OBJECTIVES: The measurement of the ‘quality’ part of the QALY used to assess health interventions is conventionally based upon the general publics’ preferences for different health states. Research from behavioural economics tells us that the elicitation of preferences to inform this analysis introduces a number of biases into the estimation of the utility generated by technologies. In response to this, various authors have considered the theoretical possibility of replacing the preference-based approaches with experience-based estimates of health related utility gains. This paper compares the ICERs for a range of interventions estimated based on both preference-based and experience-based valuation techniques. METHODS: Tariffs associated with changes in health states were extracted from published data. Tariffs based on four methods were identified: TTO, standard gamble, life satisfaction, and day affect. These data were combined with estimates of the cost and effect of a range of interventions to model the impact on ICERs of these alternative tariffs, how this varied with intervention type and tariff method, and the challenges of adopting alternative tariffs. RESULTS: Experience-based utility measures generate lower ICERs for interventions that generated improvements in the social and mental dimensions of health outcomes, and higher ICERs for those that target the pain dimensions of health outcomes.  This trend is not, however, replicated across different experience-based utility measures. CONCLUSIONS: Experience-based utility represents an alternative to the preference-based utility measures conventionally employed within health economics. If optimal use is to be made of healthcare budgets, further work is required to understand why different utility measures produce different ICERs, and further debate is required to inform the appropriate basis for reimbursement decisions.