The 5-Year Cost of Shaving: Cartridge vs Safety Razor

By The HONE Team · Updated August 31, 2026 · 6 min read

Over five years, a cartridge habit costs somewhere between $136 and $514. A safety razor costs between $101 and $320. The ranges are wide, they overlap at the edges, and the reason is the same on both sides: nobody agrees on how many shaves one blade is worth.

Ask most people what shaving costs them and the honest answer is that they don't know. That's fair. The money leaves in twenty-dollar pieces, a few times a year, buried in a receipt between toothpaste and deodorant. Nobody hands out a spreadsheet with a first razor.

So we went looking for the number.

What we found instead was a disagreement, and it sits on the manufacturer's own website.

Gillette's US shaving guide says most people should change a blade every 5 to 10 shaves. Further down the same page, it says its five-blade razors are "recommended to be replaced after about 20 shaves." Both sentences live on one page, published by the company that sells the blades.

That is not a small inconsistency. It is the single number that decides the five-year bill, and it moves by a factor of four depending on which line gets read.

Four numbers decide the whole thing.

Every cost comparison in this category is built from the same four inputs. Most of them only show one.

• Price per cutting edge. One cartridge, or one double-edge blade.
• Shaves per cutting edge. The disputed one.
• Shaves per week. Habit, not hardware.
• The handle. Paid once, then forgotten.

Only one of those four is a property of the razor. The other three belong to the person holding it. That is worth sitting with before reading any brand's savings calculator.

Take the third one. Shaves per week is the input nobody argues about and everybody assumes. Five a week is the figure used throughout this piece. Drop it to three and the same cartridge habit costs $313 over five years instead of $514, while the safety razor costs $154 instead of $216. Push it to seven and the two columns read $716 and $278.

Notice what did and didn't happen there. The ratio between the columns barely moved. The absolute numbers more than doubled. A comparison that reports only the gap, and not the assumption underneath it, is reporting the least interesting half.

What the manufacturers actually publish.

Here are the numbers, with links, checked in August 2026.

Harry's lists its own blade refills at $2.50 per cartridge in a four-pack and $1.94 per cartridge in a sixteen-pack. We used the $1.94 figure. Harry's is the cheaper end of the mainstream market, so this tilts the math in the cartridge's favor from the start.

Double-edge blades sell two ways. Shave Nation lists a hundred Astra blades for $21.99 — 22 cents each. West Coast Shaving lists the same blade in a five-pack for $2.99 — 60 cents each. We used 60 cents, the expensive way to buy them.

Both assumptions are deliberately unflattering to the safety razor. If the conclusion survives that, it means something.

For shaves per blade, only one side publishes anything at all. Gillette gives 5 to 10, and about 20 for its five-blade razors. No double-edge blade maker we could find publishes a figure. So the 3, 5 and 7 in the table below are stated assumptions, not findings, and they're marked as such.

Five years, run three ways.

Assumptions on the table, all of them: five shaves a week, which is 1,300 shaves over five years. A $10 cartridge handle. A $60 safety razor handle, bought once. Cartridges at $1.94. Double-edge blades at 60 cents.

Read down the columns and the point arrives on its own. Changing the razor moves the number. Changing how long a blade lasts moves it more.

At 22 cents a blade instead of 60, the safety razor column drops to $117 at five shaves and $101 at seven. That's the same razor, the same habit, a different pack size.

Where the cartridge wins.

There is a case, and it's worth stating plainly.

Someone who genuinely gets twenty shaves out of a cartridge, buys sixteen at a time, and shaves five times a week spends about $136 over five years. No safety razor setup beats that once the handle is counted, and most don't come close. If that describes a real person, the arithmetic says stay put.

The catch is that Gillette's own guidance says most people are not that person. Its general recommendation is 5 to 10 shaves, and that column reads $514 to $262.

If the question underneath the cost question is which blade to put in the razor: Double Edge Razor Blades: How to Choose One.

