Pellets by the bag or by the pallet? The per-tonne maths

A 15 kg bag at a DIY chain costs a few dozen złoty. A pallet from an online shop — over two thousand. The first amount sounds far friendlier, but that's an illusion of scale: to compare them fairly, both have to be brought to a price per tonne.

The sum that changes everything

The formula is trivial: pack price ÷ weight in kg × 1000 = złoty per tonne.

• A 15 kg bag at 35 zł → 35 ÷ 15 × 1000 = 2,333 zł/t
• A 975 kg pallet at 2,100 zł → 2,100 ÷ 975 × 1000 = 2,154 zł/t

The bag looked like the cheaper purchase because it meant taking 35 zł out of your wallet instead of 2,100 zł. Per unit of fuel, though, it's dearer. At a seasonal need of 4 tonnes that difference — here just under 180 zł per tonne — is over 700 zł in one winter.

In our price table every offer is already converted to zł/t precisely so you needn't do this sum for every shop.

When bags still make sense

We're not claiming bags are always the wrong choice. They can be sensible when:

• You've nowhere to keep a pallet. A pallet is about 1 m² of floor and 160–180 cm of height, in a dry place, for many months.
• You've no way to unload it. Pallets arrive on a truck with a tail-lift or a pallet truck — but getting it into the garage or cellar is your problem, and we're talking about a tonne of goods.
• You're finishing off the season. In March, buying five bags makes more sense than ordering another tonne.
• You're testing a new brand. Before you buy a tonne of something you don't know, one bag is a cheap trial.
• You need it now. The DIY store is open today; pallet delivery usually takes a few days.

You usually pay for each of those conveniences. That's fair trade — it's just worth knowing what the convenience costs, and deciding consciously.

When the pallet wins

If you heat with pellets all season, have a dry place and a way to unload, a pallet is usually clearly cheaper per tonne. There's a second, often overlooked argument: one delivery instead of a dozen trips to the DIY store, each with bags to load into the boot.

Watch the pallet weight — it's not a standard quantity. We see 975 kg, 990 kg, 1005 kg and 1050 kg; we set all the variants out separately. At a similar pallet price that's a real difference in price per tonne, easy to miss if you look only at the amount on the label. That's why we show every pack weight in the table separately.

What we must honestly warn about

We don't include delivery costs. When comparing bags and a pallet this matters especially, because it cuts both ways: a pallet usually has to be delivered (a cost on the pallet's side), but you have to drive to fetch bags (fuel and time costs that nobody counts).

That's why in the price table, when converting the cost of a whole season, for bagged offers we show no computed amount for the tonnes, only a note that delivery depends on the shop. We preferred to show less than to give a number that feigns a precision we don't have.

How to decide in three steps

1. Work out your need — the season calculator (Polish) does it from floor area and insulation standard.
2. Check whether you have a dry place for a whole pallet until the end of the season. If not — bags win anyway, regardless of price. How to do it right: how to store wood pellets.
3. Compare offers in zł/t, not by pack price, and add the delivery cost from the checkout.

If you want to buy a pallet, but not at today's price — pellet prices can change week to week. You can watch them for free or set an alert that writes to you when the rate drops below a threshold you choose yourself.