Van or car for the business?

Tradespeople and business owners often choose between van and car. Vans: higher purchase (20k-45k), better load capacity, business tax advantages, higher insurance. Cars: lower running costs, wider use cases. This calculator compares total ownership over years.

25k van + 1,500 fuel + 900 insurance × 5 years = 37k total. 20k car + 1,200 fuel + 600 insurance × 5 years = 29k total. Car saves 8k - but if you need cargo capacity, it's not a real option. Use this for the close comparisons where both work.

Tax treatment differs. Vans face lower benefit-in-kind tax on personal use (3,960 flat rate) vs cars (up to 37% of list price). Factor this if vehicle is company-provided. For owner-operators, depreciation allowances also differ.

A worked example

Try the defaults: van purchase price of 25,000, car purchase price of 20,000, van annual fuel of 1,500, car annual fuel of 1,200. The tool returns -8,000.00. 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 Van Purchase Price, Car Purchase Price, Van Annual Fuel, Car Annual Fuel, and Van Annual Insurance. Two inputs usually tip the answer one way or the other. Identify which ones matter most by flipping each value past a round threshold and watching whether the winning option changes.

The formula behind this

Van total = purchase + (fuel + insurance) × years. Car similar. Difference shows cheaper option. 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.