Consumer price inflation, UK: July 2025

• The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 4.2% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 4.1% in the 12 months to June.
• On a monthly basis, CPIH was little changed in July 2025, the same as in July 2024.

• The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.8% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 3.6% in the 12 months to June.

• On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 0.1% in July 2025, compared with a fall of 0.2% in July 2024.

• Transport, particularly air fares, made the largest upward contribution to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates; housing and household services, particularly owner occupiers' housing costs, made a large, partially offsetting, downward contribution in CPIH.

• Core CPIH (CPIH excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 4.2% in the 12 months to July 2025, down slightly from 4.3% in the 12 months to June; the CPIH goods annual rate rose from 2.4% to 2.7%, while the CPIH services annual rate was unchanged at 5.2%.

• Core CPI (CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 3.8% in the 12 months to July 2025, up slightly from 3.7% in the 12 months to June; the CPI goods annual rate rose from 2.4% to 2.7%, while the CPI services annual rate rose from 4.7% to 5.0%.

• We have identified a minor error in the imputation of missing seasonal item indices. This error has no impact on headline CPI or CPIH annual and monthly growth rates. The Retail Prices Index (RPI) is also unaffected. For more details see Section 8: Data sources and quality.

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 4.2% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 4.1% in the 12 months to June (Figure 1).

On a monthly basis, CPIH was little changed in July 2025, the same as in July 2024.

The owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs component of CPIH rose by 5.5% in the 12 months to July 2025. This is down from 6.4% in the 12 months to June, returning to the levels seen in late 2023 and early 2024. OOH costs fell by 0.1% on the month, compared with a 0.6% increase a year earlier.

The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.8% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 3.6% in the 12 months to June. The July 2025 figure was the highest recorded since January 2024, when the rate was 4.0%.

On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 0.1% in July 2025, compared with a fall of 0.2% in July 2024.

The main drivers of the annual inflation rate for CPIH and CPI are the same where they are common to both measures. However, the OOH costs component accounts for approximately 17% of the CPIH and is the main driver for differences between the CPIH and CPI inflation rates. This makes CPIH our most comprehensive measure of inflation. We cover this in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation and provide a commentary on the CPI in Section 5: Latest movements in CPI inflation. We also cover both CPIH and CPI in Section 3: Notable movements in prices, though the figures reflect CPIH.

Figure 2 shows the contributions from the 12 divisions to the change in the annual Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) inflation rate between June and July 2025. These sum to the change in the annual rate between the latest two months, that is, the rise from 4.1% to 4.2%.

The slight increase in the rate into July 2025 reflected upward contributions from four divisions, partially offset by downward contributions from six divisions. The largest upward contribution came from transport, particularly air fares. This was partially offset by a large downward contribution from housing and household services, particularly owner occupiers' housing costs.

Transport

Prices in the transport division rose overall by 3.2% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 1.7% in the 12 months to June (Figure 3). On a monthly basis, prices rose by 2.2% in July 2025, compared with a rise of 0.7% a year ago.

The rise in the annual rate reflected a large upward effect from airfares which rose by 30.2% between June and July 2025, compared with a rise of 13.3% between the same months in 2024. The monthly rise in July 2025 is the largest July increase since collection of airfares changed from quarterly to monthly in 2001 and was probably influenced by the timing of school summer holidays. Returning European flights were during the school term in 2024, whereas returning European flights were during the school holidays in 2025, which may have made these flights more expensive.

The rise in the annual rate also reflected a large upward effect from motor fuels. The average price of petrol rose by 2.0 pence per litre between June and July 2025, compared with a fall of 1.4 pence per litre between June and July 2024. The average price stood at 133.9 pence per litre in June 2025, down from 144.4 pence per litre a year earlier.

Similarly, diesel prices rose by 2.9 pence per litre in July 2025, compared with a fall of 1.1 pence per litre in July 2024. The average price stood at 141.4 pence per litre in June 2025, down from 150.4 pence per litre a year earlier. These movements resulted in overall motor fuel prices falling by 6.7% in the 12 months to July 2025, compared with a larger fall of 9.0% in the 12 months to June.

