Christmas gift budget calculator
$628Average planned gift budget
Start from one number for the whole season, add everyone you are buying for, and see what each gift can cost before you open a single shop tab.
Americans planned to spend $628 per person on gifts for family and friends in the 2025 holiday season (NRF).
Who are you buying for?
- Partner
- Child
- Parent
- Parent
- Sibling
- Friend
A medium gift gets twice the money of a small one, a big one four times. Already know what one gift should cost? Type the amount in its row and the rest is shared between the others.
Keeping Christmas inside the number
- Write the list before the budget meets the shops. Every name added in December is paid for by the names already on it.
- Count the small ones. Teachers, neighbours, the office exchange: small gifts are where a plan quietly leaks.
- Swap a row for a draw. With a big family, one Secret Santa gift each instead of a gift for everyone cuts the list to a single line.
- Gifts are only part of the season. The $628 average covers gifts alone; food, decorations and cards took the total to $890 in the same survey.
- Shop from wishes. Ask for a Christmas wishlist and the amount turns into a specific thing.
Where the numbers come from
No averages pulled out of thin air: each figure in the calculator comes from a named survey or from our own anonymised data.
- National Retail Federation / Prosper Insights & Analytics, 2025 — Holiday survey of 8,247 US adults, October 2025: $890.49 planned per person in total, $627.93 of it on gifts for family and friends.
- secret.gift, 2026 — The spending limits that gift exchange groups set on secret.gift since October 2025, anonymised: the middle value and the range half of the groups fall into.
Gift budget questions
How much does the average person spend on Christmas gifts?
In the US, shoppers planned to spend $627.93 per person on gifts for family and friends in the 2025 season, and $890.49 once food, decorations and cards were added (National Retail Federation). In the UK, adults planned about £514 on gifts (Finder, 2025).
How do I split a Christmas budget between family members?
Give each person a gift size instead of a price. In the calculator a big gift takes four shares of the budget, a medium two and a small one, so a partner and a child get the most and the wider circle shares the rest. Change any size and the split updates.
How much should I spend on each child?
The fair answer is the same size for each child, not the same price tag: a teenager's one gift can cost what three toys do. Set each child to the same size in the calculator and let the wishes decide what the amount buys.
What if my list is longer than my budget?
Either shrink sizes or shrink the list. Turning a group of adults into one gift exchange is the painless version: everyone buys one gift at an agreed limit instead of one for each person.