Price guessing games: how to play at home, at a party or on your phones
How to run a price guessing game with friends or family, from a bag of shopping and a hidden receipt to a baby shower round and a version on everyone's phones.
Ask a room full of people what a box of teabags costs and you’ll get answers from £1 to £9, all delivered with total confidence. That’s the whole appeal of a price guessing game. Everyone has a gut feeling, nobody has the full picture, and the answer is a number nobody can argue with once it’s revealed.
It’s also one of the few party games where the quiet aunt who does the weekly shop beats the cousin who knows everything. Most people know the game from the TV show format made famous by The Price Is Right, but you don’t need a studio, a host in a shiny suit or a showcase. A bag of shopping and a pen will do.
This post covers how to run a price guessing game at home: the scoring choices, seven ways to play without phones, a version for a baby shower, how to make your own price cards and how to play on everyone’s phones. For more game ideas in general, see our post on party games to play with friends.
Why price guessing works in a group
A few things make it unusually good for mixed groups.
- Nobody needs special knowledge. Everyone buys things. Teenagers know what trainers and games cost, grandparents know the price of a loaf, and the person who never cooks finally gets humbled by olive oil.
- Everyone guesses at the same time. There’s no waiting while one person thinks. Write it down, reveal, score, next item.
- The answer is a fact. Unlike a drawing game or a quiz with a vague question, there’s a receipt. Arguments end the moment the price comes out, and the shock on people’s faces is half the fun.
- It scales. Two people can play it in a kitchen. Forty can play it at a company party. Teams work as well as individuals.
Decide the scoring before you start
How you score changes how people play, so pick one rule and say it out loud before the first item.
Closest wins. The guess nearest the real price gets a point. Simple, and good for a quick round, but only one person scores each time, so players who are a little off on every item never get anything.
Closest without going over. The TV show rule. The nearest guess that isn’t higher than the price wins, and anyone over is out for that item. It adds a nice layer of tactics: if someone bids £10, the next player can bid £10.01 and steal the round if the real price is above £10. It works best when players guess one after another, out loud.
Points by distance. Everyone scores on every item, with more points the closer they get. For example: 3 points within 10%, 2 points within 25%, 1 point within 50%. This keeps everyone in the game until the end, and it’s the fairest choice for a long round.
A note on that last one. Being £5 off on a £10 item is a much worse guess than being £5 off on a £100 item. Scoring by percentage rather than by pounds means cheap items count just as much as expensive ones. If percentages feel like too much maths at a party, a simple compromise is to use pounds for cheap items and round numbers for expensive ones, or let one person with a calculator on their phone be the scorekeeper.
Whatever you choose, also agree on a tie-break (the next item decides, or the closest guess on the final item) and who settles disputes about which shop the price came from.
Seven ways to play without phones
All of these need nothing but the items, some paper and pens.
1. The shopping bag
The classic version. The host does a normal shop, eight to twelve items, and hides the receipt. At the party, they hold up each item and everyone writes down a price. Reveal from the receipt, score, next item.
Mix it up: a few things everyone buys (milk, bread, bananas), a few things nobody buys often (a jar of capers, light bulbs, a single lemon), and one surprisingly expensive thing (good coffee, razor blades, batteries). The surprising ones are where the scores separate.
2. Closest without going over, out loud
Line up five or six items. For each one, players guess in turn, out loud, going round the table. Each guess must be different from the ones before. Closest without going over wins the item, and the winner guesses first on the next one. It’s slower than writing guesses down, but the tactics are the fun part: watching someone bid one penny above the leader never gets old.
3. Higher or lower
Reveal the price of the first item. Then hold up the next one: is it more or less expensive than the last? Everyone answers at once, with a thumbs up or down. Wrong answers sit down. Last one standing wins. It’s quick, needs no maths and works brilliantly with children and with very big groups.
4. Sort by price
Put five items on the table. Each player or team writes them in order from cheapest to most expensive. One point for every item in the right position, plus a bonus for getting all five. It’s surprisingly hard when the items are close in price, and it causes great arguments between team members.
5. The perfect basket
Give each team a pile of items, or a printed page from a supermarket leaflet, and a target: £20 exactly. Teams have three minutes to build a basket as close to the target as possible without going over. Reveal the real total for each basket. Closest team wins. It’s a team game where the person who knows prices and the person who’s good at mental arithmetic suddenly need each other.
6. The receipt total
The lazy version, and a good one. After a big shop, or after a meal out, everyone guesses the total on the receipt before it’s revealed. It works as a running game on holiday: guess every supermarket receipt for a week and keep a scoreboard on the fridge.
7. The menu game
At a restaurant, while you wait for food, one person covers the prices on a menu and reads out dishes. Everyone guesses. It’s a useful way to fill the gap between ordering and eating, and it settles the debate about whether the place is expensive.
