A pint in London can cost eight quid. Nobody tells you where it doesn’t.

Why we built it

Planning a night out had quietly turned into admin. The cheap pint is on one app. The walk is on another. Whether the place is any good is on a third. And the price, the thing that actually decides where you go, is nowhere at all.

So most nights you don’t plan. You give up and end up where you always end up. Same for a daytime Spoons with a laptop, a soft-drink round, or a catch-up that never needed a lager. A seat shouldn’t cost a day’s lunch, and finding the one that doesn’t shouldn’t cost your whole evening.

What we did about it

We put real prices on the map, starting in London. When a price record names a publisher, we name and link it. When no publisher is recorded, the price says so. The ones logged by drinkers carry the day they were seen. Tap a pub and you see what a drink costs before you set off, not after you’ve handed over a note.

A first report can mark a pin straight away. Pin colour, list rows, and cheapest buckets wait for a second independent drinker. Speed is nice. A figure that survives a challenge is the product.

We kept the stories too. Most of these pubs have been pouring for a century or two, and the good ones earned their walk. So we cite the heritage, and we never make it up.

And we made it one link for the crew. You plan the outing, you send it, everyone lands in the same place walking the same route. No group-chat archaeology at half six.

Nobody pays to rank. Not ever. There’s a wall in the code between anyone’s money and the prices you see. A sponsored thing says so and sits in its own slot. The order of pubs on your map is never for sale.

What we refused to ship

• Every report as map truth. An uncorroborated price can show on the pub’s own sheet. It does not paint the pin until a second independent drinker agrees inside the age window.
• Fake Wetherspoons prices. Their public web menus do not yield per-pub drink prices today, so we refuse to invent them. Identity and honest gaps beat a made-up board.
• UK spray before London depth. We ship London first with priced pubs you can plan around. A separate OpenStreetMap layer shows more pubs across the country without pretending they carry the same price truth.
• Paid placement in the price order. Sponsored slots stay labelled and separate. Rank is not a product we sell.

Who it’s for

Everyone who actually goes out. The after-work crowd who want a cheap round before the last train. The quiet-pint person who just wants a good one and a seat by the window. The birthday mob who need somewhere that’ll take twelve of them on a Friday.

Also the daytime jobs: coffee and a laptop at a Spoons, food then a soft drink, an alcohol-free hang, a chill afternoon that never needed a crawl. Soft drink and alcohol-free prices share the same trust rules as beer. Coffee joins that honesty once someone logs it. Food anchors stay honest about their source and never masquerade as a pint on the pin.

We’re building this for people who notice an eight-quid lager, and for people who open a pub when they are not drinking at all.

Who builds it

PUBMAXX is founder-led by Karan Manoharan. We argue about corroboration versus speed, London depth versus a thinner national map, and what a price is allowed to claim. Those fights land in the product, not in a brand deck.

What we stand for

• Prices with honest source status. Listed prices name and link their publisher when recorded, and say when no publisher is recorded. A missing publisher stays missing rather than being guessed. Cited pub stories link to their references.
• Good nights count people and memories. Rewards and rankings do not count how much you drink.
• Your nights are yours. Nothing’s public unless you choose to share it, and you can browse the whole thing without an account.
• Free to browse. Nobody pays to rank, and sponsored items sit in their own labelled slots.