The best Christmas gifts for friends are the ones that prove you were paying attention — not a selection box from a Tesco garage or another candle from TK Maxx. Below are 15 ideas we'd happily give, from under £20 to a flight voucher that sends them somewhere new, plus a section for the best friend who's impossible to buy for and a few safe bets for friends you don't know all that well.
Jump to the section you need:
- How much should you spend on a friend's Christmas present?
- The 15 best Christmas gifts for friends
- Christmas gifts for your best friend
- Christmas gifts for friends you don't know that well
- How to make Christmas gifts for friends
- Left it late? Last-minute Christmas gifts for friends
- Christmas gifts for friends: your questions answered
- Will you buy one of these Christmas gifts for friends?
How much should you spend on a friend's Christmas present?
Forget the politics and go with your heart. Christmas is an eye-wateringly expensive time of year and people routinely spend beyond their means to avoid an awkward moment under the tree. Our answer: spend what you can actually afford. If you feel like treating someone, treat them. If money is tight, spend less, or make something — a friend worth keeping will not be counting.
If it helps to see the whole list by price, here's how the 15 ideas below break down.
| Budget | Gifts on this list |
|---|---|
| Under £20 | Custom face socks, birth month flower grow kit, affirmation card deck, rechargeable hand warmers, portable French press, Backpacker travel game |
| £20–£50 | Flight gift voucher, train gift card, Apple AirTag, luxury bath tray caddy, Bala Bangles, chocolate fountain |
| £50–£100 | Smart portable projector, smart table lamp |
| £100 and up | Inflatable insulated ice bath |
One thing worth saying out loud: the gift vouchers on this list let you set the amount yourself, so they work at almost any budget without ever looking like a budget gift.
The 15 best Christmas gifts for friends
1. A gift voucher for travel
Budget: you choose the amount
Great for: the friend who talks about going somewhere and never books it
Kicking off the list is a flight gift voucher. One gift card for flights covers a huge range of airlines — Ryanair, KLM, Emirates, Jet2, JetBlue, Aer Lingus, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways among them — and thousands of destinations, so they pick the trip and the date rather than being handed your idea of a good holiday.
Whether that ends up being Australia, Malta, Egypt or a long weekend somewhere in the UK, a gift voucher for travel is personal in a way most gift cards aren't: you can add your own photo and write a message, then post it, email it, or print a flight gift voucher at home and hand it over. Decorate the envelope and you've got a stocking filler that outlasts every other present in the room. If you've not given one before, here's how to gift a flight without spoiling the surprise.
2. Custom face socks
Budget: under £20
Great for: the friend whose group chat runs on cursed photos
Turn a running joke into a fashion statement. Pick a goofy or genuinely lovely photo of the two of you, have it printed on a pair of socks, and every time they get dressed they'll think of you — for better or worse. You can buy them from Supersocks.
3. Birth month flower grow kit
Budget: under £20
Great for: the friend with more plants than shelf space
For friends with a green thumb, a birth month flower grow kit comes with the seeds and everything needed to grow the bloom tied to the month they were born. It's a thoughtful Christmas gift for friends that quietly celebrates their birthday too, and it keeps going long after the tree has come down.
4. Affirmation card deck
Budget: under £20
Great for: the friend who's had a year of it
Help them start the day with something better than their notifications. These decks carry motivational messages and daily affirmations, and while they won't fix anything on their own, a small nudge towards a kinder inner voice is a genuinely thoughtful Christmas present for friends — one that supports their mental health all year rather than for one morning in December.
5. Apple AirTag
Budget: £20–£50
Great for: the friend who has lost their keys in your house, twice
For the tech-minded friend who mislays everything, an Apple AirTag clips onto keys, a wallet or a suitcase and shows up on their phone. It's a practical Christmas gift for friends that saves them the twenty minutes of panic they currently budget for every time they leave the house — and it's the one gift on this list they'll use before New Year.
