Fuel cost calculator
Enter the distance, how economical the car is and the price, and the cost of the journey is shown in total and per person.
Example prices for unleaded petrol and for charging at home, not today’s prices. Enter what you pay; petrol in pence per litre as shown at the pump.
Total
£27.28
- Total distance200 miles
- Fuel20.2 litres
- Fuel cost£27.28
- Total£27.28
- Per mile, excluding tolls£0.14
Same consumption: 6.28 l/100 km · 37.5 mpg (US) · 15.9 km/litre
How it works
The cost is distance multiplied by consumption multiplied by price. A 200-mile journey in a car doing 45 mpg uses 4.44 gallons, which is 20.2 litres. At 135p a litre that comes to £27.28, or £54.55 there and back.
Miles per gallon works the other way round from litres per 100 km: a higher figure means less fuel. A mile is exactly 1.609344 km, a UK gallon exactly 4.54609 litres and a US gallon 3.785411784 litres, so a US mpg figure looks about a sixth lower for the same car. Litres per 100 km is 282.48 divided by UK mpg, or 235.21 divided by US mpg: 40 mpg is 7.06 litres per 100 km in the UK but 5.88 in the United States.
UK pumps show prices in pence per litre, so enter 135.9 for a price of 135.9p. The official figures for new cars are measured under WLTP and are often better than you will see on the road, especially in cold weather, at motorway speeds or with a roof box or trailer.
In Brazil, Mexico and Japan consumption is given in kilometres per litre; divide 100 by it for litres per 100 km, so 12.5 km per litre is 8 litres per 100 km. In Sweden and Norway people often say litres per mil, where a mil is 10 km: 0.65 litres per mil is 6.5 litres per 100 km.
For an electric car, use miles per kWh or kWh per 100 km and the price per kWh where you charge. At home that is your unit rate; rapid chargers on the motorway often cost several times as much. Some energy is lost while charging, so the car uses a little more from the supply than its own display shows.
Tolls, congestion charges and parking are added once for the whole journey, so enter the total for both ways if you include the return trip. Wear, servicing, insurance and depreciation are not included, and they make a car journey considerably more expensive per mile than the fuel alone. The prices in the boxes are examples, not today’s prices.