What a year of periods costs, computed from live prices

The disposables side: what a year runs

Two honest ways to count it, and they land far apart. The bare-minimum version prices only the products: at 20 tampons per cycle (the average reported in BYU's Ballard Brief on period poverty) across 13 cycles a year (our assumption: a cycle roughly every 28 days), a $7 box of 36 - the worked example in Pandia Health's cost round-up - comes to 260 tampons at about 19 cents each: roughly $51 a year on tampons alone.

The second version is the commonly cited spending estimate, carried in the same Ballard Brief: $13.25 a month on menstrual products - about $159 a year, and roughly $6,000 across a menstruating lifetime. The gap between the two is real and the sources do not explain it for us: minimum box arithmetic sits at the bottom, the survey-style estimate sits three times higher, and rather than pick one we run the payback math against both ends. Neither number is ours; both are named so you can check them.

The structural point is that disposables are a subscription: the spend repeats every year, forever, and rises with prices. Everything below is about converting that subscription into a one-time purchase.

The reusable side, from the live catalog

Across the 299 in-stock single pairs from the brands we track (packs, sets, and kits excluded - a pack price is not a pair price), current prices run $3.00 to $210.00, with a median of $26 a pair.

The cheapest in-stock pair whose capacity claim we could verify is currently The Period Company The Thong Period. in Microfiber For Light Flows. at $3.00 - a clearance markdown from $12.00, with 2 sizes left in stock (verified claim up to 10 mL). A sale remainder is a deal for whoever it fits, not the category's everyday floor - the median above is the number to plan around. Cheaper unverified listings exist, but a price on an unverifiable claim is not a bargain we can vouch for.

A full rotation - the six to nine pairs that cover a whole cycle with washing in the loop - therefore runs $156 to $234 at the median pair price. Per cycle over the roughly two-year life of a pair, the median works out to about $1.00 per pair, per cycle.

The payback, shown

Against the $13.25-a-month estimate ($159 a year), a $156 to $234 rotation pays for itself in about 12 to 18 months - the arithmetic is just rotation cost divided by the monthly spend it replaces. Everything after that point is savings, for as long as the pairs last.

Against the leanest tampons-only math ($51 a year), payback stretches to roughly 3 to 5 years - longer than the two-year life a pair is usually good for. That is the honest version of “it depends”: if your current period costs almost nothing, reusables are a comfort-and-waste decision, not a money one. The higher your real basket, the faster the math tilts.

Two things keep this math honest rather than optimistic. The payback assumes the rotation fully replaces disposables - most people run a hybrid at first, which stretches the timeline. And it assumes the first buy fits: most pairs are final sale, so a wrong-tier first purchase is a real loss the spreadsheet never shows. Buy one pair, prove it for a cycle, then build the rotation.

What this math leaves out

Waste: a year of the disposables math above is 260 single-use items, times every year - we note it and do not put a dollar figure on it, because nobody has an honest one. Pain relief, liners, and the rest of the wider period basket: in neither number above - the cited figures cover menstrual products, and our computed side covers pairs, so a real total runs higher than either. And affordability context: the Alliance for Period Supplies reported in November 2025 that 2 in 5 people in the US have struggled to afford period supplies - the up-front cost of reusables is exactly the barrier there, which is why starting with one or two pairs, not a full rotation, is the whole strategy of the starter guide. The budget guide ranks the cheapest verified pairs if price is the constraint.