
Close friend
£100 – £150
Friend
£50 – £100
Colleague or acquaintance
£30 – £60
Evening only
£25 – £50

per person

🇺🇸 United States

Sibling, parent or close family
$150 – $400
Close friend
$100 – $200
Friend
$75 – $150
Colleague or acquaintance
$50 – $100
Evening only
No set figure

per person

🇮🇪 Ireland

Sibling, parent or close family
€200 – €300 or more
Close friend
€120 – €200
Friend
€100 – €150
Colleague or acquaintance
€80 – €120
Evening only
No set figure

per person

🇨🇦 Canada

Sibling, parent or close family
CA$200 – CA$300
Close friend
CA$200 – CA$300
Friend
CA$100 – CA$200
Colleague or acquaintance
CA$100 – CA$200
Evening only
No set figure

per person

🇦🇺 Australia

Sibling, parent or close family
A$300 – A$500
Close friend
A$200 – A$300
Friend
A$150 – A$200
Colleague or acquaintance
A$100 – A$150
Evening only
No set figure

per person

How it works

Looked up, not averaged

The calculator averages nothing and estimates nothing. Your choices point at one row of a table for your country, and each answer names its source: our guide for the UK and the US, named Irish, Canadian and Australian publications for the other three.

A couple or a family gives one gift. The combined range is one and a half to two times the single range, rounded outward to the nearest five, so rounding can only widen a range, never make it look more precise than its source.

Where no source gives a reliable figure, such as an evening-only guest in the US, the calculator states the rule instead of inventing a range. Everything runs in your browser: there is no form, and no choice is sent or stored.

Questions

Common questions about cash wedding gifts

In the UK most guests give £50 to £100 per person, around £100 to £150 for close friends and up to £300 for close family. In the US the equivalent band is roughly $75 to $150 for a friend and up to $400 for close family. None of it is a rule.

It appears mainly in American wedding journalism of the last few decades and in no older manners guide. It is useful as a sanity check, because it gives a figure you can estimate yourself, but treated as a floor it makes expensive weddings cost their guests more.

Two people usually give one gift together, at roughly one and a half to two times the single figure. Australian gift data shows the same pattern: couples give about one and a half to two times what a solo guest gives, not a strict double.

In the UK, where evening-only invitations are common, £25 to £50 per person is the usual band, because an evening guest has not been fed. Our US, Irish, Canadian and Australian sources give no separate figure.

Ireland: The Irish Times (February 2026) and weddingsinireland.ie. Canada: The Globe and Mail's reader survey (2024), TD Stories and CBC. Australia: Mamamia (October 2025) and PocketWell's gift data (2026). Each band is copied from its source; nothing is converted from another country.
Read on

More on money gifts

Where the UK and US bands come from, and what moves them: How much money should you give as a wedding gift?

Planning your own wedding? Try the budget calculator