Cost per mile calculator

Fuel and electricity defaults above come from the EIA gasoline price series ($4.085/gal) and the EIA electricity price series ($0.1834/kWh), checked 2026-08-27. Edit either field for your own market.

What this calculates

Ownership cost per mile is the purchase price minus what the car is worth when it is sold, divided across every mile driven in between, plus every other expense divided across the same miles. This calculator adds six components: depreciation (price paid minus resale value, spread over total miles owned), energy (fuel or electricity, picked by the selected vehicle's powertrain), insurance, maintenance, tires, and registration, each entered as an annual figure and divided by annual miles. The bar chart below the total shows which of the six is doing the most damage — for most vehicles it is depreciation, not gasoline, which is why buying the right used car matters more than most drivers assume. The result is also compared with the current IRS standard mileage rate, the deduction rate the IRS publishes for business use of a personal vehicle, so a driver can see at a glance whether the flat per-mile deduction is generous or stingy relative to what the car actually costs to run.

Assumptions baked in

Depreciation is computed as a straight line from purchase price to resale value over the miles driven in between — it does not model the faster depreciation most cars experience in their first year, or the flattening curve after year five, because most rideshare and delivery vehicles are bought and sold used, well past the steepest part of that curve. Every annual cost — insurance, maintenance, tires, registration — is assumed constant year to year, when in reality maintenance tends to rise as a car ages and insurance can fall as it depreciates; entering a mid-ownership average is more honest than entering a first-year figure. Energy cost uses combined MPG or kilowatt-hours per 100 miles for the selected vehicle rather than city or highway figures alone, since rideshare and delivery driving mixes both. The IRS rate shown is a flat national figure that does not vary by vehicle, region, or actual cost — it exists for tax simplicity, not cost accuracy, which is exactly why comparing it against a vehicle-specific number is useful.

Full formulas and the source for every default value are on the methodology page.