How long does a razor cartridge last?

What each maker publishes

This is a category where the honest answer is partly a list of silences. Two Gillette lines publish a shave count. Nobody else here does.

The last row is there for scale rather than as a recommendation. A double-edge blade is a commodity that costs a few cents, which is why its working life is discussed openly and why nobody argues about stretching one. The format comparison handles that argument; this page is about the cartridge you already own.

Which number applies to you

1. Your skin has never objected. Use the published figure as a ceiling and expect to land somewhere under it. Ten to fifteen shaves on a five-blade cartridge is a realistic working life for an average beard with a clean rinse.
2. You get razor burn, bumps or ingrown hairs. Work to five to seven, which is what the AAD names alongside using a single blade or an electric. This is the single highest-value change available to you and it is cheaper than anything you could buy.
3. You shave your head as well as your face. A scalp is roughly three times the area, so the cartridge does three times the work per shave. Divide accordingly - the head shaving guide covers the rest.
4. Your growth is coarse or dense. Fewer shaves, and this is the biggest single variable after area.

The wear indicator the makers already gave you

Every cartridge on this page has a lubrication strip, and it is the most useful thing on the razor for answering this question.

The strip is a soluble polymer band that wears away as you use it, and on most cartridges it is deliberately colored so that the fade is visible. When it has gone pale or worn through to white, the cartridge has stopped gliding and started dragging - and a dragging cartridge needs more pressure, which is the mechanism behind most razor burn.

It is not a precision instrument and it fades faster in a hot shower than in a sink. But it is a physical signal on the thing in your hand, which beats counting in your head, and it is the signal the makers themselves point at.

The three signs, in the order they arrive

1. Tugging instead of cutting. The first and most reliable sign, and the right moment to change. A sharp cartridge severs hair without you noticing; a dull one catches and pulls before it cuts.
2. Needing a pass you did not used to need. If two passes have quietly become three, the blade is compensating rather than your technique slipping.
3. Nicks where you never normally catch. A dull cartridge skips rather than glides, and a skipping blade catches skin. By this point you are well past due.

If those signs are familiar and you are already changing often, the razor burn page ranks the causes - a stretched blade is near the top, above anything you could buy to fix it.

What genuinely extends a cartridge, and what does not

• Works: rinsing and drying it. Back-flush the cartridge under a hot tap until no hair or soap comes out, shake the water off, and store it somewhere dry. Corrosion and packed debris both blunt an edge, and both are avoidable in ten seconds.
• Works: storing it out of the shower. A razor that lives in the steam is wet for twenty-three hours a day. This is the main reason two people get different lifespans from the same cartridge.
• Works: softening the hair first. A hair cut while dry and stiff takes more force from the edge. Warm water and a real lather do more for blade life than any technique.
• Does not work: drying it with a hairdryer, or on your jeans. Stropping a cartridge on denim is a persistent folk remedy. The blades in a cartridge are fixed in a plastic housing at a set angle; dragging them backwards across fabric rolls a thin edge the wrong way, which is the opposite of sharpening.
• Does not work: oil in a jar. Soaking a cartridge in mineral oil is sold as a life extender. It keeps water off the steel, which is the same thing drying it does for nothing.

What each interval actually costs

We deliberately do not print prices in prose - this site only shows figures it can source live, which is why the numbers on this page sit in the buy buttons with a date against them. But the shape of the arithmetic is the point, and it is simple.

A cartridge is the most expensive consumable in wet shaving per use, by a wide margin, and it is proprietary on every system here. Going from fifteen shaves to five triples that line. For a face that never reacts, that is money for nothing. For a face that bumps, it is the cheapest effective treatment available and it is still a fraction of what a course of anything topical costs.

The cost-per-shave calculator takes your own prices and your own replacement interval, so you can see both versions of your own year rather than ours. And if the result is uncomfortable, that is the honest argument for a different cartridge system or for the format that uses commodity blades.