Cost of running a car UK 2026: the full annual bill
Running a small petrol hatchback in the UK costs roughly £3,712 a year — £309 a month, or 52p a mile — once fuel, insurance, depreciation, vehicle tax, servicing, tyres, repairs, breakdown cover, the MOT and a residents' parking permit are all counted. The same bill on a three-year-old family petrol SUV comes to about £5,433, and on an equivalent family electric car about £5,038. Every profile assumes 7,100 miles a year, the UK average in the Department for Transport's National Travel Survey.
How much does it cost to run a car in the UK?
For the average UK driver in 2026, a car costs somewhere between £3,700 and £5,500 a year, all in. The spread is not noise — it is the difference between a paid-for supermini and a three-year-old family car still shedding value. Depreciation is the single biggest variable in car ownership, and it is the one most drivers leave out of the sum entirely.
Ten cost lines make up the total. Four are effectively fixed the moment you own a car: insurance, vehicle excise duty, the MOT and breakdown cover. Three scale with how far you drive: fuel or electricity, tyres and servicing. Two scale with the car's age and value: depreciation and repairs. The tenth — parking — depends entirely on your postcode, and in inner London can exceed everything except fuel.
The mileage assumption matters more than any other input. The Department for Transport's National Travel Survey put average car mileage at 7,100 miles in 2024, down 22% from 9,100 in 2004 as business travel collapsed and hybrid working stuck. Petrol cars averaged 6,200 miles and diesels 8,300. If you drive 15,000 miles a year, roughly double the fuel and tyre lines and add a service; if you drive 4,000, the fixed costs start to dominate and your cost per mile climbs sharply even though the annual bill falls.
Annual running costs, category by category
The table below is the complete bill for the most common car on British roads: a five-year-old petrol supermini worth around £9,000, returning about 48mpg in real-world use, covering 7,100 miles a year. Every line is priced from a named public source and labelled with its basis.
Source: modelled from GOV.UK vehicle tax rates 2026/27 and the DVSA MOT fee schedule; RAC Fuel Watch and the PetrolPrices UK Fuel Price Index (late July to early August 2026); the Car Insurance Expert UK Cost Index, benchmarked to the ABI Motor Insurance Premium Tracker; published Kwik Fit and Halfords 2026 service pricing; RAC Drive unexpected-repair survey data; and a Direct Line Group review of residents' permit charges in 100 UK towns and cities. Seven largest categories shown.
| Cost | Per year | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | £1,055 | 7,100 miles at 48mpg real-world, petrol at 157p a litre |
| Depreciation | £900 | About 10% a year on a £9,000 five-year-old supermini |
| Car insurance | £600 | Car Insurance Expert UK Cost Index average; ABI average paid was £566 in Q2 2026 |
| Repairs & wear | £420 | RAC: 65% of drivers hit an unexpected repair averaging £650 in the past year |
| Vehicle tax (VED) | £200 | Standard rate 2026/27, cars registered on or after 1 April 2017 (GOV.UK) |
| Servicing | £184 | Kwik Fit interim service from £183.95 on engines up to 1,400cc |
| Residents' parking permit | £128 | UK average across 100 towns and cities; nil if you park off-street |
| Tyres | £115 | Mid-range set of four fitted, about £340, spread over three years |
| Breakdown cover | £70 | Roadside plus recovery; AA from £49 and RAC from £47 a year |
| MOT | £40 | Typical garage price; the DVSA statutory maximum is £54.85 |
| Total | £3,712 | £309 a month, or 52p a mile at 7,100 miles |
Sources: GOV.UK vehicle tax rate tables 2026/27 and DVSA MOT test fees, checked 6 August 2026; DfT National Travel Survey 2024 (7,100 average car miles); RAC Fuel Watch and the PetrolPrices UK Fuel Price Index, late July to early August 2026 (petrol 153.5p–160.7p a litre, modelled at 157p); ABI Motor Insurance Premium Tracker Q2 2026 (£566 average paid); published Kwik Fit and Halfords 2026 servicing prices; RAC Drive unexpected-repair research; Direct Line Group residents' permit review. Depreciation and tyre lines are modelled, not quoted prices. Refresh: 2026-11-06.
Small hatch, family SUV and EV compared
Change the car and the shape of the bill changes, not just its size. The SUV burns a third more fuel and loses far more value; the electric car halves the energy line but pays for it in depreciation. All three are costed at 7,100 miles a year, with insurance held constant at the £600 UK index average because premiums vary far more by driver and postcode than by vehicle — London averages £815 against Scotland's £505.
| Cost | Small petrol hatch | Family petrol SUV | Family EV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel or electricity | £1,055 | £1,335 | £800 |
| Depreciation | £900 | £2,200 | £2,400 |
| Car insurance | £600 | £600 | £600 |
| Repairs & wear | £420 | £420 | £420 |
| Servicing | £184 | £240 | £150 |
| Vehicle tax (VED) | £200 | £200 | £200 |
| Tyres | £115 | £200 | £230 |
| Residents' parking permit | £128 | £128 | £128 |
| Breakdown cover | £70 | £70 | £70 |
| MOT | £40 | £40 | £40 |
| Total per year | £3,712 | £5,433 | £5,038 |
| Cost per mile | 52p | 77p | 71p |
Profiles: five-year-old petrol supermini (£9,000, 48mpg); three-year-old mid-size petrol SUV (£20,000, 38mpg); three-year-old family electric car (£16,000, 3.6 miles per kWh). Electricity costed at 80% home charging on the Ofgem cap rate of 26.11p/kWh (1 July to 30 September 2026) and 20% public rapid at the Zapmap weighted average of 80p/kWh in July 2026, with a 10% charging loss. Petrol at 157p a litre. Depreciation modelled on published UK depreciation curves and Auto Trader Retail Price Index used values (average used car £17,294 in January 2026). Refresh: 2026-11-06.
