What your car really costs each year.

The advertised cost of a car is rarely the actual cost of owning one. The monthly payment or purchase price is one line item; insurance, fuel, maintenance, road tax, MOT, and depreciation add 2,500-6,000 more annually for a typical driver. This calculator sums all six to show the true yearly and monthly cost.

Typical breakdowns for a mid-sized petrol car: insurance 500-1,200, fuel 1,000-2,200 (10,000 miles at typical mpg and prices), maintenance 300-700, road tax 150-600 depending on emissions, MOT 35-55, depreciation 1,500-3,500 depending on age and mileage. Total 3,485-8,255 - often more than the loan or finance payment itself.

The tool separates cash running costs from depreciation because they behave differently. Cash costs must be budgeted and paid; depreciation is an accounting loss that becomes real only when the car is sold. For leased cars, depreciation is baked into the monthly payment, so set it to zero. For owned cars, including it gives the honest picture.

A worked example

Try the defaults: insurance of 700, fuel of 1,500, maintenance of 500, road tax of 180. The tool returns 4,920.00. You can adjust any input and the result updates as you type — no submit button, no reload. That's the real power here: seeing how sensitive the output is to one or two assumptions.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Insurance (Annual), Fuel (Annual), Maintenance (Annual), Road Tax (Annual), and MOT (Annual). Frequency and unit price pull the total in different directions. The biggest surprise for most people is how small recurring amounts compound into large annual figures — that's where this calculation earns its keep.

The formula behind this

Cash costs = insurance + fuel + maintenance + road tax + MOT. Total = cash costs + depreciation. Monthly = total / 12. Everything the calculator does is shown in the formula box below, so you can check the math against your own spreadsheet if you want.

When the result says "wait"

If the payback is longer than you expect to keep the item, the math says no. That's useful information — not everything has to earn its keep financially, but knowing when something doesn't means the decision to buy it anyway is deliberate.

What this doesn't capture

Purchase decisions rarely come down to payback alone. Reliability, time saved, enjoyment, and alternatives outside the calculation all matter. The figure gives you the money side cleanly so you can weigh it against everything else honestly.