Keeping & Replacing
True Cost per Mile Calculator
Fuel is the cost you watch. It is rarely the biggest one. This adds up everything the car takes from you over the years you keep it — the value it loses, the interest, the insurance, the tires — and divides it by the miles you actually drive.
All-in cost per mile
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— over — miles
Per month
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— a year, every year
Fill in the years, the mileage, what you paid, what you expect to sell it for, and what it burns.
| Cost | Total | Per mile | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depreciation | — | — | — |
| Finance charges | — | — | — |
| Insurance | — | — | — |
| Registration, taxes & fees | — | — | — |
| Fuel or charging | — | — | — |
| Maintenance, repairs & tires | — | — | — |
| Total | — | — | — |
The same car, driven differently
— mi/yr
—
— mi/yr — yours
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— mi/yr
—
Nothing changed but the odometer. — of this car's cost lands every year no matter how far it goes — depreciation, interest, insurance, registration — so the fewer miles you drive, the more each one carries. A cost per mile is a figure about a driver, not about a car.
- Fixed — accrues per year
- — — of the total
- Variable — accrues per mile
- — — a mile
- IRS standard mileage rate, July 1 – December 31, 2026
- 76.0¢ national average
Anything left blank counts as zero. This figure is only as complete as what you entered — a blank insurance or upkeep field doesn't make those costs go away. The IRS rate above is a published national average for a typical car, shown for scale only; it is not folded into your arithmetic, and it excludes loan interest and personal property taxes, which are counted here.
Informational only, not professional advice. This tool divides costs you supply by miles you supply. It uses your estimate of future resale value, which nobody can know, and it does not discount future dollars to today's money or account for any tax position. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
How this is calculated
One division, over six categories. The categories are the ones AAA uses in its annual Your Driving Costs study, because they are the standard breakdown for what a car costs in the United States and nothing here is served by inventing a different one.
depreciation = what you paid − what it's worth at the end finance = total interest over the loan insurance = premium per year × years registration = registration, taxes and fees per year × years fuel = $ per mile × miles per year × years maintenance = maintenance, repairs and tires per year × years total = the six added together miles = miles per year × years cost per mile = total ÷ miles cost per year = total ÷ years
The fuel line is the division the rest of this site is built on: $ per gallon ÷ miles per gallon, or $ per kWh ÷ miles per kWh for an electric car. If you want to see just that side of it against another car, that is the EV vs. Gas Cost Calculator. The interest figure comes from the Auto Loan Payment Calculator, which prints it directly.
The source
AAA has published Your Driving Costs annually since 1950. Its method compares vehicles across six categories — “fuel, maintenance/repair/tire costs, insurance, license/registration/taxes, depreciation, and finance charges” — over a fixed assumption of five years and 75,000 miles. The 2025 edition put the average cost of a new vehicle at $11,577 a year, of which $4,334 was depreciation alone.
Where this tool departs from AAA is the point of it. AAA averages 45 models across nine vehicle categories and holds the ownership period fixed at five years and 15,000 miles a year, because a published national study has to standardise something. Your car is not an average of 45 models, you may keep it for twelve years, and you may drive 6,000 miles a year or 28,000. So every one of those figures is an input here and none of them is supplied on your behalf. The category list is AAA's; the numbers are yours.
Why cost per mile is a fact about you, not about the car
Four of the six costs accrue on the calendar and two accrue on the odometer. Depreciation runs whether or not you drive; so do interest, insurance and registration. Only fuel and upkeep track distance. That means the fixed share — usually well over half — is spread across whatever miles happen to occur, and the per-mile answer moves sharply with mileage while nothing about the car changes at all.
This is why AAA prints its per-mile figures at 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 miles a year rather than as a single number, and why the result above shows your figure at half and double your stated mileage. It also produces the finding people find hardest to believe: a car you barely drive is usually the most expensive car on the street, per mile. Low mileage is cheap in total dollars and expensive per mile, and which of those matters depends entirely on the decision you are making.