6. Luxury bath tray caddy
Budget: £20–£50
Great for: the friend who calls a bath "self-care"
Give the gift of an hour nobody can interrupt. These trays hold a book, a tablet, a glass of wine and whatever bath products they've been saving for a special occasion, turning an ordinary bathroom into something closer to a spa. There's a good range of styles at Eco Bath London.
7. Smart portable projector
Budget: £50–£100 for an entry-level model
Great for: the friend who hosts
A compact projector throws films, box sets and — if they must — work presentations onto a wall far bigger than their telly. Entry-level models are surprisingly affordable on Amazon, while premium ones like the Samsung Freestyle at John Lewis run into the hundreds, so this is a Christmas gift that scales with how much you like them.
8. Rechargeable hand warmers
Budget: under £20
Great for: the friend who is always, always cold
Small, cheap and disproportionately loved. Rechargeable hand warmers give hours of heat for freezing commutes, touchline mornings, Christmas markets and ski trips, and they double as a power bank on a lot of models. There's a wide range of brands and styles on Amazon.
9. Bala Bangles
Budget: £20–£50
Great for: the friend whose personality is their gym class
These weighted bangles strap to wrists or ankles and add resistance to a workout, a yoga session or a walk round the park. Bala Bangles are a trendy Christmas gift for friends that manages to look like an accessory rather than gym kit — which is most of the appeal.
10. Portable French press coffee maker
Budget: under £20
Great for: the friend with strong opinions about coffee
For the friend who has views on beans, a portable French press means a proper cup at the office, on a campsite or halfway up a hill. Compact, no electricity required, and it saves them from another disappointing service-station americano.
11. A gift card for train journeys
Budget: you choose the amount
Great for: the friend who'd rather take the scenic route
From the same company behind Flightgift, a train gift card covers rail travel across the UK and Europe, and can go towards rail passes, Eurostar journeys or standard tickets. Whether they use it on one of the UK's prettiest lines or on a run from Switzerland to Italy, it's a Christmas gift for friends that comes with a much lighter conscience than a flight.
12. Backpacker – the ultimate travel game
Budget: under £20
Great for: the friend who is always mid-trip or planning the next one
Two players is enough, and it packs down small enough to live in a rucksack. If your friend is an avid traveller, this is a fun Christmas gift that earns its space in the bag — and it's a good one to pair with a travel voucher if you want the gift to have two halves.
13. Inflatable insulated ice bath
Budget: £100 and up
Great for: the friend who talks about cold exposure unprompted
The big-ticket option. A mini ice bath is for the friend who trains hard and enjoys telling you about it: cold water is widely used to soothe sore muscles and help post-workout recovery, and they will absolutely post about it.
14. Smart table lamp
Budget: £50–£100
Great for: the friend who has just moved in somewhere
Jazz up their desk or their new flat with a smart table lamp. They can pick from millions of colours, set a warm one for working and a ridiculous one for parties, and sync it to whatever they're playing. It's a housewarming present wearing a Christmas jumper.
15. Chocolate fountain
Budget: £20–£50
Great for: the friend with the sweet tooth and the big kitchen table
Last on the list, and the least sensible: an electric chocolate fountain. A must for anyone with a sweet tooth and a genuinely brilliant centrepiece for parties, birthdays and every gathering between now and next December.
Christmas gifts for your best friend
A best friend is the hardest person on the list, because the safe options all feel like a cop-out. You already know their coffee order, so a mug won't do it. What works is a gift that's either specific to the two of you or big enough to become a memory.
From the list above, the ones that land hardest with a best friend:
- A travel voucher, given as a plan. The strongest version of this gift isn't the card — it's saying "let's actually go". Give a flight voucher alongside a note naming the trip you've both been threatening to take for three years. If you'd rather they choose, browse the destinations together over Christmas dinner.
- Custom face socks. Objectively silly, but a photo only the two of you would pick is exactly the point.
- A shared experience rather than an object. A weekend at one of the best Christmas markets in Europe costs less than most people assume and is remembered for years, which is more than can be said for a candle.
- Something that finishes a story. The travel game for the friend you always end up in an airport with; the projector for the friend whose sofa you've spent a decade on.
