Car running costs: what it costs to keep a car on the road
Running costs are the ongoing, year-to-year costs of keeping a specific car on the road: fuel or energy, tax, insurance, servicing, repairs and tyres. 73 Auto estimates each of these for a specific UK vehicle and your own driving, then shows them as one annual and monthly figure.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-28
Estimate a car's running costs
Enter a UK registration number to see its running costs, personalised to your mileage and location.
UK number plate or 17-character VIN
What counts as a running cost
Fuel or energy
Follows your mileage, driving style and fuel/electricity price
Vehicle tax (VED)
From official rate bands and the vehicle’s CO2 figure
Insurance
Follows your profile, postcode and the vehicle itself
Servicing (including MOT)
Scheduled maintenance over the period
Repairs and maintenance
Wear items and expected unscheduled repairs
Tyres
Based on typical tyre life and your mileage
How each is estimated: fuel, insurance, servicing, MOT and repairs and tyres. For an electric car, see the electric car running cost calculator.
Is there one “average” UK car running cost?
No single figure honestly answers “what does it cost to run a car in the UK”, because running costs depend heavily on the specific car (its fuel type, efficiency and insurance group), how many miles you drive, and where you live. Among the vehicles in 73 Auto's own 2026 ownership cost study, estimated annual ownership cost ranges from £4,284 to £9,650 a year, a gap of £5,366 — a spread wide enough that a single national average would be misleading for most individual cars. That study is one dataset of specific vehicles 73 Auto has analysed, not a claim about every car sold in the UK. For the average and median across that same dataset, each stated with its own sample size, see 73 Auto's UK car ownership cost statistics. The reliable way to get a number that means something for your situation is to run it for a specific registration and your own mileage, below.
Annual, monthly, or per mile
73 Auto shows the same running-cost total three ways: as one figure for the year, that figure divided by 12 for a monthly view, and divided by your annual mileage for a cost-per-mile figure. Annual is the most useful for budgeting; monthly for comparing against a finance payment; per mile for comparing cars you'd drive very different distances (see the cost per mile calculator).
Running costs vs. total cost of ownership
“Running costs” usually means the recurring, day-to-day costs above: the ones you pay to keep driving the car you already have. It leaves out two large costs that only apply if you bought the car: depreciation (the value it loses while you own it) and finance (if you didn't pay cash). 73 Auto's full total cost of ownership report adds those two in, for the complete picture of what owning the car, not just running it, costs you.
Personalised to how you actually drive
Fuel or energy, servicing, repairs and tyres all scale with your annual mileage and driving style; insurance follows your postcode and profile; tax follows the vehicle's official CO2 figure. Add your own details for a closer estimate, or leave them out and 73 Auto falls back to standard UK driving assumptions. See methodology for exactly how each category is modelled, and data sources for where the underlying data comes from.
Checking tax and MOT specifically
For just the tax side, see car tax check. For MOT status and history, see MOT check.
Other vehicle checks
- Car checkA UK car's official DVLA record, MOT status and tax status in one check.
- Vehicle history checkFull DVSA MOT test history and mileage consistency signals.
- MOT checkCurrent MOT status, expiry date and full DVSA test history.
- Car tax checkVehicle Excise Duty (VED) status and cost, from official rate bands.
- Total cost of ownershipWhat TCO means and how 73 Auto calculates it for a specific car.