Ice cream prices in the United States

Two ways to measure price

The average price tells you what a half gallon costs. It is the BLS series for prepackaged, bulk ice cream in a cardboard container, any flavor or package size, organic or not, as a U.S. city average. BLS turns every shelf price into a price per ounce, averages those, and states the result per half gallon (64 fluid ounces), without sales tax. BLS calls this an estimate of the price level, not of price change.

The CPI for ice cream and related products tells you how fast prices are moving. It follows the same or a comparable item in the same store over time, starting from 100 in December 1997. A reading of 150 would mean prices 50 percent higher than at the base.

We show both because each answers a different question: the cost of a tub today, and the pace of ice cream inflation. We use the all-items CPI only to restate old prices in today's dollars.

The shrinking half gallon

BLS still states the price per half gallon, 64 ounces, whatever size the package is. Store tubs have not kept that size. Consumer advocate Edgar Dworsky of MousePrint reported on May 12, 2008 that Breyers and Edy's were cutting containers from 56 ounces to 48 ounces at the same price, a few years after the original 64 ounce half gallons dropped to 56. The makers pointed to higher costs for ingredients, fresh cream most of all, and for manufacturing and transport. The Fiscal Times, citing Dworsky, placed the first cut around 2006 and the second in 2008.

So the BLS figure is the cost of 64 ounces. A 48 ounce tub priced the same as a 64 ounce one costs a third more per ounce. Check the ounces on the label before you compare.

At $5.93 per half gallon, 48 ounces cost $4.45 and a 1.5 quart tub at the full half-gallon price costs $0.12 an ounce instead of $0.09.

How the numbers work

• BLS collects retail prices each month for the Consumer Price Index. The average price uses a smaller subset of those prices, turned into a price per ounce, averaged, and stated per half gallon without sales tax. It is not seasonally adjusted.
• Changes in the average price over time can include more than pure price change. BLS rotates about 25 percent of its item and store sample each year, products change, and shoppers' habits shift.
• BLS releases each month's prices and CPI together in the middle of the next month; its schedule through 2027 puts them between the 10th and the 14th, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. We refresh these pages after each release.
• The price series starts in January 1980 because BLS did not publish average prices from July 1978 through December 1979 while it revised its method, and earlier prices are not comparable. The index starts in December 1997, its base month.
• BLS published no value for October 2025, during the 2025 lapse in appropriations, and no average price for January 1987. Those months stay empty in the tables and leave a gap in the charts, and yearly changes appear only when both months have values.
• Our own rule: if a series falls three or more months behind the newest month BLS could have published, we mark it as paused instead of showing an old number as current. We check the data automatically each month.
• Our own calculation: we restate an old price in today's dollars by multiplying it by the all-items CPI for the latest month divided by the all-items CPI for the old month. BLS does not publish an inflation-adjusted ice cream price.

Data through: average price September 2026, ice cream CPI September 2026, all-items CPI September 2026. All three series are current.