The Cost Per Wear Calculator

Underwear is argued about on the shelf price and lived with on the cost per wear, and those two numbers can point in opposite directions. A pack that looks like a bargain and dies inside a year can be the more expensive option, and the only way to find out is to divide.

Put your own figures in. This site does not print prices, because they change by country and by week and any number here would be wrong by the time you read it. Use whatever currency you buy in and the answer comes back in the same currency.

What the sum is doing

Total wears is the pairs in the pack, times the number of times each pair is worn in a week, times fifty two, times the years the pack stays in service. Divide the price by that and you have the cost of one wearing. Nothing clever is happening. The reason it changes minds is that the multiplication runs over years and the shelf price does not.

The figure that decides the answer is almost always the service life, and it is the one people guess at worst. A pack that survives one year and a pack that survives four are not one price apart, they are four multiplications apart, and a good pair can absorb a large premium and still come out cheaper. It works the other way too: a costly pair that gets ruined in a tumble dryer inside a year loses to the cheap pack decisively, which is an argument about how you wash things rather than about what you buy.

How to guess the service life honestly

Use the waistband, not the fabric. Everyday cotton in regular rotation typically holds its recovery somewhere between one and three years, longer at the better end of construction and dramatically shorter if it goes through a tumble dryer, which is the single most destructive thing most men do to their underwear. A well made pair in a heavier rib knit, air dried, is the case where four or more years is realistic.

If you have owned the thing before, use what actually happened rather than what the packaging implied. If you have not, run the sum twice, once with an optimistic life and once with a pessimistic one, and see whether the answer flips. If it does not flip, the decision is easy. If it does, you have learned that the whole case rests on a guess, which is worth knowing before you spend anything.

Where cost per wear stops being useful

It is a comparison tool, not a moral one. A pair that costs very little per wear because you own it for nine years is not automatically the right purchase if it never fitted properly, and comfort does not appear anywhere in the arithmetic. Fit first, then fabric, then the sum. A pair that fits badly has a cost per wear of infinity, because the honest number of wears is zero.

The other limit is cash. Cost per wear assumes you can pay the higher price today to save over four years, and plenty of people cannot, which is a real constraint and not a failure of discipline. The durability argument in full is in Buy It Once, and the case against assuming the multipack is the thrifty option is in Against the Multipack.

Questions people ask

What is cost per wear?

Cost per wear is the price of a garment divided by the number of times you actually wear it before retiring it. For underwear, multiply the pairs in the pack by how often each is worn per week, then by fifty two, then by the years of service, and divide the price by that total. It is the standard way of comparing a cheap item that is replaced often against a costly one that lasts, and it frequently reverses the answer the shelf price suggests.

Is expensive underwear actually worth it?

Sometimes, and the deciding factor is construction rather than the name on the waistband. A higher price buys a better result when it pays for a denser knit, a proper covered waistband, flatlock seams and a longer staple cotton, because those are the things that determine how long the pair keeps its shape. It buys nothing when it pays for a logo, and a premium charged for technical language on a plain cotton garment is not buying performance.

How long should a pair of underwear last?

Everyday cotton in regular rotation usually holds its shape for one to three years before the waistband gives up, with better construction at the upper end. Air drying extends that considerably and tumble drying shortens it sharply, because heat degrades elastic far faster than wearing does. Judge the end point by the waistband snapping back rather than by a date, since the fabric often outlives the elastic by a long way.

Are multipacks cheaper in the long run?

Not reliably. A multipack lowers the price of each pair on the day and says nothing about how long any of them lasts, and packs assembled to hit a price point are usually the place where the knit is lightest and the waistband thinnest. Run the sum on service life before assuming the pack wins. Where a multipack does make sense is a style you have already worn and know lasts, bought in the size you know fits.