A Pizza Area Per Dollar Calculator
Pizzas are priced by diameter but you eat area, so the bigger size is almost always better value and the arithmetic shows by how much.
Area per dollar
10.0581
- Pizza area
- 201.0619
- Cost per person
- 4.9975
- Area per person
- 50.2655
Values update as you type. This calculator covers the single scenario its formula assumes — see Common Mistakes for what it leaves out.
The formula this calculator uses
value = (pi x (diameter / 2) squared) / price
- A
- Pizza area, in square inches
- d
- Pizza diameter, in inches
- P
- Price of the pizza
How to check the result by hand
- 1
Take the diameter and the price
Both from the menu, in the same units. A 16 inch pizza at 19.99 is the worked example throughout.
- 2
Halve the diameter and square it
Sixteen halved is eight, and squared is sixty four. Squaring the halved diameter is what makes the area grow quadratically.
- 3
Multiply by pi
Sixty four times 3.141592653589793 is about 201.06 square inches. This is the amount of pizza regardless of how it is sliced.
- 4
Divide the area by the price
201.06 divided by 19.99 is about 10.06 square inches per dollar, or roughly 9.94 cents per square inch.
- 5
Compare against the smaller size
A 12 inch pizza is about 113.1 square inches, so even at half the price it is noticeably worse value per square inch than the large.
For worked examples, common mistakes and the limits of this formula, read the full How To Calculate A Pizza Area Per Dollar page.