Keeping & Replacing
Break-Even Mileage Calculator
One car costs more to buy and less to drive. How far do you have to go before the savings repay the difference — and does that happen before you sell it? Two cars, your prices, and the mile the lines cross.
The holding period is what turns a break-even mileage into an answer. A crossover at 140,000 miles means nothing to someone who trades cars every four years.
Break-even mileage
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— ÷ —
Cheaper over — years
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price + — mi of running costs
Fill in both cars, your annual mileage and how long you plan to keep the car.
- Extra paid up front
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- Saved every year
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- Break-even, in years
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- Car A, total over — years
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- Car B, total over — years
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- Miles covered in that time
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Resale value is not counted. The totals above are purchase price plus running costs — they assume both cars are worth nothing at the end, which no car is. The pricier car usually sells for more, so a real break-even normally arrives sooner than this one. The extra is also treated as cash: if you financed it, you pay interest on the difference too, which pushes the crossover the other way.
Informational only, not professional advice. This tool compares two cars on figures you supply. It does not account for resale value, financing interest, the time value of money, or any tax position, and it is not financial advice. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
How this is calculated
The whole method is one division, and it is the same one the U.S. Department of Energy uses in its own payback tool: the extra you paid, divided by what you save each year.
cost per year = $ per mile × miles per year + other yearly costs (each car) extra up front = the price difference between the two cars saved per year = the difference between the two yearly costs break-even, in years = extra up front ÷ saved per year break-even, in miles = break-even years × miles per year total over your years = price + cost per year × years you keep it (each car)
The per-mile figure underneath it is the division the rest of this site is built on: $ per gallon ÷ miles per gallon for a gas car, or $ per kWh ÷ miles per kWh for an electric one. Either car here can be either kind, independently — a thrifty commuter against a truck is as real a comparison as an EV against a hybrid. To see just the fuel side of it in more detail, use the EV vs. Gas Cost Calculator.
The source, and where this goes further
The payback method comes from “Can a Hybrid Save Me Money?” on fueleconomy.gov, the DOE and EPA's joint fuel-economy site, which computes years to payback from a price premium and an annual fuel saving with the mileage and fuel price left adjustable. That page is also refreshingly plain about its own limits: it says it “compares vehicles based on fuel cost and vehicle price only. Other factors, such as insurance, maintenance, or resale value, are not considered since they can vary widely.”
They do vary widely — which on this site makes them yours to enter rather than ours to leave out. Hence the other costs per year field on each car. It matters more than it looks: an electric car that costs $300 a year more to insure can turn a nine-and-a-half-year payback into a fifteen-year one, and most payback calculators will never show you that because they only ever counted fuel.
The federal EV tax credit is gone, and this page does not assume it
There is no incentives field on this tool, and that is deliberate. The federal New Clean Vehicle Credit — up to $7,500 under Internal Revenue Code section 30D — was ended early by Public Law 119-21 in July 2025. In the IRS's own words, the credit “is not available for vehicles acquired after Sept. 30, 2025.” A large share of the EV payback advice still on the web was written while that credit existed and silently subtracts it, which makes electric cars appear to break even years earlier than they now do.
State and utility incentives are a separate question: many still exist, they differ by jurisdiction, and they change on schedules no calculator can track. So rather than a field with a default that would be wrong for nearly everyone, the price input simply asks what you would actually pay — after whatever you personally qualify for. Nothing on this page assumes a credit on your behalf in either direction.
Sometimes there is no break-even, and the tool says so
A crossover only exists when the car that costs more to buy is also the one that costs less to run. When one car is cheaper on both counts, the other never catches up and there is nothing to break even on. Divide those figures anyway and you get a negative mileage or a payback several centuries out — which is what a calculator that assumes the answer exists will hand you. This one reports the outcome instead: which car wins outright, or that the two are identical.
What this does not cover
Resale value, and this is the big one. The totals treat both cars as worth nothing at the end of your holding period, which no car is. The pricier car usually sells for more, so you normally recover part of the premium — meaning a real-world break-even tends to arrive sooner than the one shown here. Read this as the conservative case. Working out what a car actually loses to depreciation, and folding that into a genuine cost per mile, is the job of the tools under Keeping & Replacing.
Also excluded: financing interest — the extra is treated as cash, and if you borrowed it you pay interest on the difference too, which pushes the crossover later. And the time value of money: a dollar saved in year nine is not the dollar you handed over at the dealership, and nothing here is discounted to say so. Both effects work against the pricier car, while the resale omission works for it. Finally, every figure is held flat for the whole period — fuel prices, electricity rates and insurance all move, and no calculator that asked you for one number can pretend otherwise.
Last reviewed: August 2026
Frequently asked questions
Why does it sometimes say there is no break-even?
Because sometimes there isn't one, and pretending otherwise is how these calculators mislead people. A break-even only exists when the car that costs more to buy is also the car that costs less to run — then there is a crossover somewhere down the road. If one car is cheaper to buy and cheaper to run, the other never catches up, no matter how far you drive. A calculator that assumes the crossover exists will happily divide by a negative number and print something like "-64,000 miles" or a payback in the year 2140. Neither is an answer. This tool says which car wins outright instead, because that is the actual finding.
Should I still subtract the $7,500 federal EV tax credit from the price?
Almost certainly not, and this is the single most common way a break-even calculation is wrong in 2026. The federal New Clean Vehicle Credit under Internal Revenue Code section 30D was ended early by Public Law 119-21 in July 2025: the IRS states plainly that the credit "is not available for vehicles acquired after Sept. 30, 2025." A great deal of the EV-payback advice still circulating was written while that $7,500 existed, and it quietly makes electric cars look like they pay back years sooner than they now do. State and utility incentives are a different matter — many still exist, they vary by where you live, and they change on their own schedules. That is exactly why this tool has no incentive field to get stale: you enter the price you would actually pay, after whatever you personally qualify for.
Why does the answer ignore what the car will be worth when I sell it?
Because resale value is the one figure in this comparison that nobody can give you honestly, and the tool would rather leave a gap you can see than fill it with a guess you can't check. The DOE's own payback tool takes the same position, stating that it compares vehicles "based on fuel cost and vehicle price only" because factors like resale value "can vary widely." The practical effect is worth knowing in which direction it cuts: the car that cost more to buy is usually worth more when you sell it, so you typically recover part of that premium at the end. That means a real-world break-even generally arrives sooner than the one shown here. Treat this number as the conservative case, not the optimistic one.
What should I put for the annual mileage and how long I'll keep it?
Your own honest numbers, and be realistic about both — they drive the result more than anything else on the page. Annual mileage sets how fast the savings accumulate: at 20,000 miles a year a premium repays itself in roughly half the time it would at 10,000. The holding period is what turns the mileage into a decision, and it is the input people flatter themselves on. A crossover at 140,000 miles is genuinely irrelevant to someone who trades every four years, and the tool will tell you so rather than let a large-looking annual saving carry the argument. If you're unsure, run it twice — once for how long you say you'll keep it, once for how long you kept the last one.
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