Why Are Balloons "Expensive"? Let's Talk About It.
It's a question we get asked more often than you'd think, and it's a fair one. So we wanted to answer it properly, rather than just quietly hoping nobody asks again.
The short version: it's not really the balloon you're paying for. It's the gas inside it.
The Balloon Itself Is the Cheap Part
A plain foil or latex balloon, before it's filled with anything, costs very little. That's exactly why so many online sellers can offer huge packs of balloons at low prices — they're selling flat, uninflated balloons, and letting the customer do the rest and deal with the most important part when helium balloons are the needed result.
We understand why that's appealing. But it does lead to a conversation we have on occasion: a customer arrives with a bag of flat balloons they've bought elsewhere, expecting us to simply "pop them on the machine," and is genuinely surprised when there's a proper cost attached. What follows often is some version of "but it's just gas."
It isn't just gas, though. It's helium. And helium is not like the compressed air in a bike pump.
What Helium Actually Is, and Why It's Not Simple
Helium is a genuinely finite resource. It's not manufactured — it's extracted, in limited quantities, from natural gas deposits at a small number of sites worldwide, and once it's released into the atmosphere, it's gone for good; it's too light to be recaptured. There is no factory that "makes" more of it.
It's also in demand for far more important things than party decorations. Hospitals rely on it to cool the superconducting magnets in MRI scanners. It's essential in semiconductor manufacturing, scientific research, and aerospace. Balloons and lifting gas typically account for somewhere between 7% and 18% of global helium use, depending on the year — a relatively small slice, but one that's directly competing with hospitals and high-tech industries for the same limited supply.
That's the part people rarely think about when they picture a balloon: the helium in it isn't a novelty gas made specifically for parties. It's drawn from the same global, shrinking supply used to run MRI machines.
The Helium We Use
At The London Balloon Shop, we use premium balloon-grade helium supplied by BOC, a Linde company and the UK and Ireland's largest supplier of industrial, medical, and speciality gases. It's not the same as a bargain disposable canister, and it's not diluted with air the way some cheaper operators do to stretch a cylinder further.
Prices Haven't Been Kind to Anyone in This Industry
Helium prices have risen sharply over the last five years. According to U.S. Geological Survey data, the price of Grade-A helium nearly doubled between 2020 and 2023, and the wider industry has been through what's known as "Helium Shortage 4.0" since 2022 — a mix of limited production sites, disruption to Russian supply, and the gradual wind-down of the U.S. Federal Helium Reserve, which used to help stabilise the market.
We've absorbed a good deal of that increase ourselves rather than passing it all on, because we know balloons matter to our customers and we don't want price to be the reason someone skips them. But we'd be misleading you if we said none of it reached the final price. It has and it likely will continue to as the global market remains tight.
What we haven't done, and won't do, is compromise on quality to protect our margins. Every latex balloon we sell is treated with Hi-Float as standard, a solution that helps it hold helium for longer rather than deflating within hours. Our number and letter balloons, and our other foil balloons, are chosen specifically because they float for days rather than hours. That's a deliberate choice because it's genuinely more helium-efficient.
"But I Could Just Buy a Canister Myself"
Yes, you could, and plenty of people do, especially with balloon displays looking so easy on Instagram. We won't pretend DIY isn't fun, because it is.
But there's a difference between filling a balloon and finishing one fully. Tying each one off cleanly, attaching ribbon and weights so it looks intentional rather than makeshift, working with premium, correctly-pressurised gas rather than a disposable canister that often has less helium than advertised — that's the part that doesn't show up in a twenty second Instagram reel, and it's exactly why our balloons look like they came from a balloon shop, or better still, from The London Balloon Shop.
It's also worth saying that there's a lot of unbranded, cheap balloon stock out there now, on Amazon, Temu, and similar marketplaces, and sometimes even under a brand name that's new and untested. We don't stock any of it. Our balloons are sourced properly, whether manufactured in the UK, or imported from Italy, Japan, and the US, from the same established manufacturers the wider trade uses, not the cheapest supplier we could find. Our latex balloons are made from Natural Rubber Latex (NRL), an organic material rather than plastic, collected from sustainably managed rubber tree farms using a tapping process that leaves the trees unharmed. NRL is a natural polymer and is biodegradable.
We're Also a Real Shop
Unlike most online balloon sellers, and unlike the accounts you'll find on Instagram, we're a brick-and-mortar shop in the heart of Belsize Village. You can walk in, see the actual balloons in person, hold them, compare colours side by side, talk to someone who knows the stock, and think out loud about your party plans.
This is something we think is worth customers knowing they have the option of.
Why We're Telling You This
We are not trying to talk anyone out of having a go at DIY. We just think it's worth being upfront about what we're here for, where the cost actually comes from, and why a helium balloon done properly is a small luxury worth paying for.
We hope all this explains it a little better than "but it's just gas" ever could.
Charlie,
The London Balloon Shop