What Does a Thanksgiving Dinner Cost in 2025?

Each year the American Farm Bureau Federation releases a price survey of classic items found on the Thanksgiving dinner table. This year, the average cost of feasting stands at $55.18, which is 5 percent less than last year but still constitutes a $5.75 increase from before the pandemic.

The most expensive item by far on the menu is the turkey, which this year costs an average of $21.50. This represents, however, an impressive 16.3 percent decrease from 2024 levels. While the wholesale price for fresh turkey is up from 2024, largely due to farmers still trying to rebuild turkey flocks devastated by avian influenza, grocery stores have lowered their prices with Thanksgiving deals, leading to lower retail prices for a holiday bird.

As the following chart shows, where several staple ingredients have decreased somewhat, including stuffing mix (down 9 percent), dinner rolls (down 14.6 percent) and fresh cranberries (down 2.8 percent), other ingredients have risen in value since last year, such as frozen peas (up 17.2 percent), whole milk (up 16.3 percent) and whipping cream (up 3.2 percent).

2025 marks the third consecutive year that the average price of a Thanksgiving dinner in the United States has decreased. However, this does not fully offset the increases seen between 2020 and 2022, when the meal rose from an average of $46.90 to $64.05 thanks to the impacts of inflation on food prices and farmers’ costs.

The AFBF also discovered regional differences in the average cost of a Thanksgiving meal, with the most affordable prices found in the South at $50.01 and the most expensive in the West at $61.75.

The shopping list of the survey includes all ingredients and foods in quantities sufficient to serve a feast for 10. Volunteers checked prices in grocery stores in all 50 states and Puerto Rico for the Farm Bureau during the first week of November.