There were also upward effects from sea fares and from roadside recovery services.

Restaurants and hotels

Prices in the restaurants and hotels division rose overall by 3.4% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 2.6% in the 12 months to June. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 0.4% in July 2025, compared with a fall of 0.4% a year ago.

The largest upward effect came from accommodation services, specifically from overnight hotel stays booked the night before. There were smaller upward effects from restaurants and cafes, and from canteens.  

Food and non-alcoholic beverages

The 12-month inflation rate for food and non-alcoholic beverages was 4.9% in July 2025, up from 4.5% in the 12 months to June. This was the fourth consecutive increase in the annual rate and the highest recorded since February 2024, but remains well below the peak seen in early 2023 (Figure 4). On a monthly basis, food and non-alcoholic beverages prices rose by 0.4% in July 2025, compared with being little changed a year ago.

There were small upward effects to the change in the rate from 4 of the 11 food and non-alcoholic beverages classes, these being meat (mainly beef); sugar, jam, honey, syrups, chocolate and confectionery (mainly chocolate assortments); coffee, tea and cocoa (mainly instant coffee); and mineral waters, soft drinks and juices (mainly fresh orange juice).

Housing and household services

The main counteracting downward effect came from the housing and household services division. The 12-month inflation rate for housing and household services was 6.2% in July 2025, down from 6.7% in June. On a monthly basis, prices fell by 0.4% in July 2025, compared with a rise of 0.1% a year ago.

The easing in the 12-month rate between June and July 2025 mainly reflected a downward effect from owner occupiers’ housing (OOH) costs, which rose by 5.5% in the 12 months to July 2025 compared with a rise of 6.4% in June 2025. On a monthly basis, OOH costs fell by 0.1% in July 2025 compared with a rise of 0.6% a year ago. This was the first monthly fall in OOH costs since March 2010.

There was also a downward effect from rents, which rose by 4.5% in the 12 months to July 2025, compared with a rise of 5.8% in June 2025. This was the lowest annual growth for rents since October 2022. On a monthly basis, rents rose by 0.4% in July 2025, compared with a rise of 1.7% a year ago.

There was a counteracting upward effect from electricity, where prices rose by 8.0% in the 12 months to July 2025 compared with a rise of 4.5% in June 2025. Monthly electricity prices fell by 3.8% compared with a fall of 6.8% a year ago. This resulted from a change in the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) energy price cap in July 2025, described on the Ofgem website. Ofgem estimated that for an average household paying by direct debit for dual fuel, this equates to an annual bill of £1,720, a fall of £129.

Figure 5 shows the 12-month inflation rates for the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) series for all goods and all services, together with CPIH excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (often referred to as core CPIH). The CPIH inflation rate is added for comparison.

The CPIH all goods index rose by 2.7% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 2.4% in the 12 months to June. This is the highest rate since October 2023, when it was 2.9%. The largest upward contributions to the change in the annual rate came from energy, primarily from motor fuels and electricity.  

The CPIH all services index rose by 5.2% in the 12 months to July 2025, unchanged from last month. This is the joint-lowest annual rate seen since January 2023. The largest upward contributions to the change in the annual rate came from air fares and from overnight hotel stays, while the largest downward contributions came from owner occupiers’ housing costs and rents.

The core CPIH annual inflation rate was 4.2% in July 2025, down slightly from 4.3% in June.

Figure 6 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPIH inflation rate over the last two years. The contribution of each category to the annual rate depends on the price movement in that category and its weight, which is updated annually.

The contributions from all divisions to the annual CPIH inflation rate were positive in July 2025. The largest positive contribution came from housing and household services. This contributed 1.82 percentage points, down from 1.97 percentage points in June.

The contribution from food and non-alcoholic beverages rose from 0.41 to 0.44 percentage points between June and July 2025. This was the largest contribution from this division since February 2024. The 0.35 percentage point contribution from transport was the second highest upward contribution since January 2023.

Figure 7 shows the contributions from owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs and Council Tax to the annual CPIH inflation rate in the context of wider housing-related costs. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) differs from the CPIH because it does not include these two components.

