Commute Cost Calculator

The true cost of commuting is far more than just fuel. When you add vehicle wear, parking, tolls, and the monetary value of your time, commuting is often the second-largest household expense after housing.

True daily commute cost formula: Daily Cost = Fuel + Wear + Parking + Tolls + Transit Fares + (Time × Hourly Value) Annual Cost = Daily Cost × Working Days per Year

Component calculations:

Fuel: Fuel Cost per Day = (Round Trip Miles / MPG) × Gas Price

Vehicle wear (IRS mileage rate, 2025): Wear Cost = Round Trip Miles × $0.70/mile (covers depreciation, maintenance, tires)

Time value: Time Cost = (Commute Hours per Day) × (Your Hourly Wage)

Worked example: Daily round trip: 40 miles | MPG: 32 | Gas: $3.60/gal | Parking: $12/day | Commute: 1.5 hours/day | Wage: $30/hr

• Fuel: (40/32) × $3.60 = $4.50/day
• Wear (beyond fuel): 40 × $0.70 − $4.50 = $23.50/day
• Parking: $12.00/day
• Time cost: 1.5 × $30 = $45.00/day
• Total daily cost: $85.00
• Annual cost (250 days): $21,250

Often-missed commute costs:

• Increased car insurance premium for high-mileage drivers
• Faster vehicle depreciation
• Business clothes / dry cleaning budget
• Lunches purchased near work vs. packed at home

Remote work value: If you work from home just 2 days per week, you save approximately 40% of your annual commute cost, which is worth negotiating for.

Two numbers, and the gap between them. This page gives you a fuel figure and an all-in figure, and they are far apart on purpose. Fuel is what you feel at the pump. The all-in figure uses the IRS standard mileage rate, which folds in insurance, tyres, servicing, and the depreciation that mileage causes whether you notice it or not. On a typical commute the all-in number lands at five or six times the fuel cost.

Which one is the honest one depends on the question you are asking. Deciding whether to make one extra trip this week? Fuel, because insurance and depreciation happen anyway. Deciding whether to take a job forty miles away, or whether to move closer, or whether a second car earns its keep? Use the all-in figure, because at that scale every one of those costs really does scale with the miles.

The number that surprises people is the depreciation. A car driven 20,000 miles a year is worth meaningfully less at resale than the same car driven 8,000, and nobody puts that on a spreadsheet because it arrives as a single disappointing number years later.

This page prices the drive from your fuel figures, which is what most people can look up without digging. Parking, tolls and the value of your time are in the worked example above but not in the calculator.
To put actual numbers on those, use the annual commute cost calculator. It takes parking, tolls and an hourly rate as inputs and separates the cash cost from the time cost, which are the two figures worth arguing about separately.

On electric vehicles: the fuel line changes completely and the rest barely moves. Charging at home commonly costs a quarter to a third of petrol per mile, but insurance, tyres and depreciation stay roughly where they were, and EV tyres wear faster because the cars are heavier. Run the fuel side at your electricity rate and treat the all-in gap as still applying.