Against the IRS standard mileage rate
The result panel shows the IRS standard mileage rate — 76¢ a mile for July 1 – December 31, 2026— beside your figure, for scale only. It is never folded into your arithmetic. The rate is the IRS's own annual estimate of the fixed and variable costs of operating a car nationally, which makes it the one citable all-in per-mile figure for US drivers and a fair sanity check on your own.
Two differences are worth knowing. Loan interest and personal property taxes are not inside the IRS rate — Publication 463 has them claimed separately — while both are counted here, so a financed car will read higher against it. And the rate assumes a national-average mileage that may be nothing like yours. If your figure lands far above 76¢, the usual reasons are heavy depreciation on a newer car, low annual mileage, or an expensive premium — and the table above will say which.
What this does not cover
Resale value is an estimate, and it is the largest single input. Nobody knows what a car will fetch in five years, including us — so it is your figure, and the honest way to use this tool is to run it twice, optimistic and pessimistic, and treat the spread as the answer. Everything else is arithmetic; this one is a forecast.
Also excluded: the time value of money — a dollar of depreciation realised in year eight is not the dollar you handed over at the dealership, and nothing here is discounted to say so. Inflation, likewise: every figure is held flat for the whole period, and fuel prices, premiums and repair labour all move. Parking, tolls and fines are not costs of the car and are not counted — Commute Cost handles those where they belong. And this is a cost calculation, not a tax one: it is not a deduction, and business use has its own rules.
Last reviewed: August 2026
Frequently asked questions
Why is depreciation usually the biggest number, when I never write a check for it?
Because it is the one cost you pay all at once, at the end, in the form of a car worth far less than the one you bought. AAA's own annual study finds the same thing: depreciation is the single largest cost of owning a new car, averaging $4,334 a year in its 2025 edition — more than fuel, insurance and maintenance combined for most vehicles. It doesn't feel like a cost because no invoice ever arrives, which is exactly why a fuel-only view of driving is so misleading. The moment you sell or trade the car, the whole of it lands at once. This tool asks you for the price and the resale value and treats the gap as what it is: money spent on driving.
Why does my cost per mile change when I change the mileage, if nothing about the car changed?
Because most of what a car costs has nothing to do with distance. Depreciation, loan interest, insurance and registration accrue on the calendar — the car sitting in the driveway all year still costs you all four. Only fuel and upkeep track the odometer. So the fixed costs get spread across however many miles you drive: cut your driving in half and each remaining mile carries twice the fixed cost. AAA publishes its cost-per-mile figures at 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 miles a year for precisely this reason. The practical consequence is worth sitting with — a low-mileage driver often has the highest cost per mile on the street, and a car you barely drive is the most expensive kind to own.
How does my figure compare to the IRS's 76-cent standard mileage rate?
It is the closest published benchmark, and comparing to it is fair as long as you know what it is. The IRS rate — 76 cents a mile for July 1 – December 31, 2026 — comes from an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating a car nationally: fuel, depreciation, insurance, maintenance, tires, registration. It is an average across a notional typical car and a notional typical driver, so it is a scale reference, not a target. Two differences matter when you read your own figure against it. Loan interest and personal property taxes sit outside the IRS rate and are claimed separately under Publication 463; both are counted here. And the IRS assumes a mileage that may be nothing like yours, which by the logic above moves the number more than almost anything else.
What should I put for what the car will be worth at the end?
A real valuation for that specific car at that specific age and mileage — not a guess, and not a percentage rule of thumb. Look the car up on a used-car valuation site at the age and odometer reading you expect to reach, and use the private-party or trade-in figure depending on how you actually intend to sell it. If you plan to keep the car until it is worthless, enter 0 and the whole purchase price becomes depreciation, which is the honest treatment. This is the least knowable input on the page and it usually carries the largest single category, so if you are unsure, run the tool twice — once optimistic, once pessimistic — and read the spread as the real answer rather than either end of it.
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