The latest issue is live
Flip through all 11 pages below, or download the PDF.
What gigs actually pay across the UK this month — by city, gig type and band size.
Flip through all 11 pages below, or download the PDF.
A free, monthly benchmark for bands, venues, agents, promoters and couples planning a wedding — built from real UK bookings, not agency marketing.
Live music fees in the UK swing hard by city, band size, gig type and day of week. A 4-piece wedding band in Mayfair commands two and a half times what the same band plays a Tuesday pub gig in Newcastle for. Until now, that spread has been hidden in private agency spreadsheets, closed-door conversations and out-of-date forum threads. The GigXchange Index makes it public.
Working musicians pricing themselves against the market without underselling. Venues and promoters budgeting realistic offers that actually get accepted. Agents checking their own rate cards against national medians. Couples and event planners sanity-checking wedding quotes before signing. Journalists and researchers needing citable UK live-music data.
Fees for seven gig types — wedding, corporate, private party, festival, ticketed club, theatre/pit and pub & bar — across ten UK cities (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle) and five band sizes (solo, duo, 3–piece, 4–piece, 5+ piece). Every figure is a median with 25th–75th percentile ranges, so you know both the typical fee and the realistic spread.
Most UK rate guides are one-number-fits-all recommended minimums from the Musicians' Union or Equity — useful, but a floor, not a market rate. The GigXchange Index is built from 2,381 real April 2026 observations weighted across nine sources: confirmed platform bookings, artist-submitted post-event fees, MU and Equity minimums, agency rate cards, venue budgets and public gig listings. Confirmed bookings carry the heaviest weight (1.00); asking-prices the lightest (0.16). Full methodology in the report above; raw data on Hugging Face and Zenodo under CC BY 4.0.
Highlights from the April 2026 issue. The full breakdown — including methodology, data sourcing and city-by-city figures — is in the report above.
For a 3–4 piece wedding band, the typical UK fee in April 2026 is £1,340. Most bookings fall between £995 and £1,757. The top end of the market reaches £2,241. Solo wedding singers typically charge £367; duos £600; 5+ piece bands £2,000.
Edinburgh leads the country at £1,779 median, with Glasgow second at £1,678. Cardiff (£1,480), Brighton (£1,424) and Leeds (£1,366) round out the top five. London's median is £1,355 but it has the widest spread of any city — from £865 budget weddings to £2,444 high-end Mayfair functions. Manchester typically pays £1,240, Birmingham £1,195, Liverpool £1,160, Newcastle £995.
Private parties typically pay £1,098 for a 3–4 piece, corporate events £839, ticketed clubs £600, festivals £757, theatre/pit work £631, and pubs & bars £487 — the lowest-paying gig type in the Index.
Every gig you've done is a data point we need. Submit three rates anonymously and you unlock every figure and price trend for 30 days. No email, no signup.