Anonymous burial from 999 € – what is missing?

The short answer: nationwide offers for 950 to 1,100 € do exist – but with them the provider picks the cemetery, somewhere in Germany. Anyone who wants the interment in their own city pays between 758 € and 2,504 € in municipal fees alone.

This page does the arithmetic, using the official rates from the cities' fee statutes. It is not meant to disparage anyone: for people to whom the place of interment genuinely does not matter, such offers are legitimate and sensible. They are simply not comparable with an interment in your own city.

Where the price difference comes from

The budget nationwide offers contain a sentence that is easy to overlook: the interment takes place at a cemetery of our choosing. The provider picks a municipality with particularly low fees – it may be several hundred kilometres away. That is entirely lawful as long as it is stated in the offer. In practice it means the family often learns only later in which federal state the interment happened.

The second lever is the split. Some items are expressly "passed on at cost" or charged directly to the relatives by the authority – the death certificate, refrigeration, municipal burial permits. They do not appear in the advertised fixed price but they do arise.

The arithmetic for NRW

Suppose an offer costs 999 € and claims to include all fees. This is what the city alone charges for the anonymous urn interment:

Source: the cities' official fee statutes, see the NRW fee index. As of 30.08.2026.

In eight of the eleven cities checked, the municipal fee alone exceeds the advertised all-inclusive price – before collection, coffin, cremation, urn, transfer and formalities have been paid for at all. Only in Dortmund, Wuppertal and Mönchengladbach would anything be left over, and in Wuppertal and Mönchengladbach the cremation is not included in that fee either.

Four questions every offer must answer

1. In which city will the interment take place? If the answer is "at a cemetery of our choosing", the location is open – anywhere in the country.
2. Are the cemetery fees of that specific city included? Not "all fees", but those of the actual city.
3. Which items are charged on top? Death certificate, second post-mortem examination, refrigeration, burial permit.
4. What does the transfer cost, over what distance? With a distant grave this is a real item.

Under the German Price Indication Ordinance consumer prices must be total prices. Where items only appear in the small print, ask in writing – and the answer belongs in the offer, not in a phone call.

How our price comes about

With Ritual-Service 24 the interment takes place in the city the family chooses, among the twelve NRW cities we serve, and that city's municipal fees are included. That is why the price starts at 2,300 € and not at 999 €, and why it is higher in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Duisburg and Krefeld: there the municipal fees themselves are highest.

This is not the better offer for everyone. Whoever deliberately says the location does not matter is better off with a nationwide provider. Whoever wants the interment where the family lives should compare with our price – and should know the fees of their own city. If you are flexible about the city, we offer the anonymous burial nearby for 1,790 €: we choose the cemetery from four NRW cities with low fees, at most two hours by car.

What neither model includes

Usually excluded on both sides: a funeral service with a speaker, floral decoration beyond the essentials, obituaries, catering and a later memorial stone. When comparing offers, draw up the same list for both.