Price per piece by LEGO theme: which lines give you the most brick for your money

Price per piece is the most useful single number for comparing LEGO sets of different sizes, and it is also the number that exposes how differently LEGO themes are priced. We took every active set with at least 100 pieces and a recommended retail price in our Danish catalogue on 23 September 2026 (976 sets), and calculated the median price per piece per theme, both at RRP and at the cheapest live price that day.

The ranking

Prices are Danish kroner per piece; the ratios between themes hold in other markets even if the absolute level differs. Across all 976 sets, the median RRP works out at 0.86 kr per piece, and the median live price at 0.62 kr, a 34 % discount.

Theme	Sets	RRP per piece	Live price per piece	Median discount
Classic	9	0.56	0.34	39 %
Art	10	0.59	0.42	31 %
Architecture	12	0.64	0.48	29 %
Creator 3-in-1	47	0.74	0.49	37 %
LEGO Editions	21	0.75	0.51	38 %
Fortnite	12	0.76	0.51	39 %
BrickHeadz	20	0.76	0.76	0 %
Ideas	30	0.78	0.60	16 %
DREAMZzz	11	0.79	0.55	31 %
Botanicals	33	0.82	0.56	38 %
Icons	58	0.83	0.66	16 %
Technic	59	0.84	0.57	35 %
Jurassic World	16	0.84	0.64	32 %
Speed Champions	30	0.86	0.52	38 %
One Piece	12	0.88	0.57	35 %
City	60	0.90	0.59	36 %
Friends	47	0.90	0.58	39 %
Minecraft	29	0.90	0.58	36 %
Harry Potter	42	0.92	0.64	33 %
NINJAGO	40	0.94	0.58	37 %
Disney	52	0.98	0.63	36 %
Super Mario	28	0.98	0.79	20 %
Star Wars	79	1.01	0.77	30 %
Animal Crossing	8	1.09	0.72	35 %
Marvel	50	1.18	0.81	32 %

Why the number moves

Licences cost money. The bottom of the table is LEGO's own unlicensed lines: Classic, Art, Architecture, Creator. The top is licensed: Marvel, Animal Crossing, Star Wars, Super Mario, Disney. Part of every licensed set's price is the licence fee, and it shows up as roughly 30-50 % more per piece than an equivalent unlicensed set.

Minifigures are expensive pieces. Marvel and Star Wars sets are priced for their characters. A set with six exclusive minifigures and 300 pieces will always look poor on price per piece and may still be excellent value to a collector. The metric measures bricks, not desirability.

Piece size matters. Art and Architecture score well partly because they are built from many tiny elements: 1x1 tiles and plates. Technic and DUPLO sit in the middle for the opposite reason. Price per piece is most meaningful when comparing sets within the same theme or of a similar building style.

Discount habits reshuffle the table. Look at the live column. Speed Champions moves from mid-table at RRP to one of the cheapest lines per piece at live prices, because it is discounted so consistently. Icons, Ideas and Super Mario barely move, and BrickHeadz not at all. If you buy at the cheapest live price rather than RRP, unlicensed and heavily discounted play themes pull further ahead.

How to use it

1. Use price per piece to choose between similar sets: two City vehicles, two Technic cars, two Botanicals bouquets.
2. Do not use it to compare a Marvel set with a Classic box; they are priced for different things.
3. Look at the live figure on the set page, not the RRP figure. A 40 % discount turns an average set into a cheap one.
4. Combine it with the price history: a set that is cheap per piece and at its lowest recorded price is as good as LEGO buying gets.

The concept itself, and its limits, is explained in more depth in our price per piece explainer. Every set page on Brickheist shows the live figure next to the price.