The annual contribution from OOH costs continued to slow, to 0.93 percentage points in July 2025. This follows a recent high of 1.31 percentage points in January 2025.

The annual contribution from rents continued to slow, to 0.29 percentage points in July 2025. This follows a recent high of 0.49 percentage points in January 2025 and is the lowest contribution since August 2022.

The annual contribution from electricity, gas and other fuels rose to 0.24 in July 2025, up from 0.18 in June 2025. This is the largest contribution since September 2023.

While the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is our lead and most comprehensive measure of consumer price inflation, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is based on a harmonised methodology developed by Eurostat. This enables international comparisons to be drawn. More information on the use cases for our consumer price inflation statistics can be found in our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

Figure 8 shows annual CPI inflation for the UK compared with the EU average and selected G7 countries. While the UK CPI is produced on a comparable basis with EU countries, the US Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) differs in some respects (see Note 1 to Figure 8).

The UK’s CPI inflation rate of 3.8% was significantly higher than the first (or “flash”) estimate of inflation for France (0.9%) and Germany (1.8%) in July 2025.

Figure 9 shows the 12-month inflation rates for the CPI all goods and all services series, together with CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (often referred to as core CPI). The headline CPI inflation rate is added for comparison.

The CPI all goods index rose by 2.7% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 2.4% in the 12 months to June. This is the highest rate since October 2023 when it was 2.9%.

The CPI all services index rose by 5.0% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 4.7% in June.

Core CPI rose by 3.8% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 3.7% in the 12 months to June.

As with the all-items annual inflation rates, the drivers of CPIH and CPI goods and services inflation are the same (except for owner occupiers’ housing (OOH) costs and Council Tax, which are excluded from CPI). The drivers are discussed in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation.

Figure 10 shows how each of the main groups of goods and services contributed to the change in the annual CPI inflation rate between June and July 2025.

The increase in the rate into July 2025 reflected upward contributions from four divisions, partially offset by downward contributions from six divisions. The largest upward contribution came from transport. There were no large, offsetting downward contributions.

Though the sizes of the contributions differ from CPIH, the main drivers to the change are the same where they are common to both measures.

Figure 11 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPI inflation rate over the last two years.

The CPIH includes extra housing components not included in the CPI. This can sometimes result in the largest contributions to the annual CPI and CPIH inflation rates coming from different divisions. However, in July 2025, the housing and household services division made the largest contribution to both measures, with a 0.92 percentage point contribution to the CPI rate and 1.82 percentage points to the CPIH rate. OOH costs made a large upward contribution to housing and household services in the CPIH, but are excluded from the CPI.

Annual inflation rate

The most common approach to measuring inflation is the 12-month or annual inflation rate, which compares prices for the latest month with the same month a year ago. In any given month, the annual rate is determined by the balance between upward and downward price movements across the range of goods and services included in the index.

Consumer price inflation

Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices. For an overview of the range of indices available and their uses, please see our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017 and our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

CPIH

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is the most comprehensive measure of inflation. It extends the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home, known as owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs, along with Council Tax. Both are significant expenses for many households and are not included in the CPI.

CPI

The CPI is a measure of consumer price inflation produced to international standards, and is based on European regulations for the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. The CPI is the inflation measure used in the government's target for inflation.

The CPI is produced at the same level of detail as the CPIH in our accompanying Consumer price inflation tables dataset and accompanying Consumer price inflation data time series.

Owner occupiers' housing costs

OOH costs are the costs of housing services associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home.

RPI

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) does not meet the required standard for designation as accredited official statistics. In recognition that it continues to be widely used in contracts, we continue to publish the RPI, its subcomponents, and RPI excluding mortgage interest payments (RPIX). To view the all-items RPI, please see the data time series section of the Inflation and price indices area of our website. The annual RPI inflation rate was 4.8% in July 2025.