The handle gets more attention than it deserves.

It is the visible cost, and it's the one that stops people. A reviewer of a rival razor put it plainly: "the initial cost is a bit of a deterrent." That reaction is rational. Sixty dollars is a real decision, and it arrives all at once, in a single receipt. For what the first week of using one is actually like: The Safety Razor Learning Curve: What Actually Takes a Week.

But spread across five years it's $12 a year. At five shaves a week that's under five cents a shave, and it's the only one of the four numbers that gets paid once.

Meanwhile the blade line — the part that arrives quietly, twenty dollars at a time — runs anywhere from $41 to $504 depending on nothing but pack size and patience. The small number is the one that gets deliberated. The big one gets waved through.

What the numbers leave out.

Three things, and none of them are small.

Soap cancels out. Cream, gel, whatever gets used — it's the same expense with either razor. A lot of comparisons quietly put a $30 brush and a puck of soap on the safety-razor side and nothing on the other. That's a preference, not a cost of the tool.

Nobody publishes a double-edge shave count. Cartridge makers do, because they sell the schedule. Blade makers sell a hundred at a time and have no reason to. The honest position is that the safety-razor column rests on an assumption, and the table shows what happens when that assumption moves.

The cost of stretching a blade isn't in dollars. A blade kept past the point where it starts tugging doesn't send an invoice. Whatever it costs, it doesn't show up in this table, and that's true whichever razor is holding it. Worth reading once if that's a familiar pattern: Razor Burn vs Razor Bumps vs Ingrown Hairs: How to Tell Which One You Have.

The number people can move.

Every figure above was set by four decisions, and three of them happen after the purchase.

Price per blade is what people shop for. Shaves per blade is what they pay for.

The five-year bill was never decided at the checkout. It gets decided every morning, by whether a blade is judged to have one more shave left in it — a judgment nobody is trained to make, about an object nobody has ever priced.

There's no purchase at the end of this. Counting shaves per blade costs nothing, works with whatever razor is already in the cabinet, and is the only input in the whole calculation that belongs entirely to the person doing the shaving.

Questions people ask about this.

How much does shaving cost per year?

On the assumptions in this article — five shaves a week, $1.94 cartridges, 60-cent double-edge blades — a cartridge habit runs $27 to $103 a year and a safety razor runs $20 to $64. The spread inside each range is wider than the gap between them.

Is a safety razor actually cheaper than a cartridge razor?

In most of the scenarios we ran, yes, but not in all of them. Someone who gets twenty shaves out of a cartridge and buys sixteen at a time spends about $136 over five years, and no safety razor setup beats that once the handle is counted.

How many shaves does one double-edge blade last?

No double-edge blade maker we could find publishes a figure. This article uses three, five and seven shaves as stated assumptions and shows what each one does to the total, rather than picking one and calling it a fact.

How often does Gillette say to change a cartridge?

Its US shaving guide gives two answers on the same page: every 5 to 10 shaves as a general rule, and about 20 shaves for its five-blade razors. That difference alone moves the five-year cartridge total from $514 to $136.

Does a safety razor cost more to start?

Usually. A safety razor handle is a one-time $25 to $100, while a cartridge handle is often $10 or bundled free with the blades. Spread over five years, a $60 handle works out to about $12 a year.

Sources.

• Gillette, How Often Should You Change Razor Blades — gillette.com, consulted August 2026.
• Harry's, Original Blade Refills — harrys.com, pricing consulted August 2026.
• Shave Nation, Astra Superior Platinum DE Blades, 100-pack — shavenation.com, price consulted August 2026.
• West Coast Shaving, Astra Superior Platinum Double Edge Razor Blades, 5-pack — westcoastshaving.com, price consulted August 2026.

Prices change. Every figure in this article was checked in August 2026 and every assumption behind the totals is stated in the text, so the arithmetic can be re-run with different numbers at any time.