How we set our prices
Page updated . Prices last changed .
Every price on this site is an indicative range: a guide to what a UK scrap yard might pay per kilogram, not a quote or an offer from any yard. Copper, aluminium, brass, bronze, lead, zinc and stainless steel follow sterling metal spot prices, checked every Monday. Steel and iron are set by hand from letsrecycle.com trade guide prices. City rates are a fixed regional adjustment to the UK figure.
Where each UK price comes from today
| Metal | UK range | Source | Last changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copper | £4.76–£5.66/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) | |
| Aluminium | £0.75–£1.13/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) | |
| Brass | £3.20–£3.88/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) | |
| Steel | £0.10–£0.16/kg | letsrecycle.com guide prices, July 2026 | |
| Lead | £0.99–£1.26/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) | |
| Iron | £0.06–£0.13/kg | letsrecycle.com guide prices, July 2026 | |
| Bronze | £2.65–£3.31/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) | |
| Stainless Steel | £0.56–£1.03/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) | |
| Zinc | £0.85–£1.21/kg | Spot-indexed (metalpriceapi.com) |
Non-ferrous metals: indexed to spot prices
Each of these metals has a base price range that was set by hand (the base date is shown on each metal page). Every Monday a script reads sterling spot prices from metalpriceapi.com and moves each range by the same percentage as its spot price has moved since the base date:
new range = base range × (spot price today ÷ spot price on the base date)
- Copper, aluminium, lead and zinc follow their own spot price.
- Stainless steel follows nickel, the metal that drives its scrap value.
- Brass follows a blend of 65% copper and 35% zinc; bronze follows 88% copper and 12% tin.
- A change of less than 0.5% from the published range is not published. If a spot price has moved more than 25% since the base date, that metal is not moved automatically and keeps its last range until its base is reset by hand.
- Spot prices are for refined metal. Scrap sells for less; that discount is part of the base range and is not recalculated.
Steel and iron: trade guide prices
There is no spot price feed for ferrous scrap, so steel and iron are set by hand from letsrecycle.com ferrous guide prices. Those are trade prices (what processors pay merchants and collectors), so a yard may pay a member of the public less. These figures change only when we update them, and the date on each page shows when that was.
City rates: a regional adjustment
City rates are not collected from yards in each city. For cities with a rate, we apply one fixed factor to the UK range, the same for every metal. Cities without a factor show the UK range, labelled as such.
| City | Factor on the UK range |
|---|---|
| London | ×1.05 |
| Edinburgh | ×1.00 |
| Liverpool | ×1.00 |
| Leeds | ×1.00 |
| Manchester | ×0.98 |
| Birmingham | ×0.97 |
| Sheffield | ×0.96 |
| Glasgow | ×0.95 |
Grade prices
The ranges for individual grades (for example bare bright copper or cast aluminium) were set by hand when the site was built in March 2026 and are not moved by the weekly market check. They can lag the UK range for their metal, so use them as a guide to how grades compare and get a quote from the yard.
Prices visitors submit
Visitors can submit the price a yard paid them. Submissions are stored for reference. They do not change the published prices automatically.
What these prices do not tell you
- What a particular yard will pay you. Yards set their own prices, which vary with grade, cleanliness, quantity and the day.
- Live prices. The non-ferrous ranges move once a week; steel, iron and grade ranges move only when updated by hand.
- Prices for specialist material such as catalytic converters, whose value depends on the precious metals inside.
Always confirm a price with the yard before you travel.
Corrections and independence
If a price or fact looks wrong, please tell us. Scrap Metal Pricer UK is an independent publication. It is not affiliated with any scrap yard, metal exchange, trade body or government agency, and it is funded by advertising.