kosztować — to cost

kosztować is the verb you reach for every single time you ask a price in Polish — Ile to kosztuje? ("How much does it cost?"). It is imperfective, it belongs to the very regular -ować class, and in its "cost" meaning it lives almost entirely in the third person. Learning it well does double duty: it is also your gateway into how Polish numerals govern the words around them, because the price that follows is never as simple as it looks to an English speaker.

What kind of verb is this?

kosztować is imperfective and conjugates like every other -ować verb (pracować, dziękować, podróżować): the -ować of the infinitive becomes -uj- in the present. That single rule generates the whole present tense. There is no native perfective partner for the "cost" sense — prices are an ongoing state, not a completed event, so you simply do not say "it will have cost." For the future you use the compound imperfective: będzie kosztować / będzie kosztowało.

Present tense

Although the table below gives all six persons for completeness, in the "cost" meaning you will overwhelmingly meet just two of them — kosztuje (one thing costs) and kosztują (several things cost).

Past tense (by gender and number)

The past is built from the stem kosztowa- plus the gendered past endings. Because prices are nearly always inanimate "it" and "they," the forms you will actually use most are the neuter singular kosztowało (for to — "it") and the non-masculine-personal plural kosztowały. The full paradigm:

Future, imperative, conditional, participles

Because there is no perfective for "cost," the future is the imperfective compound: a form of być plus either the infinitive or the gendered -ł form. Both are correct; the -ł version is slightly more common in speech.

The imperative and conditional belong almost exclusively to the "taste/sample" meaning (you don't command a price), so we treat them in the next section. The contemporary adverbial participle kosztując ("costing / tasting") exists and is fully regular; the active adjectival participle kosztujący is rare but well formed.

The other meaning: "to taste, to sample"

kosztować has a second, transitive life meaning "to taste / to try (food or drink)" — to put a little in your mouth to see what it is like. Crucially, in this meaning it governs the genitive, exactly like its near-synonym próbować: you taste of something, a partitive logic ("have some of the soup"). This is where you will actually use the first- and second-person forms and the imperative.

In the "taste" sense there is a perfective partner, skosztować (with the s- prefix), used for a single completed tasting — skosztuj! ("have a taste!"). The imperative is therefore real and common here: Skosztuj!, Skosztujcie!

Government: why the price is not just a number

This is the part English speakers most need. In English "it costs five zloty" is trivial — "five" plus a plain noun. In Polish the noun złoty changes its form depending on the number, because Polish numerals govern the case of what they count. With kosztować the amount sits in the slot that numeral agreement controls:

• 1: kosztuje jeden złoty (nominative singular)
• 2, 3, 4: kosztuje dwa / trzy / cztery złote (nominative plural)
• 5 and up, and all the "teens": kosztuje pięć / jedenaście / dwadzieścia złotych (genitive plural — złotych)

So Ile to kosztuje? is genuinely the doorway to numeral agreement: the answer forces you to choose between złoty, złote, and złotych. The same logic governs groszy (the smaller unit) and any counted noun.

Note also that kosztować can take a dative-like "experiencer" object for whom something cost: in kosztowało nas fortunę ("it cost us a fortune"), nas is who paid. Here, in the figurative "it cost me dearly" sense, the amount appears in the accusative (fortunę, dużo, życie), not the genitive.

Common collocations

• Ile to kosztuje? — How much is it? (the single most useful price question)
• kosztować fortunę / majątek — to cost a fortune
• kosztować grosze — to cost peanuts (literally "to cost groszy")
• kosztować kogoś życie / zdrowie — to cost someone their life / health (figurative)
• dużo / niewiele kosztować — to cost a lot / not much
• skosztować potrawy — to sample a dish (perfective, + genitive)

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• kosztować is a regular -ować verb; the present stem is kosztuj-.
• In its "cost" meaning it lives in the third person: kosztuje (one thing), kosztują (several). The everyday past forms are kosztowało and kosztowały.
• The price obeys numeral agreement: jeden złoty, dwa/trzy/cztery złote, pięć+ złotych. That is why Ile to kosztuje? is the gateway to the whole numeral system.
• A second meaning, "to taste/sample," takes the genitive (like próbować) and has the perfective skosztować with a live imperative skosztuj!