The UK Statistics Authority (The Authority) and HM Treasury launched a consultation in 2020 on The Authority's proposal to address the shortcomings of the RPI. From 2030 (at the earliest), as outlined in The Authority's response to the joint consultation on reforming the methodology of the Retail Prices Index, the CPIH methods and data sources will be introduced into the RPI. Additionally, the supplementary and lower-level indices of the RPI will be discontinued.

Minor error

We have identified an error in the imputation of missing seasonal item indices in months for which no price data are available. This error has no impact on headline Consumer Prices Index (CPI) or the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) annual growth rates. The Retail Prices Index (RPI) is also unaffected.  

This minor error has no impact on growth rates at divisional level. However, a small number of classes within two divisions have seen annual growth affected by up to 0.1 percentage points, for the periods February to June 2025. These are: 

• furniture, household equipment and maintenance 

• recreation and culture  

More details on the lower-level impacts can be found in our CPIH microdata release.

In line with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) consumer prices revisions and correction of errors policy, we have not corrected the indices for those months. However, we have corrected the error in the July 2025 published indices and in the 2025 price quotes dataset.

The error is isolated to one specific imputation process, which has been rebuilt as part of modernising a legacy production system. The ONS is reviewing its testing and quality assurance processes in response to this issue.

Quality improvement

We are undertaking a programme of quality improvement across our consumer price statistics, including identifying new sources, improving methods and developing modern automated systems. Our Transformation of consumer price statistics: August 2024 article, contains more information about the project and our ongoing plans. We also published our Consumer prices development plan: updated August 2024 to outline the rationale for our priorities and their potential impact.

The next planned improvement is the introduction of grocery scanner data into our consumer price statistics from February 2026, with the first publication scheduled for March 2026. We outlined this change in our series of research articles, including our Research and developments in the transformation of UK consumer price statistics: April 2025 article.

As usual, we welcome your feedback on our work. To contact us, please email cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Moving from sample items to broader consumption segments

The "All items" Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) series incorporate price information from a wide range of goods and services. From March 2025, the process for aggregating this detailed information has changed, as a necessary step towards incorporating larger and more granular datasets into the consumer price indices.

Goods and services are allocated into "consumption segments" for different categories of expenditure. In some cases, we have currently defined these consumption segments to correspond to one "item" for which we track prices over time. However, in cases where more comprehensive source data are available, or are expected to be available in the future, a consumption segment typically includes much more than just one item. For simplicity, we continue to refer to "items" in the statistical bulletin and detailed briefing note. More detailed methodological information on the new aggregation process and consumption segments is available in Introducing alternative data into consumer price statistics: aggregation and weights article.

Please note that the move from sample items to broader consumption segments means there is an impact on the individual price quotes and lower-level indices published from March 2025 in our Consumer price inflation consumption segment indices and price quotes dataset. These outputs have been updated and presented in an improved format to help users transition to the use of consumption segments and other methodological changes.

We have published an updated glossary (XLSX, 25KB), which sets out the changes made from March 2025.

Households and the cost of living

To assist individuals in understanding how the rise in inflation affects their expenditure, we have produced a personal inflation calculator. The calculator allows users to enter the amount they spend across either a reduced or a wide range of categories, to produce an estimate of their personal inflation based on those spending patterns.

Our Shopping prices comparison tool shows how the average prices of items have changed over time. Please note that the newly introduced consumption segments for food, drinks and tobacco will not have data before 2025 in the tool. However, the historical average prices for food, drinks and tobacco items, that were on the tool before the update in 2025, can be found in our Shopping prices comparison tool data download before the 2025 update.

Please also note that Table 55 in our historic Consumer price inflation tables dataset, which provided time series of prices for petrol and diesel, has not been published from 26 March and the two series have been discontinued. Historical average prices are still available from the time series explorer function on our website using the four-character identifiers CZMK for petrol and CZML for diesel.

On 29 May 2025, we published our quarterly Household Costs Indices (HCIs) for UK household groups bulletin. The HCIs reflect how different types of households experience changing prices, and differ from CPIH and CPI. The CPIH and CPI are based on recognised economic principles, and provide an aggregate measure of inflation for household spending in the UK.

