Bird seed cost calculator
The bag price is not the price. Hull is between 14% and 40% of the weight of a seed sold in the shell, and you are buying it.
The short answer
- Compare seed on cost per pound eaten, not cost per pound bought. Black oil sunflower at $1.35 a pound delivers food at about $1.80 a pound once the hull is subtracted.
- Cracked corn is the cheapest bag on the shelf and close to the worst value per calorie, because it is low in fat and low in energy density.
- Sunflower hearts really are dearer per pound eaten, about 44% more than in-shell black oil sunflower. What the money buys is no hull under the feeder rather than more food.
- A single feeder in a busy yard typically works through 2 to 6 lb of seed a week in winter, which is where the annual number comes from.
Enable JavaScript to run the comparison, or read the worked figures in cost per calorie.
Why shelf price is the wrong number#
A pound of black oil sunflower is not a pound of bird food. About a quarter of that weight is hull: it is cracked open at the feeder, dropped, and swept up in spring. You paid for it, the birds did not eat it, and it is now killing the grass underneath.
Once you correct for hull, the ranking of the common seeds changes substantially. Here is the same set of foods at benchmark prices, with the correction applied.
| Food | Edible fraction | kcal / 100 g edible | Fat | Price / lb | Cost / lb eaten | kcal per dollar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black oil | 75% | 584 | 51% | $1.35 | $1.80 | 1,472 |
| Hearts | 100% | 584 | 51% | $2.60 | $2.60 | 1,019 |
| Striped | 60% | 584 | 49% | $1.60 | $2.67 | 993 |
| Safflower | 65% | 517 | 38% | $1.95 | $3.00 | 782 |
| Nyjer | 86% | 515 | 35% | $3.40 | $3.95 | 591 |
| Millet | 82% | 378 | 4% | $1.10 | $1.34 | 1,278 |
| Cracked corn | 100% | 365 | 4% | $0.75 | $0.75 | 2,208 |
| Peanuts (shelled) | 100% | 567 | 49% | $3.10 | $3.10 | 830 |
| Peanuts (in shell) | 73% | 567 | 49% | $2.40 | $3.29 | 782 |
| Suet | 100% | 740 | 75% | $2.20 | $2.20 | 1,526 |
| Mealworms | 100% | 500 | 28% | $9.50 | $9.50 | 239 |
| Nectar | 100% | 68 | 0% | $0.16 | $0.16 | 1,928 |
| Fruit / jelly | 100% | 180 | 0% | $2.00 | $2.00 | 408 |
Prices are 2026 United States big-bag benchmarks used as defaults in our seed cost calculator. Swap in your own and the ranking can change; the edible fraction and energy columns will not.
The cost per pound eaten column is the one that matters for a budget. The kcal per dollar column is the one that matters for the birds, because in a January cold snap what a chickadee needs is energy, not volume. Those two columns disagree often enough that it is worth checking both: millet is cheap per pound eaten and poor per calorie, because it is a low-fat grain.
The three numbers worth tracking#
- Pounds per week. Measure it once, in January and again in June, and you will never have to guess again. Most people badly overestimate summer consumption and underestimate winter.
- Cost per pound eaten. This is what tells you whether the "value" bag was value.
- Hull swept up per year. The calculator gives it because it is a real cost in labor and in lawn. At 5 lb a week of in-shell sunflower, you are putting about 65 lb of hull on the ground each year.
When cheap seed is genuinely cheap#
There is one case where a low-cost grain is the right buy: a dedicated ground station for doves, juncos and sparrows, using white proso millet or a millet-heavy mix, kept well away from the main feeders. Those species genuinely prefer it, it costs little, and nothing is wasted because it is going to birds that want it.
What is never right is putting that same mix in a tube. Tube-feeding birds sort through it, flick the grain out, and you have paid for seed to fertilize your lawn. The arithmetic is in seed mix versus single seed, and the label-reading guide is in birdseed mixes.
Cutting the bill without cutting the birds#
- Buy the big bag, but only if you can store it properly. Twenty pounds of seed that goes rancid or gets into by moths costs more than five pounds that does not. See storing birdseed.
- Stop filling feeders to the top. Seed sitting in a feeder for three weeks is seed you will eventually throw away.
- Add a seed catcher. It pays for itself in one season on a busy tube feeder.
- Switch one feeder to safflower. If grackles or squirrels are taking a serious share of your seed, the loss is not on the shelf, it is at the feeder. See safflower.
Frequently asked questions#
How much does feeding birds cost per year?
For one tube feeder and one suet cage running year-round, expect roughly $120 to $250 a year in the United States at 2026 prices, depending on the seed and how many birds you attract. Winter is the expensive part: consumption in January can be three times what it is in June. Enter your own bag price and weekly consumption above and the calculator gives your number rather than an average.
Which bird seed is the best value?
Per calorie delivered, suet and black oil sunflower are consistently the best value of the common foods, and subtracting hull weight does not change that: in-shell black oil still beats sunflower hearts, because the hull is a quarter of the bag rather than half of it. Hearts are bought for a clean yard, not for value. Cracked corn and cheap mixes containing milo and wheat are the worst value in practice: they are cheap per pound because they contain little fat, and they are partly rejected by the birds you want.
Is expensive bird seed worth it?
Sometimes, and there is a break-even you can do in your head. A hulled seed only has to beat the hull it replaces, so against black oil sunflower at about a quarter hull, hearts pay for themselves at up to a third more per pound than in-shell. At our benchmark prices they are about 93% more, which is well past it, so the extra is buying a clean yard rather than more food. What is never worth paying for is a mix bulked out with milo, wheat or oats, whatever the front of the bag says, because the part the birds sort onto the ground is a total loss.
How much seed will one feeder use in a week?
A 1 to 2 lb tube feeder in a busy winter yard is usually emptied every 2 to 4 days, so 2 to 6 lb a week. In midsummer the same feeder can go a fortnight untouched because natural food is abundant. Track your own refills for a month and use that number in the calculator: yard-to-yard variation is larger than seed-to-seed variation.
Sources and further reading
- Types of Bird Seed Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Seed types and which birds take them
- Methodology Bird Feeder Web How our kernel yield and energy figures are derived