India Diwali Cracker-Spend Index
How much Indians spend on Diwali crackers, tracked year over year from public surveys plus our own reader poll. An evolving spend index, updated each 2026.
No government agency tracks how much Indian households spend on firecrackers in a given year. What exists instead is a scattered set of public surveys and trade-body turnover figures, each measuring a different slice: how many families plan to burst crackers, how much the Sivakasi industry sells at wholesale, how large the broader festive economy runs. This page pulls those threads into one tracked index, sourced line by line, so the direction of cracker spending is visible even where no single authority publishes the number.
Last verified: 2026. This page is refreshed annually as new pre-Diwali survey and season-end trade figures are published.
The short answer:
- The clearest cracker-specific figure is Sivakasi's own industry turnover: trade bodies put peak Deepavali-season sales at roughly ₹6,000 crore in 2022–2023, rising to over ₹7,000 crore in both the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
- Household intent to burst crackers is rising in the one market surveyed most consistently, Delhi-NCR, from 18% planning to in 2024 to 34% planning to in 2025, a jump LocalCircles itself called a 40% year-on-year increase.
- Nationally, a 2021 LocalCircles survey found 42% of respondents called cracker-buying "wasteful spending," the closest public data point on cracker-specific spending sentiment.
- The wider Diwali retail economy, which crackers sit inside, has grown from ₹3.75 lakh crore (2023) to ₹4.25 lakh crore (2024) to ₹5.4 lakh crore (2025) in CAIT's trade estimates. That's useful context, not a crackers figure on its own.
- No survey publishes an average ₹ figure spent per household on crackers specifically; this page states that gap plainly rather than inventing one.
On this page
On this page
This page is part of our crackers data & research hub. For a practical shopping walkthrough, see the Diwali crackers shopping guide.
Why there's no single "cracker spend" number
Crackers are a cash-heavy, largely unorganised retail category sold through tens of thousands of small licensed outlets for a two- to three-week window each year, which is exactly the kind of market that resists a single audited sales total. CAIT and RBI-adjacent trade estimates track festive retail broadly (mobiles, apparel, gifting, electronics), and none of the public breakdowns available as of this page's last verification isolate a firecrackers line item from that total.
What does exist, and what this page tracks instead, are three separate proxies: how much the manufacturing hub itself reports selling (Sivakasi turnover), how many households say they intend to buy and burst crackers (LocalCircles survey intent), and how the overall festive economy is moving around them (CAIT trade estimates). None of the three is "cracker household spend" on its own. Read together, they show the trend.
Cracker-specific turnover: the Sivakasi trend
Sivakasi supplies close to 90% of India's firecrackers, so its reported turnover is the single best proxy for national cracker spending that exists in public sourcing. Business Standard described the industry as a "₹6,000 crore" sector in October 2022, and that figure anchored reporting through 2023. The Fireworks Traders Federation then put combined 2024 Deepavali-season sales at more than ₹7,000 crore, and TANFAMA (Tamil Nadu Fireworks and Amorces Manufacturers' Association) reported the 2025 season also closed at around ₹7,000 crore, describing it as roughly 17% higher than the previous season on its own comparison base.
Two different trade bodies use two slightly different counting methods, which is why the two 2024/2025 figures don't reconcile to the decimal, but both point the same direction: peak-season cracker sales climbed from the long-standing ₹6,000 crore mark into the ₹7,000 crore range over 2024–2025. Our Sivakasi industry statistics page carries the full sourced breakdown, including employment and export figures behind this turnover.
Household intent to burst crackers
LocalCircles is the most consistent public pollster on cracker-burning intent, though its survey scope has shifted between national and Delhi-NCR-only samples across the years, so treat each figure against its own geography rather than as one continuous national line.
Delhi-NCR, the most-surveyed market:
- October 2024 (10,526 respondents, Delhi-NCR): 18% said they were likely to burst crackers that Diwali; 55% said they would not, citing pollution.
- October 2025 (38,000 respondents, Delhi-NCR): 34% planned to burst crackers, of which 17 percentage points said they would burn both green and regular crackers; 49% said they would not. LocalCircles itself framed this as roughly a 40% year-on-year jump in cracker-burning families, comparing the 2025 intent figure against 24% who reported actually having burned crackers in 2024.
National sample, an earlier reference point:
- November 2021 (28,000 respondents, 371 districts nationwide): 45% said they would not burn any crackers; of the rest, 15% planned green crackers, 11% sparklers only, and 6% regular crackers. That's roughly a third of households nationally reporting some form of cracker-burning intent. Separately, 42% of respondents in that survey called cracker purchases "wasteful spending," the closest public figure this page has found to a direct sentiment measure on cracker-specific household spending.
The Delhi-NCR trend (18% to 34% intent, 2024 to 2025) is the most recent and most directly comparable pair of figures, and it runs counter to the narrative that cracker demand is steadily shrinking: intent rose sharply in the one market tracked most closely, even as roughly half of NCR households still say they won't burn any at all.
