What A 6-Pack Of Beer Cost In 1970 Versus Today

The American beer scene in 1970 was very different than it is today. This was long before the craft beer revolution that took off in the late 1990s and transformed the face of the industry. Today there's nearly 10,000 craft brewers in the U.S., with a head-spinning variety of types of beer. But back in 1970, lager ruled, and brands like Anheuser-Busch, Schlitz, and Pabst (what we would consider domestic beer today) were king. Back then you could get a six pack of beer, depending on the brand and where you lived, for under $1.

For instance, an advertisement in The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper from February 1970 offers a six-pack of Miller High Life — the cheap beer we've rated as the best — for 99 cents. Other big brands were a bit more expensive. If you wanted Coors in Henryetta, Oklahoma, you'd have to shell out $1.37 for a sixer. Today, those same beers will cost you around $7 and $9, respectively. Before you get up in arms and rail about how prices back in the day were so much cheaper, we have to adjust the price for inflation to come up with the actual cost.

Once we've adjusted the price of a six-pack of beer via an inflation calculator, that 99-cent six-pack of Miller High Life from 1970 is actually slightly more expensive than today's prices, being equivalent to around $8.68. Similarly, that Coors beer from Oklahoma in 1970 would cost the equivalent of about $11.82, nearly $3 more than what it would typically cost today. That said, when we look at the national average cost of a six-pack of beer in the U.S. today it's $10.58, according to The Council For Community and Economic Research. That's likely driven by the typically higher price of craft beer.

In 1970, the national average price for a sixer was $1.98 (per 24/7 Wall Street), much higher than the prices we found in advertisements from that year. That cost is equivalent to $17.44 today — quite a bit higher than today's actual price range for a six-pack. So along with all the massive changes in the beer industry since 1970, besides your huge range of beer choices today, your brews are actually cheaper than they used to be. Interestingly, the biggest selling beer in the U.S. is now Michelob Ultra (which trumped Modelo as America's most popular beer in 2025). While this light beer didn't exist in 1970, its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, was the biggest brewer in 1970.