Since the release of 2008's Iron Man, multiple writers, tech experts, and financial wizards
have worked hard to find out just how much money Tony Stark spent being Iron Man.
Some of these numbers are surprisingly low — and some of them are straight-up astronomical
— but one thing's for certain: Being the Iron Avenger ain't cheap.
In 2010 — the same year Iron Man 2 was released — io9's Annalee Newitz crunched the numbers
and learned that the total for all the parts comprising Iron Man's suit came to around
$100 million.
Newitz pointed out that this was around $12 million less than the cost of an F-35 fighter
plane.
You probably wouldn't find them in a big box store, but hypothetically it wouldn't be out
of the reach of the U.S. military.
The story is a decade old, so why aren't there already fleets of Iron Man suits?
Well, probably because of a couple of the story's missing pieces.
First, Newitz comes to the figure with only five components of the hypothetical suit — a
helmet-mounted display, an exoskeleton, a portable nuclear power source, a jet pack,
and wearable computers.
No weapons are mentioned, which are crucial to being Iron Man.
There are many other missing suit capabilities, like Tony's, uh… waste filtration system.
"You know, the question I get asked most often is: 'Tony, how do you go to the bathroom in
the suit?'
...Just like that."
Second, even if it were a complete list, the story is missing a critical component: the
research and development necessary to make all these different pieces of tech work together
in one suit.
That kind of brain power comes with a hefty — and unknowable — price tag.
A couple of months after the 2012 release of Avengers, MoneySupermarket.com gave the
cost of being Iron Man a much steeper sum than io9's quote.
The site estimated the cost of living as both Tony Stark and Iron Man would be well over
15 times greater, putting it at $1.6 billion.
Unlike the 2010 story, MoneySupermarket.com's data took into account things like the anti-personnel
guns on the suit's shoulders — $400,000 each — the rocket launchers in the wrists,
which would clock in at $1.5 million; and the development of the artificial intelligence
program known as JARVIS at around $10 million.
MoneySupermarket gauged the total cost for all of Tony Stark's suits combined by the
end of The Avengers at $1.5 billion.
The site also went beyond the suit and looked at Tony's lifestyle.
They put his mansion at $25 million and his fancy car collection at $3.4 million.
So while most of that $1.6 billion goes toward the suits, it's good to know he gives himself
a modest amount of cash to just have a little fun.
A little less than a year after MoneySupermarket.com released its data putting the cost of being
Iron Man at $1.6 billion, the same site released a new estimate of $10 billion.
By 2013, Stark's collection of suits increases from seven to 42, adding $7 billion to this
estimate — and, honestly, that's probably a little low.
Their data only counts seven of Tony's 35 new suits.
Iron Man 3's final battle and Tony's "House Party" protocol clearly shows way more than
seven new suits, so if seven suits cost $7 billion, you can likely add around $30 billion
to the total.
And whatever that total is?
Well, that's what Tony throws away on a romantic gesture to Pepper by ordering the surviving
suits to self-destruct…only to have new suits ready to go by Avengers: Age of Ultron.
There's one big-ticket item just about everyone forgets in their assessment of Tony's spending
— Veronica, a.k.a. the Hulkbuster suit.
"The whole team's down.
We've got no backup here."
"I'm calling in Veronica."
In particular, there's the method of the Hulkbuster suit's delivery.
When Tony activates Veronica in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, we learn he isn't keeping the
armor in Stark Tower or a compound in upstate New York.
The Hulkbuster armor waits in orbit to be deployed by a satellite.
That means that along with developing and building the suit, Veronica needed to be attached
to a satellite which needed to be launched into orbit.
So while we can't tell you how much it would cost Tony to build the Hulkbuster armor, we
do know launching a satellite would cost him between $50 million and $400 million all on
its own.
While we don't work for NASA, we're going to guess that — considering that satellite
needs the added capability of launching Veronica back to Earth at a moment's notice — Veronica's
costs would be closer to the high end of that estimate.
In 2017 — the same year Tony acted as Peter Parker's father figure in Spider-Man: Homecoming
— the billionaire got some good news from a new estimate of his spending needs.
According to a video made by Coinage, Time Inc.'s personal finance video company, being
Iron Man would cost $8.4 billion — a $1.6 billion drop from MoneySupermarket.com's 2013
estimate of $10 billion.
Coinage's explanation isn't nearly as comprehensive as far breaking down exactly how they arrived
at that number, so it's curious how that $1.6 billion went missing.
We'll leave someone with Tony Stark-level intelligence to sus that one out — but the
most likely reason for this discrepancy?
Someone hasn't been keeping up with the MCU movies.
Shame, shame…
"It's, it's… it's embarrassing."
As comprehensive as any of the analyses of Tony Stark's costs may be, there's a lot missing.
No one knows, for example, the cost of the Spider-Man suits Tony makes, the Hulkbuster
suit, most of the 42 suits he'd made by Iron Man 3, or the automated arms used to peel
the armor off.
We don't know what Age of Ultron's Iron Legion cost, the new nano-fiber suit Tony debuts
in Infinity War, or the time machine in Endgame.
Then there are personnel costs.
Tony has to pay for all the food and other amenities provided for the Avengers at their
compound, not to mention that he presumably pays them salaries.
He's got Quinjets and helicopters, he's got multiple satellites, he buys a giant stuffed
bunny for Pepper in Iron Man 3, and he also has to pay for that dude's phone he smashes
after he threatens the Mandarin.
"That's what you wanted, right?"
"Bill me."
Then there's maintenance.
You think Tony can build one of these insanely advanced Iron Man suits and not bother with
tune-ups?
Every high-tech thing Tony invents is an ongoing investment, so it's arguably fortunate they
usually get destroyed after only a couple of uses.
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