The median published price of a new UK stairlift is £2,800, and the shape of the rail explains most of it. A curved lift’s median is £4,395 against £1,995 for a straight one, so a made-to-measure rail adds about £2,400. Fitting costs £300 to £600 where a seller prices it separately, the home survey is free, and a buyer who qualifies for VAT relief pays no VAT at all.
From 73 new-lift prices published by 25 UK sellers, part of 290 sourced datapoints. How the median is worked out.
Ask a stairlift company why its lifts cost what they do and the usual answer is an offer of a home visit. We checked every new-lift price in our tracker for an itemised split into rail, chair, fitting and tax. None of the 73 has one. Two retailers publish an installation charge as a separate line, and one dealer page last updated in 2018 prices a few options one by one. That is the full extent of it.
So this page works the parts out the other way round, by setting published prices against each other. A curved lift and a straight lift from the same seller differ mainly by the rail. A new and a reconditioned lift of the same type differ mainly by the chair and drive unit. A price with fitting and a price without it differ by the fitting. Every figure below links back to a price that anyone can check, and every one comes from the tracker’s dataset.
The £2,800, part by part
| Part | What it adds | What the published prices show |
|---|---|---|
| Home survey | £0 | Eight listings say the survey is free or included. None of the 290 datapoints charges for one. |
| Chair, motor and batteries (the carriage) | The bulk of a straight lift’s £1,995 | Buying it reconditioned takes £600 off the straight median (£1,395 against £1,995). |
| Straight rail | Included in the £1,995 | A hinged rail, for a door or hallway at the foot of the stairs, adds £300 at Halton (£2,000 against £1,700). |
| Curved rail | About £2,400 | Curved median £4,395 against straight £1,995. Across 12 sellers who publish both, the curved price is a median £2,720 higher. |
| Fitting | £300 to £600 (straight) | Where priced separately. One retailer lists curved fitting at £600 to £1,500 and outdoor at £500 to £1,000. |
| Warranty | Usually included | Of the 21 new prices that state a term, 12 give two years, six give 12 months, one gives three years and two say lifetime. |
| VAT | £0 or 20% | £0 for a buyer who qualifies for relief. For anyone else, 20% on top: £560 on a £2,800 lift. |
| Options | £90 to £375 each | One dealer list (last updated July 2018): powered swivel seat £295 one way or £375 two way, power spur £90, earth bonding £150. |
Medians are for new, one-off prices of real stairlift units (straight, curved, outdoor, heavy duty and perch), n=73, captured 20 August 2026. Sources are listed in the tracker’s CSV.
The rail is most of the answer
If you want one reason stairlifts cost so much, it is the rail on curved stairs. The median new curved lift is 2.2 times the price of the median straight one. Compare like with like, by taking the cheapest curved and cheapest straight lift that the same seller advertises, and the gap holds across all 12 sellers who publish both: curved costs from 1.5 to 3.5 times as much, with a median of 2.47 times.
| Seller | Cheapest new straight | Cheapest new curved | Curved costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK Stairlifts | £1,350 | £3,990 | 2.96x |
| Halton Stairlifts | £1,700 | £3,500 | 2.06x |
| TKE Home Solutions | £1,715 | £5,972 | 3.48x |
| Mills Mobility | £1,795 | £4,695 | 2.62x |
| Clear Choice Stairlifts | £1,595 | £3,695 | 2.32x |
| Multicare Mobility | £1,595 | £5,295 | 3.32x |
| Reconditioned Stairlift Prices | £1,595 | £4,395 | 2.76x |
| My Mobility UK | £1,995 | £5,600 | 2.81x |
| Manchester Stairlifts | £1,995 | £2,995 | 1.50x |
| Companion Stairlifts | £2,000 | £4,000 | 2.00x |
| 1st Choice Stairlifts | £2,150 | £5,000 | 2.33x |
| Millercare | £3,000 | £5,000 | 1.67x |
Each seller’s lowest published new straight and new curved figure, as captured 20 August 2026. Halton’s curved figure is for a single flight. The two sides are not always the same brand, so read the ratio as a seller’s entry price for curved stairs against its entry price for straight ones.
One source puts a number on the same lift in both forms. Stairlift Experts says a Stannah Starla for straight stairs “will be around £2500 cheaper” than the same model for a curved staircase, which is close to the £2,400 gap between the two medians.
Why a curved rail costs so much more comes down to who else can use it. A straight rail is a standard section cut to length. A curved one is measured and built for a single staircase, and once it comes out of that house it has almost no second life. TKE Home Solutions, one of very few sellers that publish a buy-back schedule, offers £200 for a curved lift under a year old and £100 for one aged 12 to 24 months. Halton reserves the right to ask for a 20% deposit on any order, and 50% non-refundable on custom-made stairlifts. The first buyer carries the whole cost of the rail, because nobody after them can.
The reconditioned market points the same way. Buying reconditioned takes 30% off the straight median (£1,395 against £1,995) but only 24% off the curved one (£3,342 against £4,395). Among the six sellers who publish new and reconditioned curved prices, the median saving is about a fifth. That smaller discount is what you would expect if a reconditioned chair still needs a rail built for your stairs, and some listings say so: My Mobility UK describes its budget reconditioned curved lift as having a custom-built curved rail.
What fitting and the survey cost
Most published prices include fitting, which makes it hard to see. In the tracker, 19 of the 73 new prices do not say whether fitting is included, nine mention fitting without saying what it costs, and one, an online price for the Otolift Air, is supply only and delivered to the kerb.