Two results are worth pausing on. First, the electric car is the cheapest of the three to fuel by a wide margin — £800 against £1,335 — and that gap widens dramatically if you can charge overnight on a smart EV tariff. At 7p/kWh off-peak the energy line falls to roughly £470 a year, less than half the petrol supermini's. Rely on public rapid chargers instead, at Zapmap's July 2026 weighted average of 80p/kWh, and the advantage disappears entirely. Our EV charging cost breakdown sets out the home-versus-public gap in detail.
Second, depreciation swamps everything else on a newer car. It does not arrive as a bill, so it rarely feels like a cost, but the SUV and the EV each lose more value in a year than they spend on fuel, tax, servicing, tyres, the MOT and breakdown cover combined. Electric cars have been under particular pressure in the used market; our EV depreciation data shows retained values after three years ranging from 29% to 62% depending on the model, which is a far wider spread than any petrol equivalent. Buying a car that is already three to five years old is the single largest lever most drivers have over their annual motoring bill.
Which lines you can actually move
Not all ten costs respond to effort. Vehicle tax is set by statute at £200 for the standard rate in 2026/27, with a £440 expensive-car supplement for years two to six on anything with a list price above £40,000 when new (£50,000 for zero-emission cars). Nothing you do changes that except choosing a different car. The MOT is capped at £54.85 and most garages charge £30–£45, so the maximum available saving is about £20 a year.
The lines that genuinely move are insurance, fuel and depreciation. Insurance is the one where identical drivers pay wildly different amounts: the ABI puts the average paid comprehensive premium at £566 in Q2 2026, while the Confused.com price index, which measures quoted prices rather than what people settle on, recorded £719 for the same quarter. That gap is renewal apathy. Shopping the market before renewal, rather than auto-renewing, is what closes it — our UK car insurance cost index shows how far the average moves by age, region and vehicle.
Fuel responds to driving style and where you fill up more than most drivers expect. Pump prices ranged from roughly 153.5p to 160.7p a litre across the UK in late July and early August 2026, a spread of 7p that is worth about £47 a year on the supermini profile. Servicing responds to where you book: Kwik Fit publishes an interim service from £183.95 and Halfords a full service from £239.99, while independent garages routinely undercut both. See our car service cost guide for the full spread.
Products that sit on top of the bill
Three regulated products are commonly sold alongside a car and are not in the table above, because none of them is a running cost every driver incurs. GAP insurance pays the difference between an insurer's total-loss settlement and either the purchase price or an outstanding finance balance; typical three-year policies run around £107 to £205 bought standalone. It is relevant mainly to people who bought new or nearly new, or who owe more on finance than the car is worth; it is largely irrelevant on a £9,000 five-year-old supermini where the gap it insures barely exists. Our GAP insurance cost page explains the mechanics.
An extended warranty or vehicle service contract charges roughly £180 to £1,000 a year to cover mechanical failure. Whether that beats self-insuring depends on how the annual premium compares with the £420 repair line above and on what the policy actually excludes — wear items, consumables and pre-existing faults are commonly outside cover. Our extended warranty cost page sets out the pricing tiers. Car finance — PCP, HP or a personal loan — is a cost of acquiring the car, not of running it, and layering interest on top of the figures above is how a £3,700 running cost becomes a £7,000 total monthly outlay. Car Insurance Expert is an independent research site and is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority; we describe how these products work and what they cost, and make no recommendation about any of them. The full set of ownership costs sits on our car running costs hub.
Cost of running a car FAQs
Our sources
- GOV.UK — vehicle tax rate tables — the £200 standard rate for 2026/27 and the £440 expensive-car supplement, with the £40,000 and £50,000 list-price thresholds
- GOV.UK — DVSA MOT test fees — the £54.85 statutory maximum for a class 4 car, unchanged since 2010
- Department for Transport, National Travel Survey 2024 — average car mileage of 7,100 miles a year, 6,200 for petrol cars and 8,300 for diesels
- Association of British Insurers — Motor Insurance Premium Tracker and the Confused.com Car Insurance Price Index with WTW — £566 average premium paid in Q2 2026 against £719 average quoted
- RAC Fuel Watch and the PetrolPrices UK Fuel Price Index — UK average pump prices of 153.5p to 160.7p a litre for petrol in late July and early August 2026
- Zapmap charging price index and the Ofgem energy price cap — 80p/kWh weighted average for public rapid charging in July 2026, against a 26.11p/kWh capped domestic electricity unit rate for 1 July to 30 September 2026
- Published Kwik Fit and Halfords 2026 pricing (interim service from £183.95, full service from £239.99), RAC Drive unexpected-repair research (65% of drivers, £650 average) and a Direct Line Group review of residents' permit charges across 100 UK towns and cities (£128 average)
Reviewed by the Car Insurance Expert editorial team
Every figure on this page was taken from a named public UK source and re-checked on the date below. Statutory costs come from GOV.UK; mileage from the DfT National Travel Survey; premiums from the ABI tracker and the Confused.com index, each labelled with what it measures; fuel and electricity from RAC Fuel Watch, the PetrolPrices index, Ofgem and Zapmap; servicing from published chain pricing. The depreciation and tyre lines are modelled from published UK value curves and retail tyre pricing rather than quoted, and are labelled as such in the table notes. Where an honest single figure does not exist we give a range. Car Insurance Expert is an independent research site: it is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, does not sell or arrange any product, and makes no recommendation about any regulated product mentioned here.
Last updated: 2026-08-06