If the closest person on your list is a partner rather than a friend, we've got separate guides to Christmas gifts for boyfriends, girlfriends and partners.
Christmas gifts for friends you don't know that well
New friends, friends of friends, the group you see twice a year, a Secret Santa with a £15 cap — this is a different problem. Here you're not trying to move anyone to tears, you're trying to avoid the two failure modes: too personal, or obviously an afterthought.
Three rules that hold up:
- Useful beats sentimental. Hand warmers, a portable French press or an affirmation deck all read as thoughtful without implying you know their childhood nickname.
- Consumable beats permanent. Nobody resents a gift they can finish. Homemade baking is genuinely welcome here, and costs almost nothing.
- A voucher is not a cop-out if it's specific. A generic high-street card says "I forgot". A card for flights or train travel says "I hope you get to go somewhere" — same effort from you, a completely different message received.
How to make Christmas gifts for friends
There are tutorials online for practically every homemade Christmas present for friends you can think of. Baking travels best: mince pies, gingerbread or a batch of chocolate truffles all look far more generous than they cost. Beyond the kitchen, a Christmas wreath, a framed photo from a trip you took together or a small jar of something you made in the summer will all beat a panic-bought candle.
Homemade also solves the budget problem honestly. If money is tight this year, a made gift plus a handwritten card is not a lesser present — it's usually the one they keep.
Left it late? Last-minute Christmas gifts for friends
Every year a chunk of the list gets sorted in the last week, and the panic is what leads to the novelty mug. Two things save you here.
First, know your delivery deadlines. Anything physical needs to be ordered well before the last posting dates, and those dates land earlier than most people expect — check the retailer's Christmas delivery page before you add to basket rather than after.
Second, digital gifts have no deadline. An e-gift card arrives by email, and a PDF gift card can be printed at home on Christmas Eve and still look like something you planned in November — especially with your own photo on it and a message written properly rather than in a rush. If you want to see how it works before you buy, here's how Flightgift works.
Christmas gifts for friends: your questions answered
What should I get my friends for Christmas?
Start from how well you know them rather than from a product. For a close friend, go for something specific to the two of you or a shared experience. For a friend you see less often, something useful or consumable — hand warmers, good coffee kit, homemade baking. And for anyone whose taste you genuinely can't call, a travel voucher lets them choose while still saying something about how you see them.
What's a good Christmas gift for a best friend?
The best friend gifts that land are the ones with a story attached. Custom face socks with a photo only the two of you would choose, a game you'll actually play together, or a flight or train voucher given as an invitation rather than a card — "let's finally go" is a better gift than almost any object at the same price.
What do you get a friend who has everything?
Stop buying things and buy time or distance. Someone with a full house doesn't need another object, but almost nobody has enough trips booked. An experience, a weekend away or a travel gift card sidesteps the problem entirely, because it doesn't have to fit anywhere in their home.
What are some cheap Christmas gifts for friends?
Plenty on this list sits under £20: a birth month flower grow kit, an affirmation card deck, rechargeable hand warmers, a portable French press or the Backpacker travel game. Homemade baking costs less again. And because gift vouchers let you set the amount, a small one with a well-written message beats a bigger gift chosen without thought.
How much should you spend on a friend's Christmas present?
There's no correct figure, and treating it as a matching exercise is how Christmas gets stressful. Spend what you can comfortably afford, agree a cap with your group if that helps, and put the effort into the choosing rather than the total.
What are the 5 gifts of Christmas?
It's a popular rule of thumb for keeping present-buying under control: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read, and one main gift. It's aimed at families, but it works surprisingly well for a friend too — the travel voucher becomes the main gift, and a book or a pair of socks fills in the rest.
Will you buy one of these Christmas gifts for friends?
Has the list helped? We hope so. Whether you go for a train gift card, a portable ice bath or a multi-airline voucher — our personal favourite — they'll notice the thought you put in, which is the whole point of the exercise.
And if you're still stuck, our full range of Christmas gifts lets you set your own amount, add a photo and send it however suits: in the post, by email, or printed and handed over on the day.