Straight answers.

We help families who’ve just lost someone make better funeral decisions under pressure. Two things stay free forever:

• Fair price lookup(free) — see what funeral services should cost in your zip code, by line item.
• Prep kit(free) — the questions to ask, the upsells to decline, the rights families don’t know they have.

Everything else is in the $199 toolkit— one charge, all of it unlocks at once:

• Advocacy outreach— we contact funeral homes on your behalf and collect comparison quotes.
• Side-by-side comparison with line-item fair- price ratings.
• 30-day post-funeral checklist— with help on every step (death certificates, Social Security, credit freeze, life insurance locator, VA benefits, accounts to close, estate basics).
• Pre-meeting worksheet, obituary helper, certificate calculator, price-list analyzer, veterans benefits checker.

One $199 charge. No subscriptions. Money-back if we don’t save you anything in 14 days. We’re not a funeral home; we help you compare.

One flat $199 charge per family, charged when you start the toolkit (after the four-question intake at /decide). That is the only thing we charge for, ever.

• No commissions from funeral homes. Ever.
• No referral fees from insurance companies, financing services, or anyone else.
• 14-day money-back: if we didn’t save you anything documentable, email us and we refund the full $199.

Charging the family directly is the only way to stay accountable to the family. Every "free" service in this industry runs on commissions or kickbacks from funeral homes — which is why most of them route grieving families to whichever home paid for the placement. We don’t play that game.

No. Honest Funeral is a consumer advocate, not a directory or a broker. We don’t take commissions or kickbacks from funeral homes.

We were built by a licensed funeral director who spent years watching families overpay — and her brother, a software engineer. The whole point of this site is that the incentives point at the family, not the home.

You can still use the fair-price lookup (free) to rate the quote they gave you against local data. If the quote is within the fair range for your zip, you’re done — we don’t need to do anything else.

If it’s above the range, you have options: go back and ask about lower-priced packages, ask the home to match a comparable quote, or let us reach out to 3–5 other homes for comparison quotes before you sign.

Yes. The $199 unlocks the full toolkit regardless of whether the family chooses burial, cremation, direct cremation, green burial, or whole-body donation. One charge per family, paid once when you start.

Direct cremation in particular is where families often overpay the most, because traditional homes quote it as if it were a full service. Our comparison quotes typically save $1,500–$3,000 on direct cremation alone.

Our fair-price lookup works for most US zip codes. If we don’t have enough local data to show a range, we’ll say so plainly on the results page — we won’t make up numbers.

The funeral-home outreach in the toolkit still works in any zip with at least a few funeral homes: we send the request, homes respond under the FTC Funeral Rule, and you see whatever comes back.

For the fair-price lookup: you see a results page with the regional range for each line item, and — if you entered a home’s quote — a rating of that quote against the range. Nothing is saved. No account, no email collected.

For the funeral-home outreach in the toolkit: we show you the homes in your zip and ask for your written authorization before anything goes out. You approve the list. We send the emails. Homes respond. We summarize in your dashboard.

For the fair-price lookup: no. That happens entirely on our side, and no home is contacted.

When you have us call funeral homes for you (in the toolkit): yes, and that’s the point. We identify ourselves, by name, in every email. We invoke your rights under the FTC Funeral Rule to request a General Price List. Your surname is mentioned so the home knows who the inquiry is for; nothing else about you unless you tell us to share it.

We don’t impersonate families. We don’t send secret shoppers. Homes respond to Honest Funeral differently than to a grieving family, and that’s exactly why this works.

The toolkit’s funeral-home outreach contacts funeral homes on your behalf and collects comparison quotes. It is not anonymous— it’s transparent.

The homes know Honest Funeral is asking, they know we’re a consumer advocate, and they know the FTC Funeral Rule gives them a legal obligation to provide a price list on request. We don’t hide who we are; we rely on the fact that homes respond differently when someone who knows the rules is doing the comparing.

No. Honest Funeral is not a law firm, not a funeral home, and not a medical or financial advisor. The information on this site is general consumer guidance, not legal, medical, or financial advice.

We reference the FTC Funeral Rule because it governs how funeral homes must disclose prices — but if you have a complex estate or legal question, you should talk to a licensed attorney in your state.

Our regional ranges are based on General Price Lists collected from funeral homes, FTC Funeral Rule disclosures, and industry reports. We update them regularly.

We’ll always show you a range, not a single number — because real prices vary by neighborhood, by home, and by what’s included in each package. The range tells you whether a quote is reasonable, not whether it’s the lowest possible price.

If you ever see a price estimate on this site that you think is wrong, email us and we’ll look at it.

Then don’t pay us anything. Run the fair-price lookup for free. Read the 72-hour guidance for free. Use the obituary helper for free.

Families routinely overpay by $2,000 to $5,000on the funeral arrangement alone — usually because they don’t know the fair range. If the free tools tell you the quote you’ve been given is already in range, you’re done. Nothing else to do.

For quotes collected through our outreach: tell us within 14 days of service and we’ll refund your $199. We also escalate with the home — a written, itemized GPL quote is what the Funeral Rule requires homes to provide, and homes that fail to honor a written quote can be reported to the FTC and to your state attorney general.

For quotes you collected on your own: keep every written communication. You can file a complaint with the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and (in many states) with your state attorney general or funeral board.

Fair-price lookup: under three minutes. No account, no email.

The funeral-home outreach: most homes respond within 24–72 hours. Start to finish (authorize → quotes → choose a home) typically takes 3–5 days. Families tell us this is worth waiting for — the savings on a single funeral arrangement often cover a year of living expenses for someone on a fixed income.

The first 30 days after a death involve a lot of paperwork — death certificates, Social Security, closing accounts, estate filings. Your dashboard includes a checklist with the right order and scripts for the calls you’ll need to make.

If something specific comes up (a disputed bill, a missing death certificate, an insurance claim that’s been denied), email us. We’ll point you at the right resource or office, even if it’s not something we can handle directly.