Cost per mile calculator
Fuel is the cost you notice. Insurance, maintenance, depreciation and fees are the ones that decide what a mile really costs. Enter a year of each and this adds them up — using your figures only.
What a mile costs you
Enter a year's worth of each cost. Leave anything you do not pay blank.
Enter at least one cost to see how the total breaks down. Every figure on this page is one you supply — we do not hold running-cost data for any vehicle.
How the numbers are worked out
Addition and division — there is no model behind this
- Total a year
fuel + insurance + maintenance + depreciation + registration - Cost per mile
total a year ÷ miles a year - Cost a month
total a year ÷ 12 - Share of total
one cost ÷ total of the costs entered
A field left blank contributes nothing — it is not treated as zero-and-therefore-known, it simply does not appear in the breakdown. With no mileage entered the per-mile figure shows an em dash rather than dividing by zero.
Where to get each figure
All five come from your own records
- Fuel or charging
- A year of receipts, or an estimate from your mileage, your measured MPG and the price you pay.
- Insurance
- Your annual premium. If you pay monthly, multiply by twelve — instalment charges are part of what the vehicle costs you.
- Maintenance and repairs
- What you actually spent over the last year: servicing, tyres, brakes, wipers, the unplanned bill. We do not publish a maintenance estimate for any vehicle and will not supply one here. A safety recall repair is carried out free of charge, so it does not belong in this line.
- Depreciation
- What the vehicle lost in value over the year — a cost that never appears on a receipt, which is why it is the one most often left out. Take it from your own valuation of the vehicle now against a year ago. Any figure here is an estimate you are making, not one we are asserting.
- Registration, taxes and fees
- Registration renewal, any state or local vehicle tax, inspection or emissions testing, parking permits.
Finance interest is not one of the five fields. If you are paying interest on a loan, add it to whichever line you find easiest to reason about, or track it separately — but do not leave it out of a comparison between two vehicles.
What a per-mile figure is good for
And what it cannot settle
- Comparing a decision, not a vehicle. It answers “what does this trip cost me?” or “is this commute worth it?” better than a fuel figure alone, because the costs you do not see at the pump are usually the larger half.
- Mileage changes the answer even when no cost does. Insurance, depreciation and registration are largely fixed for the year, so halving your mileage roughly doubles what each of them adds to every mile.
- It is a record of last year, not a forecast. A year with no repairs and a year with a major one produce very different figures for the same vehicle.
- It says nothing about safety or reliability. What a vehicle costs to run and what owners have reported to NHTSA about it are separate questions, answered on separate pages.