A whole laptop pays £1.25–£1.70 per unit at our gate. A stripped laptop — RAM out, CPU out, PCB separated — typically pays £4–£10 each. Below is the full price grid and the decision matrix on whether stripping is worth it for your volume.
Per-unit laptop prices
Laptops & tablets — per piece
| Item | Grade | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Laptops Complete With battery & screen | Premium | £2.20 /kg |
| Laptops Missing Parts Cracked screen, no battery | Stripped | £1.75 /kg |
| Tablets iPad, Surface, Android | Standard | £1.60 /kg |
Complete vs missing parts
- Complete (£1.70) — motherboard, screen, battery and case all still there. Doesn't matter if it boots; doesn't matter if the screen cracked.
- Missing parts (£1.25) — any of those four core elements gone. Casing alone, motherboard alone, etc.
Per-kilo if you strip
Per-kg rates for stripped laptop parts
| Item | Grade | Price |
|---|---|---|
| RAM Bare DDR sticks, no heatsinks or attachments | A | £70 /kg |
| CPU Pinless (modern LGA) Intel i5/i7/i9 4th-gen+, Xeon Scalable | Reuse | £11 /kg |
Strip or whole — the decision matrix
Two competing forces: stripping pays more per laptop, but takes time. The cross-over is around 30 laptops per worker per day.
| Volume | Whole | Stripped |
|---|---|---|
| 10 laptops | ~£17 | ~£60–100 |
| 50 laptops | ~£85 | ~£300–500 |
| 200 laptops | ~£340 | ~£1,200–2,000 |
| 1,000+ laptops | ~£1,700 | ~£6,000–10,000 |
Strip ranges assume 8th gen+ Intel/AMD with at least one 8GB stick and 256GB SSD per machine. Older or stripped machines yield less.
What's inside a laptop that's actually worth something
- RAM — typically 0.05–0.10 kg per stick; even 50 laptops yields ~1 kg clean RAM = £65.
- CPU — modern laptops have soldered CPUs (low yield) but mid-2010s and earlier had socketed pinned CPUs = £14/kg at our rate.
- Mainboard PCB — laptop motherboards pay £13.50/kg; one board ≈ 0.2–0.4 kg, so ~£3–5 per laptop in PCB value alone.
- Working SSDs — undamaged drives are £15/unit (don't smelt these — they hold real resale value).
- Aluminium chassis — Apple MacBook bodies are essentially aluminium ingots; £1.40/kg as aluminium heatsink grade.
Common questions
What about working/refurbishable laptops?
If they boot and have value, sell them refurb instead — eBay, Back Market, Mazuma. We're scrap. Our laptop rate assumes the unit's at end-of-life.
Do you take Apple MacBooks?
Yes. The aluminium chassis adds £2–4 each on top of the unit price if you strip them.
What about hard drives in the laptops?
Spinning HDDs are £1.50/unit. SSDs/NVMe in good shape are £15/unit. Just leave them in or post separately — your choice.
I have 500 laptops — what's the easiest path?
WhatsApp us a photo. We'll usually quote 25–35% over the per-unit rate on a single bulk strip-and-weigh job, with our team doing the stripping at our facility.