The baby shower and bridal shower version
Price guessing is one of the most popular baby shower games, mostly because nobody who hasn’t had a baby recently has any idea what anything costs.
The host buys ten baby items: a pack of nappies, wipes, a dummy, a bottle, baby shampoo, a muslin cloth, nappy cream, a vest, socks, a teether. Each item gets a number. Guests get a card with the numbers one to ten and write a price next to each. The parent-to-be reads out the real prices at the end, and the guest with the closest total, or the most points by distance, wins a small prize. The items then go to the new parents, so nothing is wasted.
For a bridal shower or a housewarming, swap the baby items for kitchen basics or household things the couple will actually use.
Two tips: put prices for the whole set on one sheet so the scoring takes two minutes, not twenty, and include at least one item that’s far more expensive than people expect. With baby items, there’s always one.
Making your own price cards
If you’d rather not buy a bag of shopping, make cards instead. It takes about half an hour and you can reuse them.
- Use real listings. Screenshot product pages from an online shop and cover the price, or print them with the price cut off. Write the price on the back.
- Note the date. Prices change. If you keep the cards for next year, add the date so people know why that games console looks cheap.
- Include the details. Pack size, brand and quantity make a big difference. “Washing-up liquid” is a guess; “Fairy, 3 x 433 ml” is a puzzle.
- Mix the price ranges. Cards from £1 to £500 make for a better game than ten cards that all cost about £15.
- Add a few curiosities. A heated ice cream scoop, a pet camera, a twelve-pack of something that comes in a twelve-pack for no clear reason. People love guessing the price of things they didn’t know existed.
Price guessing on everyone’s phones
The paper versions are great, but someone has to buy the items or make the cards, and someone has to score. A phone game does both.
Price Check is our price guessing party game with real products. Each round shows everyone the same product card: a photo, the name, the brand, the star rating, the number of reviews and the shop it’s from. Everyone types a price and locks it in before the timer runs out, with two buttons to nudge a guess 10% up or down. Then the real price appears, with every guess laid out on a scale around it, so you can see who went high and who went low.
It scores by distance, the fair way: being 10% off counts the same on a cheap item as on an expensive one, and everyone scores on every product. Each language plays with products from its own local shops, in its own currency, so the prices feel familiar. It takes 2 to 20 players, so it works for a family gathering or a whole office party, and since everyone guesses on their own phone it plays just as well on a video call.
It runs in the browser with nothing to install. One person opens a room on play.guezzer.com, everyone else joins with the room code, and the game keeps the score.
If your group enjoys guessing numbers, Closest Wins works the same way with trivia questions instead of prices: how tall, how far, how many, and the closest guess scores the most.
How to guess better
A few habits separate the winners from the people who guess £20 for everything.
- Read the pack size. Most bad guesses come from pricing one item when it’s a pack of six. Check the label or the title before you think about the price.
- Look at the brand. The same thing can be a cheap own-brand version or the famous one at three times the price.
- Anchor on something you know. If you know what a pint of milk costs, a litre of fancy oat milk is somewhere above it. Work from the prices you’re sure of.
- Think in multiples, not pounds. If you’re torn between £10 and £40, the sensible middle is £20, not £25. Each is twice as far from £20.
- Guess slightly low on cheap things. Small items often cost less than people think. Expensive gadgets often cost more.
Which version for which occasion
Family gathering. The shopping bag or higher or lower. Children are great at higher or lower, and grandparents usually win the shopping bag. For more ideas, see our post on games for family gatherings.
Office or Christmas party. Teams with the perfect basket, or everyone on their phones with Price Check. Our post on office Christmas party games has more that work with colleagues.
Birthday party. Price cards of things the birthday person has bought this year, if they’re willing to share. See also our birthday party games for adults.
Video call. Phones are easiest, since nobody can see the items on a small screen. More ideas in our post on games to play on a video call.
Baby shower or bridal shower. The ten-item card version above.
With children. Higher or lower with sweets and toys. They’re often better than adults at knowing what toys cost.
Common mistakes
- Items that are all the same price. Ten things that cost about £3 make a dull game. Spread the prices.
- Prices nobody can check. Keep the receipt, the screenshot or the price tag. “I think it was about a fiver” ends in arguments.
- Out-of-date prices. A card from three years ago will be wrong. Date your cards or refresh them.
- Too many items. Ten to twelve per round is plenty. After that, people stop caring.
- No tie-break. Decide before you start, not when two people are on the same score.
The best part
The best moment in any price guessing game isn’t the winner. It’s the reveal, when someone finds out what their partner thinks a bottle of shampoo costs, or the whole room learns that a twelve-pack of batteries costs more than dinner. Grab a bag of shopping, hide the receipt and let the guessing begin.
