How Much Does Backpacking Gear Cost?

The honest answer to “how much does backpacking gear cost” is that the floor is lower than most outdoor shops imply and the ceiling is higher than anyone needs. This site exists for the gap in between, so the three numbers below are not invented tiers — they are the budgets of three complete builds on this site, each one priced from the makers' own published list prices.

The three tiers, and what each buys

Each of those is a real build you can read line by line, with every item's list price sourced: the $500 kit, the $1,000 kit and the $2,000 kit.

What a whole kit contains

Costing a kit means knowing what is in it. For one person, three seasons, in rough order of spend:

• The big three: pack, shelter, sleep system (bag or quilt plus pad). Typically 60-70% of the total. See the big three.
• Clothing: rain shell, insulated jacket, hiking layers, socks, hat, gloves. The most commonly under-budgeted category, and the one where you may already own most of it.
• Kitchen: stove, pot, lighter, spoon. Can be genuinely cheap.
• Water: filter and bottles. One of the best value purchases in the whole kit.
• Electronics: headlamp, battery bank, cable.
• The small bag: first aid, repair kit, trowel, sunscreen, toothbrush, cord. Individually trivial, collectively a real line item.
• Footwear: excluded from every budget above, because it is personal, it wears out, and it is not optional. Budget for it separately.

The full item-by-item list, with nothing missing, is our backpacking checklist. For a first-timer, the shortest path is beginner backpacking gear.

The cheap end, item by item

To make the bottom tier concrete, here are four of the lowest-list-price items we track that are still real gear rather than toys. Every price is the maker's own published list price, read on its own page.

Spending a little more at the same tier changes the weight more than the comfort. A 3F UL Gear Lanshan 1 at 775 g (1 lb 11.3 oz) replaces the Clostnature tent for a modest step up in list price, and a QiDian Pro at 880 g (1 lb 15.0 oz) replaces the Teton pack and saves more than a kilo. That is the whole argument of the $1,000 build.

The four purchases worth spending on

1. Your sleep system. A bad night ruins the next day, and the pad matters as much as the quilt. This is the category where the price difference buys the most real comfort. Start with R-value explained.
2. Your shelter. Weight, weather protection and a pitch you trust. It is also the item you will keep longest.
3. Your rain shell. The one piece of clothing where cheap genuinely underperforms over days of use. See best budget rain jackets.
4. Your pack — last. Buy it after everything else, because its size and load rating depend on what you are putting in it. Buying the pack first is the commonest expensive mistake in this hobby.

The four worth buying cheap

1. Stove. A sub-30 g canister stove boils water as well as a premium one. The ranking is on best budget backpacking stoves.
2. Water bottles. Disposable plastic bottles are lighter than hard bottles, free with a drink, and thread onto every squeeze filter we track.
3. Pillow. A stuff sack of clothing costs nothing. If you want a real one, the cheap ones score well — see best backpacking pillows.
4. Trowel, spoon, repair kit, cord. Collectively a few tens of grams and almost no money. Nothing is gained by upgrading any of them.

The costs nobody budgets for

• Footwear. Excluded from every kit price on this site, and it wears out annually if you hike often.
• Fuel and food. Consumable, per-trip, and over a season they add up to a significant fraction of a gear budget. Our fuel canister guide helps you buy the right size.
• Permits, parking and travel. Often more than the gear amortised over a year.
• The second-purchase tax. Buying cheap then replacing it costs more than buying once properly. This is the real argument for the middle tier.
• Consumables you forget: fuel canisters, water treatment cartridges, batteries, seam sealer for the budget trekking-pole shelters that ship unsealed.

How to spread the spend

You do not have to buy a kit at once, and you should not. A sensible order:

1. Borrow or rent for the first trip. You will learn more about what you want from one night out than from a month of reading, including this page.
2. Buy the sleep system first. Pad and bag or quilt. It is personal, it is the hardest thing to borrow comfortably, and it decides whether you want to go again.
3. Then the shelter. Now that you know whether you hike alone or with someone, and in what weather.
4. Then the kitchen and water. Cheap, light, and quick to get right.
5. Buy the pack last. With everything else on the floor in front of you, you can measure the volume you actually need and the weight it has to carry. See the backpack sizing guide.

Done in that order, a kit that would be painful as one purchase becomes four manageable ones, and you stop paying the second-purchase tax on items you bought before you knew what you needed.