What a gig really pays, in a unit every musician understands. Each city’s median advertised gig fee — live from the GigXchange Index — divided by the UK average price of a pint. A gig in Sheffield currently buys 108 pints.
13 cities ranked · refreshes with the Index · free to cite
Last updated: 13 August 2026
The headline pints
The Big Mac Index has burgers; live music has beer. The Pint Index divides each city’s median advertised gig fee — from the GigXchange Index, refreshed every 24 hours — by the UK average pint price (£4.83, ONS). The result is the only UK gig-pay league that updates itself, in a unit that needs no explaining. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.
live
108 pints
The UK’s best-paying stage: Sheffield’s median advertised gig fee of £522 buys 108 pints at the UK average pint price.
London ranks 13 of 13 — its median gig buys 100 pints, more than you’d guess for the capital, because a dearer gig city is also a dearer pint city in real life (the Index uses the national pint price — see methodology).
Every city the Index publishes, ranked by what its median gig buys at the bar. Advertised rates across all gig types and band sizes — every city is scored on the same 22-cell grid, so the ranking reflects pay rather than how much data a city happens to have. Own data is how many of those 22 rest on that city’s own observations; the rest are derived and flagged. The 30d column shows places moved against the board a month earlier. Tap a city to see what’s on there.
Median advertised gig fee ÷ UK average pint price (£4.83, ONS). Live from the Index’s published city cells.
Source: GigXchange Index published city cells × ONS CZMS. Every city the Index publishes is shown, each scored on the same grid.
How it’s made
A playful unit on a serious base — here is exactly how the number is made, and what it does not say.
Formula: city median advertised gig fee (GigXchange Index published cells, all gig types and band sizes pooled) ÷ UK average draught lager price (£4.83 — the final published value of ONS series CZMS, reviewed annually). The gig-fee side refreshes with the Index every 24 hours; this page always shows the current cells.
Honest limits: fees are advertised rates (agency rate cards and asking prices), not invoiced fees; the mix pools all gig types, so wedding-heavy cities rank higher; the pint price is the national average — city-level pint prices have no free published series, so city variation comes from gig fees only. Cities appear only with ≥30 observations in their cell. Full methodology: GX Index methodology.
Cite the Pint Index — free under CC BY 4.0 with attribution: “GigXchange, The UK Pint Index, 2026 — gigxchange.app/rates/pint-index” Journalists: every card above has a one-click Copy stat with attribution included. Custom cuts and comment: gigxchange.app/press.
What it measures, how it updates, and how to use it in a story.
The Pint Index expresses what UK gigs pay in a unit every musician understands: pints of draught lager. It divides each city’s median advertised gig fee (from the GigXchange Index) by the UK average pint price (ONS). It is a serious dataset wearing a friendly unit — the same idea as The Economist’s Big Mac Index.
Sheffield currently tops the league: its median advertised gig fee of £522 buys 108 pints at the UK average pint price. The full league below ranks every city the Index publishes.
Median advertised gig fee per city (GigXchange Index published cells, all gig types and band sizes) ÷ UK average draught lager price (£4.83, ONS series CZMS). Every city is scored on the same grid of gig types and band sizes, so the ranking reflects pay rather than how much data a city happens to have. Fees are advertised rates, not invoiced fees.
The gig-fee side refreshes with the GigXchange Index — the cells behind this page rebuild every 24 hours as new rate data lands. The pint price does not. £4.83 is the final published value of ONS series CZMS, from January 2025: the series carries legacy status and has not updated since. A pint costs more than that today, so every count on this page is, if anything, generous. We are building a live replacement — a pint price by place and by month — rather than quietly leaning on a dead series.
Yes — everything on this page is free to cite under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to GigXchange. Every stat card has a copy button that includes the attribution for you. For custom cuts, use the press page.
Play where the pints are
Benchmark your rate against your city, see what’s on, and get booked — free to join, free to list, free to browse.
