Per, Each, Every, and A Pop: The English of Rates and Unit Prices

A student was buying coffee for the office. The cashier asked how many cups, and he said, "Six, please. How much per cup?" She smiled and answered, "Three fifty a pop." He paused. A pop? It sounded like she had thrown a small balloon into the conversation. But she had simply said the same thing as per cup, only with the friendly, casual sister of per. English has at least five common ways to talk about a rate — and each one fits a slightly different room.

Why This Matters

Rates and unit prices appear everywhere: in supermarkets, on petrol pumps, in restaurant menus, in salary discussions, in lab reports, in fitness apps, in invoices, and in every test that asks you to describe data. If you only know per, you sound like a textbook. If you only know a pop, you sound great at a food truck and weird in a board meeting. Picking the right word tells your listener whether you are reading a chart, writing an email, or chatting with a friend. The set is small, the rules are simple, and the payoff is enormous.

For a deeper dive into the to and in prepositions used in ratios, you might want to skim How to Say Decimals, Fractions, and Ratios Without Freezing. Rates and ratios share a lot of grammar.

The Pattern

Per is the workhorse. It means for every one. It works with almost any unit: per hour, per gallon, per person, per kilometer, per night, per visit. Per is neutral, slightly formal, and at home in spoken English, writing, business, and academic contexts.

Each sits after the price or quantity. It is the everyday spoken cousin of per, and it works best when you are talking about identical items being counted one at a time.

• The apples are a dollar each.
• The tickets cost fifteen dollars each.

Every introduces a cycle or interval, often with time or frequency.

• The bus comes every ten minutes.
• Take one tablet every four hours.
• We meet every Tuesday.

Apiece is a slightly older, more formal cousin of each. It still appears in writing and in measured speech.

• The lottery tickets cost two dollars apiece.

A pop is highly casual, used in everyday spoken English to mean each. It works in shops, food trucks, and friendly chats — never in formal writing.

• These tacos are four dollars a pop.

A / an can quietly do the same job in fixed phrases.

• Sixty miles an hour (the same as per hour).
• Five dollars a kilo.

This a / an form is extremely common in everyday speech. Per sounds slightly more clinical; a / an sounds more natural in conversation about prices, speeds, and rates.

Wrong / Natural / Why

Common Situations

At the supermarket. A neutral, everyday way to talk about prices is per pound, a pound, or just each. "How much per pound are these tomatoes?" You can also ask, "How much a kilo?" — both are fine. If the cashier shouts back, "Two fifty a kilo," they have used the a / an form, which is more natural in spoken English than per kilo.

On the road. Speed and fuel both rely on per and a: "We are doing about sixty miles an hour." "This car gets thirty miles per gallon." Drivers in conversation almost always say miles an hour and miles a gallon, with miles per hour showing up in formal writing and police paperwork.

Renting a place. Listings advertise apartments at "one thousand two hundred dollars per month" or "one twenty a night" for a short stay. In a chat with a friend, you might say, "It costs about a hundred and twenty a night, which is not bad for that area."

Medical instructions. Pharmacists say, "Take one tablet every four hours, but no more than six per day." Notice the mix: every with a time interval, per with a daily total. They live together happily in the same sentence.

Salary conversations. "She earns about seventy thousand a year." "I get fifteen dollars an hour." "The freelance rate is around eighty dollars per hour." All three are correct, and the choice between a / an and per is mostly tone. An hour sounds casual; per hour sounds professional.

Concert tickets and event prices. "Tickets are forty dollars apiece, or one fifty for four." A friendly cashier might say, "Forty bucks a pop." A formal flyer would say "tickets are forty dollars each." Same price, three registers.

Common Mistakes

• Using per with an article: per a day, per an hour. The correct form is per day, per hour. After per, drop the article.
• Stacking per and each: five dollars per apple each is redundant. Pick one.
• Using each before the price instead of after. The natural order is price + each: the books are ten dollars each, not each ten dollars.
• Mixing every and each in a time interval. Every two hours is correct. Each two hours is not. Each works with countable items, not with cycles.
• Reaching for a pop in formal writing. It is great at a food truck, terrible in an essay.
• Forgetting that every needs a number or a fixed time word after it. "Every two days," "every Monday," "every other day" — but not "every day in two."
• Using for instead of per. "Two dollars for hour" should be "two dollars per hour" or "two dollars an hour."
• Saying apiece in casual chat with friends. It is grammatical, but it can sound slightly old-fashioned. Use each or a pop instead.

Mini Practice

Choose the most natural word(s) — per, each, every, apiece, a pop, or a / an — and fill in the blank.

1. These cupcakes are three dollars ______, so a dozen comes to thirty-six.
2. Take this medicine ______ six hours, up to four times ______ day.
3. The car is supposed to get about thirty miles ______ gallon on the highway.
4. We bought five concert tickets at fifty bucks ______, which felt steep but worth it.
5. Rent here is about one thousand four hundred dollars ______ month, plus utilities.

Summary

Per is the formal, all-purpose workhorse; each is its everyday spoken twin; every introduces cycles and intervals; apiece is slightly older and a bit literary; a pop is casual, friendly, and very natural in speech; a / an quietly handles speeds, prices, and rates in conversation. Match the word to the room — chart, invoice, supermarket, food truck — and your rates will sound like English instead of translation. The rules are short, but the right choice makes every number you quote sound natural.

Want to practice numbers, quantifiers, and units in real test sentences? Start practicing on ExamRift.