How much does it cost to make a penny?
It cost the United States Mint 3.02 cents to make and distribute each penny in fiscal year 2025, which ended 30 September 2025: more than three times the coin's face value, and the 20th consecutive fiscal year the penny cost more than one cent. The figure is the Mint's own, from the unit cost table of its 2025 Annual Report, and it covers the metal and fabrication, the overhead allocated to the coin, and shipping it to Federal Reserve Banks. The Mint shipped 4,765 million pennies that year and lost $95.6 million on them. It will not publish another full year like it: the final circulating pennies were struck at Philadelphia on 12 November 2025, as Reuters reported, and the ones in your pocket stay legal tender.
3.02 cents
to make and distribute one penny, fiscal year 2025
$95.6 million
lost on the pennies shipped in fiscal year 2025 (negative seigniorage)
4,765 million
pennies shipped to Federal Reserve Banks in fiscal year 2025, 59.7 percent of all coins shipped
3.69 cents
what one penny cost the year before, fiscal year 2024, from the same table
about $56 million
a year the Treasury says ending penny production saves in material costs
Cost breakdown
Each table below comes from one source, named underneath it, with the date that source last revised the figures. Everything is a United States figure in USD.
What one penny cost in fiscal year 2025, from the United States Mint unit cost table
| Component, as the report prints it | Per penny |
|---|---|
| Cost of goods sold | $0.0232 |
| Selling, general and administrative | $0.0067 |
| Distribution to Federal Reserve Banks | $0.0003 |
| Total unit cost | $0.0302 |
The penny's unit cost over three fiscal years, from the comparative columns of the same table
| Fiscal year | Total unit cost |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 3.07 cents |
| 2024 | 3.69 cents |
| 2025 | 3.02 cents |
What the penny cost the public purse in fiscal year 2025, from the shipments and seigniorage table
| Line | Fiscal year 2025 |
|---|---|
| Face value of pennies shipped | $48.3 million |
| Gross cost of making and shipping them | $143.9 million |
| Seigniorage (the loss, in brackets in the report) | ($95.6 million) |
| Seigniorage per $1 issued | ($1.98) |
A bar for each row of the table above, 4 of them, drawn to the same scale so the spread is visible at a glance. The figure beside each bar is the one the table prints.
What changes the price
- Metal prices
- A penny is 2.5 percent copper and 97.5 percent zinc, per the United States Mint coin specifications, and the 2025 Annual Report records average fiscal year 2025 spot prices of $2,839.69 a tonne for zinc and $9,453.50 a tonne for copper. The blank is most of the cost of goods sold, so those two markets move the unit cost.
- How many are struck
- Overheads are spread over the coins shipped. The United States Mint shipped 4,765 million pennies in fiscal year 2025 against 3,172 million in 2024, and the unit cost fell from 3.69 to 3.02 cents as volume rose, because the fixed part of the cost was divided across more coins.
- The end of production
- President Trump ordered the halt in February 2025, the Mint placed its final order of blanks in May, and the last circulating pennies were struck on 12 November 2025, per Reuters. Fiscal year 2025 is therefore the last full production year the United States Mint unit cost table will show for the penny.
Questions
Why does a penny cost more than one cent to make?
The metal, fabrication, overhead and distribution add up to 3.02 cents per coin in the United States Mint fiscal year 2025 figures, and no part of that scales down to the face value of one cent. The report notes fiscal 2025 was the 20th consecutive year the penny cost more than it is worth.
Is the penny still being made?
No. The final circulating pennies were struck at the Philadelphia Mint on 12 November 2025, Reuters reported, after President Trump ordered the Treasury to stop producing them in February 2025. Pennies already in circulation remain legal tender.
How much did the Mint lose making pennies?
In fiscal year 2025 the United States Mint shipped $48.3 million of pennies at a gross cost of $143.9 million, a loss of $95.6 million, from the seigniorage table of its 2025 Annual Report. The year before, the loss was $85.3 million.
What is a penny made of?
Copper-plated zinc: 2.5 percent copper and 97.5 percent zinc, per the United States Mint coin specifications page. It weighs 2.50 grams and measures 19.05 millimetres across.
How much does stopping the penny save?
The Treasury puts the saving at about $56 million a year in reduced material costs, per Reuters. That is a materials estimate, and it is smaller than the $95.6 million accounting loss the United States Mint recorded in fiscal year 2025, because the two measure different things: one counts metal not bought, the other counts the full cost of every coin shipped against its face value.
Where these figures come from
Every figure here is for the fiscal year named beside it, because the United States Mint publishes a new unit cost table every year. The fiscal year 2025 figures cover the year ended 30 September 2025 and come from the Mint's 2025 Annual Report, read on 8 October 2026 from the copy attached to the Treasury OIG audit dated 26 February 2026, since usmint.gov refuses a scripted fetch. The end of production and the Treasury's savings estimate are from Reuters, published 12 November 2025. Nothing here is averaged across sources, and the per-coin costs are the Mint's own accounting, not a market price.