Cheapest pint of lager in Manchester

Manchester's average pint of lager now sits somewhere north of £5, and in Spinningfields or Deansgate Square you can comfortably pay £7 for a Camden Hells. The good news: that average is dragged up by a small number of very expensive bars. Drink anywhere outside the central postcodes - or stick to traditional tied houses inside them - and you can still find a pint under £4 without much effort.

Three rules of thumb apply almost everywhere. First, Wetherspoons sets the floor: any Spoons in Greater Manchester will pour Carling, Ruddles or Stella for £3–£4 a pint, and the app drops it another 25–50p. Second, tied houses (Holt's, Hydes, Robinsons, Lees) almost always undercut free houses on their own beer - a Holt's Bitter at a Holt's pub is the bargain of Manchester. Third, postcode matters more than venue type: a craft bar in Levenshulme will be cheaper than a traditional boozer in Spinningfields.

If you're picking somewhere new, anything that calls itself a 'craft beer bar', a 'taproom' or sits inside a Grade-II-listed converted warehouse is going to be £6+ a pint. Anything calling itself a 'tavern', 'arms', 'hotel' or named after a person tends to be cheaper. It's not a perfect rule but it's a useful one.

The ranking below pulls every pub in our database with a verified cheapest-lager price and sorts ascending. Prices come from a mix of in-person pub crawls and reader submissions, and we re-verify the cheapest entries roughly monthly. If a price looks wrong, hit the pub's page and submit an update - the leaderboard moves the moment we approve it.