The cheapest rocket on the market is the most expensive way to reach orbit
Electron costs $7.5m a launch — a tenth of a Falcon 9. Divide by what each actually lifts and the ranking inverts completely: Electron is the dearest per kilogram of any vehicle flying, and the Space Shuttle beats it.
- Period
- Published list prices, various years
- Published
- August 10, 2026
- Built with
- Databoat
$25,000.00
per kilogram on the cheapest launch money can buy
Electron
- Falcon Heavy$1,701.75
- Falcon Heavy exp.$2,351.10
- Falcon 9 expended$3,245.61
- Vulcan Centaur$4,044.12
- Falcon 9$4,228.57
- Ariane 64$5,727.48
- Atlas V 551$8,132.24
- Ariane 62$10,434.78
- Space Shuttle$16,363.64
- Electron$25,000.00
Left column ranks by price per launch, right by price per kilogram. Electron falls from first to last. Nothing else in the table moves that far.
Hover a point
Launch price barely triples across the table. Payload capacity varies by a factor of two hundred.
- Falcon Heavy$1,701.75
- Falcon Heavy exp.$2,351.10
- Falcon 9 expended$3,245.61
- Vulcan Centaur$4,044.12
- Falcon 9$4,228.57
- Ariane 64$5,727.48
- Atlas V 551$8,132.24
- Ariane 62$10,434.78
- Space Shuttle$16,363.64
- Electron$25,000.00
Falcon Heavy at $1,702 against Electron at $25,000 — the same orbit, fourteen times the price.
Area is payload to orbit. Electron is the sliver you cannot read — which is the entire reason its price per kilogram is what it is.
The Space Shuttle, retired as a byword for expensive spaceflight, sits cheaper than the newest small launcher flying.
Method
Two published numbers per vehicle — price per launch and payload capacity to low Earth orbit — and one division. Databoat derived four columns from them: price per kilogram, tonnes to orbit, price per gram, and each vehicle's cost as a share of the Space Shuttle's.
The inversion is the whole point. Ranked by sticker price, Electron is the cheapest way to reach orbit by a wide margin. Ranked by what you are actually buying — mass delivered — it is the most expensive vehicle in the table, and the Space Shuttle beats it.
That is not a criticism of Electron. It sells a different product: a dedicated launch on your schedule to your orbit, for a payload that would otherwise ride as a passenger on someone else's rocket. Per kilogram is the wrong metric if you only have 200kg to fly. It is exactly the right metric if you are comparing rockets on price, which is what almost every comparison does.
On the figures. Prices are published list prices and are not what every customer pays; large operators negotiate. They also carry different years — Falcon 9 at 2026, Falcon Heavy reusable at 2022, Atlas V at 2016 — so this is a comparison of advertised prices rather than an inflation-adjusted series. Ariane 6 is quoted in euros (€100m and €115m) and converted here at 1.08. The Space Shuttle figure is the $450m per-launch average, not the roughly $1.5bn figure you get by amortising the whole programme across 135 flights; on that basis it would be the most expensive row by a distance.
Payload figures are maximum capacity to low Earth orbit, which no real mission fills exactly.
Comparison of orbital launch systems · Falcon 9 · Falcon Heavy · Electron · Ariane 6 · Vulcan Centaur · Atlas V · Space Shuttle
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