Is it Cheaper to make or buy Butter?

When I was in culinary school, we would hear all the time that butter makes everything better. This is true for most dishes and the creamy smooth taste is truly delicious.

As with lots of grocery items, the cost of butter has been steadily rising lately. This makes me wonder if making butter at home is cheaper than buying it at the store. Let’s breakdown the costs and find out!

Butter Shortage of 2022

As if rising costs have not been bad enough, we are facing a butter shortage as we head into the holiday season of 2022. In the last year, butter prices have already risen an estimated 25% and you can expect this price will go up even more.

The reasons for the butter shortage can be linked to multiple issues. First, we have a decline in milk production. When we have less milk to work with, it will be used more for regular milk, ice cream, and cheese before it is used to make butter.

As you will see when we breakdown the cost of butter, when you make butter you also make buttermilk. In fact, every batch of butter you make only results in 40% butter and 60% buttermilk.

That means it is just not as profitable and cost effective to make butter commercially, which means manufacturers are going to put their energy into making products that are in the most demand and the most profitable.

Add in labor shortages and rising labor costs, and now your butter will be more expensive. Some sources say that the Northeast parts of the US are doing fine with butter supply, but places in the Midwest are currently outpacing the supply.

This means you may notice much higher prices in the Midwest for butter than in other areas.

How much does it cost to make butter at home?

Before we breakdown the cost of making butter at home, we first have to cover that when you make butter, you will also end up with butter milk.

For every batch of butter that you make you will end up with 40% butter and 60% buttermilk. So, for a batch made with 2 cups of heavy cream, you will end up with 3/4 of a cup of butter, and 1 1/4 cups of buttermilk.

If you do not have a use for buttermilk, then your cost to make butter will be much higher.

Did you know that making butter/buttermilk is actually really easy? It can be done in a stand mixer, food processor, blender, or just in a sealed jar. Really you just put the heavy cream in and then shake or whip it around until it separates into solid butter and liquid buttermilk.

Homemade Butter Ingredients	Cost
16 oz heavy cream	$2.58
Cost of Homemade Butter: $1.03	Cost per oz of Butter: $0.17
Cost of Homemade Buttermilk: $1.54	Cost per oz of Buttermilk: $0.15

The total cost to make 3/4 cup of butter is $1.03 and comes out to $0.17 per oz. This also makes 1 1/4 cup of buttermilk for a cost of $1.54. That is $0.15 per oz of buttermilk.

For this cost breakdown we bought one 16oz carton of Great Value Heavy Cream from Walmart. If you were to use a name brand heavy cream, your price per ounce will come out higher than ours.

How much does butter cost at the grocery store?

Now let’s see how the homemade butter and buttermilk compare to buying it at the store.

Store Bough Butter & Number of Ounces	Store & Price	Cost per Oz
Great Value 16oz	Walmart, $4.48	$0.28
Schnucks 16oz	Schnucks, $3.99	$0.24
Countryside Creamery 16oz	Aldi, $4.25	$0.26
Coburn Farms 16oz	Save A Lot, $4.37	$0.27
Land O Lakes 16oz	Target, $6.79	$0.42
Fresh Thyme 16oz	Fresh Thyme, $4.69	$0.29
Kirkland 64oz	Costco, $17.15	$0.26
	Average Cost per Oz of Store Bought Butter:	$0.28

Store Bough Buttermilk & Number of Ounces	Store & Price	Cost per Oz
Marburger Farm, 32oz	Walmart, $2.27	$0.07
Schnuck’s Low Fat 64oz	Schnuck’s, $3.49	$0.05
Organic Valley 32oz	Fresh Thyme, $4.89	$0.15
Prairie Farms 64oz	Save A Lot, $3.09	$0.04
Kroger 16oz	Kroger, $1.19	$0.07
Oak Farms 64oz	Aldi, $1.85	$0.02
The Fresh Market 16oz	The Fresh Market, $2.49	$0.15
	Average Cost per Oz of Store Bought Buttermilk:	$0.08

The average cost per oz of store-bought butter is $0.28 per ounce. This is much higher than the cost per oz of homemade butter being $0.17.

The average cost per oz of storebought buttermilk is $0.08 per ounce. This is much lower than the cost per ox of homemade buttermilk being $0.15.

With the butter being higher and the buttermilk being lower, we need to dig a little deeper. We can’t make just butter or just buttermilk, so we need to look at the cost per ounce combined.

If we take the cost per oz of homemade butter and buttermilk, we come out to $0.32 per ounce. If we take the cost of store-bought butter and buttermilk, we come out to $0.36 per ounce.

Is homemade butter worth it?

Now that we know the cost of homemade butter/buttermilk is just a little bit smaller than store bought, we know that is the better deal.

BUT! What if you don’t regularly use buttermilk or don’t even like it? Then your total cost of homemade butter is actually about $0.43 per ounce. This is a lot higher than the average store-bought butter cost of $0.28 per ounce.

Overall, we have learned that if you want to save a little money, then making your own butter and buttermilk is totally worth it but only if you will use both final products.

Our family is not a huge fan of buttermilk and rarely if ever use it. We do use a lot of butter in cooking and baking though. It looks like our best bet is to just keep an eye on for when butter is on sale and stock up!

Now one condition this may work for us, is if we had leftover heavy cream and wanted to use it up. Then it would totally be worth it!

As the price of butter rises due to the shortage in 2022, it may become more cost effective to make your own butter. We will have to keep an eye on the cost of heavy cream and if it stays steady while the price of butter raises, then making your own butter will end up being cheaper!

For more cost breakdowns of making versus buying, check out “Is it Cheaper to make or buy a Key Lime Pie?” and “Is it Cheaper to make or buy Sweetened Condensed Milk?“