Two retailers do price installation on its own. Stairlift Cost UK gives £300 to £600 for a straight lift. My Mobility UK quotes its brand prices without fitting and lists installation at £300 to £600 for straight, £600 to £1,500 for curved and £500 to £1,000 for outdoor. On the £1,995 straight median, £300 to £600 is between 15% and 30% of the price.
The survey is the part people worry will be charged for. It never is in this data. Eight listings describe it as free or part of the price, and nothing in the dataset charges for one. Its cost exists, since someone has to drive out and measure your stairs, but it is folded into the price of the lifts the company goes on to sell. Our guide to what happens at the survey covers what gets measured.
VAT relief is the one part you can remove
A stairlift for someone with a long-term illness or disability can be zero-rated for VAT under Group 12 of Schedule 8 to the VAT Act 1994. The buyer signs a short eligibility declaration and pays no VAT. Anyone else pays the standard 20%.
| Median, treated as a price before VAT | With relief | Without relief | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight median | £1,995 | £2,394 | £399 |
| All-types median | £2,800 | £3,360 | £560 |
| Curved median | £4,395 | £5,274 | £879 |
Read any price you are given with this in mind, because sellers handle VAT in different ways. Of the 73 new prices, 29 mention VAT relief or exemption, six show a figure with VAT added or both figures side by side, and 38 say nothing about VAT at all. A quote that already assumes relief and one that includes 20% VAT can differ by several hundred pounds for the same lift. Relief also works backwards from a VAT-inclusive figure: it takes off one sixth, which is why our VAT exemption guide shows a £3,000 price falling to £2,500.
The part nobody lists: who you buy from
Some of what you pay has nothing to do with the lift. The same Handicare Freecurve is listed at £3,995, £4,500 and £5,295 by three different dealers. That £1,300 gap covers the same model, and it may reflect differences in warranty, service or area covered, none of which the listings spell out.
Public-sector buyers see the same spread. When South Kesteven District Council tendered a supply-and-install contract in 2024, four bidders priced the identical scope at between £167,438 and £260,065, so the highest bid was 1.55 times the lowest. Fife Council’s 2024 stairlift tender drew bids from £722,540 to £1,160,210 for the same work. In a 2017 mystery shop, the disability research charity RiDC asked three firms to quote for the same staircase in each of three homes. On the two straight staircases, the highest quote was 45% and 51% above the lowest.
A published price also rarely moves. When we re-checked 12 of the tracker’s primary sources on 31 August 2026, every published figure was unchanged from 11 days earlier, and Dolphin’s price page was still dated November 2023. A discount offered in your hallway is taken off the quote. The number you saw online stays where it was.
What comes after the price
The purchase price is not the whole bill. Our running costs report puts the typical cost of keeping a stairlift going at £235 a year, most of it servicing, with electricity at about £12. Halton says removal can cost anywhere from £0 to £600, and a lift that comes out usually earns little: TKE’s buy-back tops out at £200. Our removal cost guide has the detail.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure on this page comes from the tracker’s dataset of 290 sourced datapoints, captured on 20 August 2026 from 150 source URLs. The medians use new, one-off prices for real stairlift units only (straight, curved, outdoor, heavy duty and perch), which gives 73 prices from 25 sellers. Installation charges, deposits, rental fees and third-party survey averages are kept out of the medians and used only where this page names them.
The seller comparison takes each seller’s lowest published figure for a new straight lift and a new curved lift, leaving out the supply-only Otolift price, and divides one by the other. Anyone with the CSV can repeat it. The full rules are on the methodology page.
Two limits are worth knowing. About half of the new prices (34 of 73) are “from” prices, the cheapest version a seller advertises, so a quote for your stairs is likely to come in above them. And the option prices come from a single dealer page last updated in 2018, so treat them as an order of magnitude.
Cite this page
Stairlift Costs, “Stairlift price breakdown: what the £2,800 pays for”, September 2026, stairliftcosts.co.uk/stairlift-price-breakdown/. Based on the UK Stairlift Price Tracker, September 2026 edition (n=73 new prices, captured 20 August 2026). Data free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with this credit.
Frequently asked questions
Why do stairlifts cost so much?
Mostly because of the rail. A curved rail is built for one staircase and cannot be reused, and it adds about £2,400 to the median price. The rest is the chair and drive unit, fitting, a warranty that is usually included, and VAT for buyers who do not qualify for relief. On top of that, the same lift can cost £1,300 more from one dealer than another.
How much of a stairlift price is installation?
Where sellers price it separately, fitting a straight stairlift costs £300 to £600, which is 15% to 30% of the £1,995 straight median. One retailer lists curved fitting at £600 to £1,500. Most published prices already include fitting.
Do you have to pay for a stairlift survey?
No. Eight listings in our dataset of 290 datapoints say the survey is free or included in the price, and none charges for one.
How much more does a curved stairlift cost?
The median new curved stairlift is £4,395 against £1,995 for straight, a difference of £2,400. Across 12 sellers who publish both, the cheapest curved lift costs a median 2.47 times the cheapest straight one.
How much does VAT relief save on a stairlift?
20% of the price before VAT: £399 on the £1,995 straight median, £560 on the £2,800 all-types median and £879 on the £4,395 curved median. Check whether a quote already assumes relief, because 38 of the 73 new prices in our tracker say nothing about VAT.
Is a reconditioned stairlift much cheaper for curved stairs?
Less so than for straight stairs. Reconditioned takes 30% off the straight median but only 24% off the curved one, consistent with a curved rail still being made to measure for your stairs.
For a figure for your own stairs, the stairlift cost calculator gives a band by type, and the price tracker lists every published price with its source.