The HCIs are official statistics in development and this release included new estimates for January to March 2025. The data in this release have been updated using 2024 weights leading to some minor revisions in previously published comparisons. It was not possible for this latest release to update the weights for 2025 in line with the standard methodology for consumer prices. This is because of delays in processing the underlying survey data and the need for further ongoing quality assurance. Instead, the most recent estimates have been compiled using the weights for February to December 2024. We aim to update the weights as soon as we can.

Passenger transport by air

We previously published a monthly index for passenger transport by air. We are also publishing Domestic, European and long-haul airfares consumer prices sub-indices and weights on an annual basis from 26 March 2025. These are being released in the user requested data section of our website.

Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP)

The Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) 2018 (PDF, 2.51MB) is the classification that underpins some of the main statistics produced by the ONS. The classification has seen a substantial update in recent years to reflect changes in household expenditure patterns since its inception in the late 1990's. The UK currently uses the version of COICOP introduced in 1999.

We will ensure that the new classification is implemented in a comprehensive and reliable manner that considers other priorities around the production of our main statistics. We will aim to introduce the new classification as soon as possible.

For further information, please email cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Weights for 2025 consumer price inflation statistics

In line with usual practice at the start of each year, the expenditure weights used in compiling the CPIH and CPI were calculated using updated spending information. The first update of weights was implemented with the January indices. The second update was introduced, along with the usual basket update, with the February indices released in March. We published our Consumer price inflation, updating weights: 2025 article and Consumer price inflation basket of goods and services: 2025 article on 18 March 2025.

The 2025 weights for CPIH and CPI were calculated using national accounts household final consumption expenditure (HHFCE) data for 2023. This is in line with our standard methodology of using data lagged by two years. It differs from the approach used in 2021, 2022 and 2023, when there were large changes seen in spending patterns because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Over those years, we adjusted the spending data so that, for example, the resulting weights for 2023 were more reflective of spending in 2022. More information is available in our Consumer price inflation, updating weights articles.

The weights for the RPI were also updated for 2025 in line with the practice followed both before and during the coronavirus pandemic period. This was with no additional adjustment to the spending data because of any pandemic-related effects.

In line with the improvements introduced last year, we now use unrounded weights in compiling CPIH and CPI. The weights before 2024 for the CPI and CPIH were rounded to integers as parts per thousand of the all-items indices at the class level (4-digit COICOP). The RPI continues to be based on integer weights.

Consumer price inflation historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988

On 18 May 2022, we published our Consumer price inflation, historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988 - methodology and Consumer price inflation, historical estimates and recent trends, UK: 1950 to 2022 article. These include new estimates of CPIH and improved estimates of CPI for 1950 to 1988. These estimates (published in response to user need for a longer series) are indicative and are for analytical purposes only. They are not intended for official use and do not constitute part of the accredited official statistics series.

Previously, in December 2018, we published our Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) historical series: 1988 to 2004 article. This series is also not classed as accredited official statistics, reflecting the historical uncertainty around the backcasts.

Methodology information

The consumer price indices are normally based on prices collected from outlets around the country, supplemented by information collected centrally over the internet and by phone. The figures in this publication use data collected on or around 15 July 2025.

An overview of consumer price statistics is given in our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017 article. The concepts and methodologies underpinning the indices in more detail are covered in our Consumer Prices Indices Technical Manual, 2019 methodology.

A comprehensive source of information on the CPIH, focusing on the approach to measuring owner occupiers' housing costs, is provided in our CPIH Compendium.

Information on the users and uses of these statistics, and the characteristics of the different measures of inflation related to potential use, is included in our Users and uses of consumer price inflation statistics: July 2018 update methodology.

Strengths and limitations

We illustrated our approach to Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households most recently in December 2023 using three "use cases", and described how they relate to the measures published and under development.

The three cases refer firstly to the CPIH as our lead measure of inflation based on economic principles. They also refer to the HCIs as a set of measures that reflect the change in costs and prices experienced by different households, and the Retail Prices Index (RPI) as a legacy measure that is required to meet existing user needs. The issues with the RPI are described in our Shortcomings of the Retail Price Index as a measure of inflation article.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in July 2017. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".