I've recently made a post about comparing crossbow costs with arquebus costs around 1519, from documents relating to equipping fleet of Ferdinand Magellan.

Here's the post:

Going over some old notes, I stumbled upon an old calculation I made, comparing prices of Arquebus and Crossbow in the early 16th century so I decided to share it. It's nothing special but might be interesting to some.

The source of data is the inventory and purchase list for Magellan's voyage around the world 1519-1522, as published in English here. The list is meticulous and offers many insights into supplies necessary for a long voyage of exploration. But let's just focus on the two weapons for now.

Here is the table of relevant entries. First two columns are directly taken from the document, the third column is compiled by me and is price of one unit of item with weights recalculated into british pounds (lbs) where necessary

Item	Total Price	Price per unit
60 crossbows with 360 dozen arrows from Bilbao	33,495	558.25
50 arquebuses from Biscay	10,500	210
50 flasks and prickers for the arque buses, and 150 yards of fuses	5,611	112.22
221 arrobas 7 lbs. of lead for bullets (...)	39,890	7.22 (per lbs)
50 quintals of gunpowder from Fuenterrabia and freight	109,028	21.5 (per lbs)

There are 60 crossbows and 360 dozen arrows so it's 6 dozen, or 72 arrows per crossbow. As we can see, components for arquebus are scattered through several entries like gun itself, gunpowder, lead etc. Also lead and powder where given in aggregate, and we must analyze how much each shot expended of the materials to see how much each shot cost, so we can calculate how much 72 shots cost, that we could contrast it with crossbow.

So to get to it, I actually don't have any concrete information on arquebus shot and powder weights of that period, but I managed to find some rough estimates. Feel free to correct it with more accurate information. I assumed that arquebuses of ~1520 shoot 50 gram lead bullets (this is an upper limit I found, some sources claim 25-45g) and used up ratio of 1:1 shot to powder weight for firing. Based on those estimates, and the data on price of lead and gunpowder per lbs from the list, we get:

Item	Price
Price of one 50g (0.11lbs) bullet of lead	~0.8 maravedis
Price of one 50g (0.11lbs) shot of powder	~2.4 maravedis
Price of 72 bullets + powder	~230 maravedis
Price of one arquebus + flasks, prickers, fuses	~323 maravedis

This gives us

Total price of 1 arquebus and equipment and munitions for 72 shots = ~553 maravedis

Contrasting this with

Total price of 1 crossbow with 72 arrows = 558.25 maravedis

Overall we get the final value that effective prices of crossbow and arquebus and 72 shots at around 1520 was pretty much the same, or at least in order of the same magnitude. Honestly I am a little surprised, as I assumed gunpowder weapons would be considerably more expensive but it seems it was not the case. I haven't factored in any losses that might occur, like using more lead to make a bullet or gunpowder for a shot and things like that, but I do not think it would make much difference.

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The Magellan list gives prices of different items as well, such as weapons (list link) or foodstuffs (list link).

While we are here let's give some examples of price of some general weapons:

100 corselets with armlets, shoulder-plates, and helmets, and 100 breastplates with throat-pieces and helmets from Bilbao ...... 110,910
200 shileds from Bilbao ...... 6,800
95 dozens of darts, 10 dozen javelins, 1000 lances, 200 pikes, 6 boarding-pikes &c from Bilbao .... 44,185

This means you could equip one soldier with armour for 554.55 maravedis. Shields cost 34 maravedis per piece, and bunch of weapons including 1000 lances and 200 pikes cost 44,185 all together, meaning under 40 maravedis per lance/pike (possibly closer to 30 when counting in darts, javelins etc). Basically, equipping an infantry soldier with basic armor, lance and a shield would cost around 650 maravedis. A crossbowmen or arquebuser would cost 600 to equip without armor or 1200 if armored in a similar way.

Better armour and weapons cost more as we see:

Coat of mail and two complete suits of amour for the Captain-General from Bilbao ... 6,375

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For comparison and context, the monthly salary of a mariner on Magellan voyage was 1,200 maravedis per month, and according to Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry in the Italian Wars, 1494–1559 by Idan Sherer, wages of Spanish pikemen was 900 maravedis per month and arquebusier earned 1200 maravedis per month. Here are some wages of professions from the same book.

Also here is a index of wages and prices of various items in 16th century compiled in book Spain's Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century by Pablo E. Perez-Mallaina.

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At the end some comments relating to your own questions.

First to make clear, in Spain and Portugal and probably many European countries, with England being a known exception, by 15th and 16th century crossbow was more popular and preferred to bows. Portuguese and Spanish also continued to use crossbows until the mid 16th century, but slowly kept replacing them with firearms.

The data I gathered unfortunately doesn't show the price of crossbow arrows or bolts separate from the crossbow itself. It does says the replacement wires (strings) cost around 20 maravedis per wire (120 pieces for 2,499 maravedis). I am not sure how often it needed to be replaced, but it seems for expected voyage of 2 years each crossbow was issued 2 replacement wires.

Importantly overall the price of a arquebus and a crossbow with around 6 dozen (72) shots were roughly the same. I suspect one additional arrow was cheaper then 3-4 maravedis you needed to pay gunpowder and lead for each new shot, but overall 4 marevedis wasn't expensive at all