About us

Hockey is one of the most expensive youth sports in North America, and almost none of that cost is transparent. Registration is just the beginning. Add equipment, tournaments, travel, development, and more, and families routinely spend several times the entry fee. Most don’t know what they’ve signed up for until the money’s already gone.

Even registration fees aren’t publicly available. When we started researching registration costs program by program, of the first 200-plus programs we checked, only about one in eight published their fee in a way a family could simply look up. The rest kept it behind tryouts, member logins, or “contact us for pricing,” and the more competitive the program, the more likely the price was hidden.

Families are flying blind into one of the biggest financial decisions they’ll make during the year, and feel pressured to say yes to anything once their player makes a team.

We want to fix this. We’re building the most comprehensive picture of what hockey actually costs so families can plan ahead, compare programs, and stop getting caught off guard.

We combine family-submitted season cost reports, published registration data, and regional benchmarks to map the full cost of a season. The costs we show are driven by real data, not by what a program wants you to see. No program pays us to look cheaper or hide its costs.

Hockey Budget is an independent project. Our mission is to help every youth hockey family make the best financial decisions for their situation, through high-integrity data and tools.

If that mission resonates, the most valuable thing you can do is add your own season costs. It takes just a couple of minutes, it’s completely anonymous, and every cost shared makes the picture sharper for the next family deciding whether they can afford to play. A registration fee, a full season breakdown, or just a rough “this is about what we spent” all helps.

Spread the word by sharing the site with your friends, family, team, and social network. Let’s show families what hockey actually costs.

Mike, Hockey Budget