The wider festive economy, for context
CAIT's overall Diwali/festive-season trade estimates show the broader retail economy crackers sit inside growing every year: ₹3.75 lakh crore in 2023, ₹4.25 lakh crore in 2024, and ₹5.4 lakh crore in 2025, a figure CAIT and trade coverage described as roughly a 25% jump over the Navratri–Diwali period. None of these totals isolates crackers as a line item (they cover apparel, gifting, electronics, mobiles, and general retail turnover), so this figure is included as macro context for the trend, not as a substitute for a cracker-specific number.
Reading the index together
Put the three proxies side by side and a consistent story emerges even without one master figure: the Sivakasi turnover figure (the closest thing to a real cracker-sales total) rose from the ₹6,000 crore range into the ₹7,000 crore range over 2022–2025; Delhi-NCR household intent to burst crackers nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025; and the festive retail economy crackers ride alongside grew at a comparable pace. None of the three sources confirms the others directly, and each is an independent measurement with different methodology and scope, but a reader asking "is cracker spending going up or down in India" gets the same answer from all three: up, over the last two Diwali seasons, after several years of pandemic- and pollution-driven caution.
The numbers at a glance
| Metric | Value | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sivakasi Deepavali-season industry turnover | ~₹6,000 crore | 2022–2023 | Business Standard, Oct 2022 |
| Sivakasi Deepavali-season industry turnover | >₹7,000 crore | 2024 | Fireworks Traders Federation (via ap7am.com) |
| Sivakasi Deepavali-season industry turnover | ~₹7,000 crore (+17% YoY) | 2025 | TANFAMA / News9live, 14 Oct 2025 |
| Delhi-NCR households planning to burst crackers | 18% | 2024 | LocalCircles, 27 Oct 2024 (10,526 respondents) |
| Delhi-NCR households planning to burst crackers | 34% (+40% YoY) | 2025 | LocalCircles, 18 Oct 2025 (38,000 respondents) |
| National households with any cracker-burning intent | ~32% (15% green + 11% sparklers + 6% regular) | 2021 | LocalCircles, 2 Nov 2021 (28,000 respondents, 371 districts) |
| Respondents calling cracker-buying "wasteful spending" | 42% | 2021 | LocalCircles, 2 Nov 2021 |
| Overall Diwali/festive-season trade (India, CAIT estimate) | ₹3.75 lakh crore | 2023 | CAIT |
| Overall Diwali/festive-season trade (India, CAIT estimate) | ₹4.25 lakh crore | 2024 | CAIT |
| Overall Diwali/festive-season trade (India, CAIT estimate) | ₹5.4 lakh crore (+25% YoY) | 2025 | CAIT, Storyboard18/Swarajya, Oct 2025 |
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the average Indian household spend on firecrackers each Diwali?
No public survey publishes a verified average ₹ figure per household specifically for crackers. The closest available data points are Sivakasi's total industry turnover (roughly ₹7,000 crore in peak 2024–2025 seasons) and LocalCircles' intent surveys, which measure whether households plan to buy crackers at all rather than how much they spend. Treat any specific per-household ₹ figure you see elsewhere with caution unless it cites a named, dated survey.
Is cracker spending in India going up or down?
Recent data points up, not down. Sivakasi's reported turnover rose from the ₹6,000 crore range (2022–2023) to over ₹7,000 crore (2024–2025), and Delhi-NCR household intent to burst crackers nearly doubled from 18% to 34% between the 2024 and 2025 surveys, per LocalCircles.
Why do LocalCircles' cracker-burning percentages vary so much between surveys?
Because the survey scope changes. Some LocalCircles polls sample Delhi-NCR only (10,000–38,000 respondents from five cities), while others sample nationally across hundreds of districts. A Delhi-NCR figure and a national figure from different years should never be compared directly as if they measure the same population. This page keeps each figure labelled with its geography and sample size for that reason.
Does the CAIT festive-trade figure include crackers?
Yes, but it doesn't break crackers out separately. CAIT's ₹3.75 lakh crore to ₹5.4 lakh crore Diwali/festive-season estimates (2023–2025) cover the full retail economy (apparel, gifting, electronics, mobiles, and more), with crackers as one unmeasured slice inside the total. It's included on this page as context for the broader spending trend, not as a cracker-specific figure.
Where does the Sivakasi turnover figure come from, and how reliable is it?
It comes from trade-association estimates (the Fireworks Traders Federation and TANFAMA), not an audited government revenue filing. No single body publishes a certified, consolidated cracker-industry sales figure, so treat these numbers as the best available trend indicator rather than a precise total. The full sourcing and caveats are on our Sivakasi industry statistics page.
For a practical breakdown of what to actually buy and how to plan a Diwali cracker budget, see our Diwali crackers shopping guide, or browse the rest of our data & research hub.
Written by the buyonlinecrackers.com editorial team. Figures are drawn from named trade-association statements, LocalCircles survey releases, and CAIT trade estimates, cited individually above. Refreshed annually; last verified 2026.
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