Fuel & Charging
Trip Fuel Cost Calculator
What one drive costs to fuel, at your pump price and your car's real economy — divided among everyone in the car, and set against what the same miles cost the car itself.
Fuel for the trip
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— mi ÷ — MPG = — gal
What you pay
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— ÷ 1 person
- Distance driven
- — mi there and back
- Gasoline needed
- — gal
- Fuel
- —
- Tolls, parking and ferries
- —
- Out of pocket for the trip
- —
- Each person's share
- —
The same drive, counting everything
All-in, at $0.76/mile
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Fuel's share of it
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The first figure on this page is what you hand over at the pump. This one is what the drive costs the car — the tyres it wears, the miles of depreciation, the share of a year's insurance and servicing that those miles used up. You will not pay it this week, but it is the number to use if someone is reimbursing you, and it is the honest comparison against a flight or a rental.
Energy only, in the headline figure.The big number is fuel or charging and nothing else — before depreciation, insurance, maintenance and tires. Real trips also run a little over: detours, traffic, roof boxes, a loaded car and a headwind all cost miles per gallon, and the EPA rating this probably came from is a laboratory figure the government says “may not accurately predict the average MPG you will get.” Treat the result as the floor, not the ceiling.
Informational only, not professional advice. This tool multiplies a distance by a cost per mile using figures you supply, and divides the result by the number of people you tell it about. It is not tax advice: whether a trip is deductible, and at what rate, depends on facts this page never sees. Nothing you type is sent anywhere; the arithmetic runs in your browser.
How this is calculated
Two multiplications and a division, done twice — once for the fuel, once for everything:
miles = one-way distance × 2 (round trip)
cost per mile = $ per gallon ÷ MPG
= $ per kWh ÷ mi/kWh (electric)
fuel needed = miles ÷ MPG (gallons, or kWh)
fuel cost = miles × cost per mile
trip total = fuel cost + tolls and parking
each share = trip total ÷ people in the car
all-in cost = miles × all-in rate + tolls and parking
fuel's share = fuel cost ÷ (miles × all-in rate)The method, and where it comes from
This is the same calculation the Department of Energy and EPA run in their own Trip Calculator: a distance, a vehicle's fuel economy and a fuel price, multiplied out. Theirs picks the car from an EPA database and the route from a map; this one asks you for both, because the figure that decides the answer is the efficiency your car actually returns rather than the one the fleet average returns, and because the pump price that matters is the one at the station you will stop at. Everything on this page divides numbers you supply. Nothing is a national average.
The per-mile division itself — $/gallon ÷ MPG, or $/kWh ÷ mi/kWh — is the same primitive every tool on this site is built from, so a trip, a commute and a year of driving all price a mile identically here.
Fuel is not what the trip cost
The pump receipt is the part you notice, and it is a minority of the real number. A mile of driving also spends tire tread, engine and brake life, a slice of a year's insurance and registration, and — the largest cost of owning a car, and the most invisible — depreciation. The second panel prices the same drive at the IRS standard mileage rate, currently 76¢ a mile for July 1 – December 31, 2026, which is set from an annual IRS study of exactly those fixed and variable costs. It is a national average and is labelled as one — it is the only citable all-in per-mile figure published for US drivers, and the field holding it is editable so you can substitute your own from the True Cost per Mile Calculator.
Tolls, parking and ferries sit outside the per-mile figure on both sides of that comparison, which is why they get their own input and their own line. That is not a simplification: IRS Publication 463 treats parking fees and tolls as claimed in addition to the standard mileage rate rather than as costs the rate already covers, so folding them in would double-count nothing and mis-state everything.
Splitting it
The split is plain division — the trip total over the number of people, driver included. The tool does not weight it by who sat where or who drove, because there is no defensible formula for that and inventing one would be arithmetic pretending to be fairness.
One point of law is worth stating because people worry about it: collecting money from passengers in an ordinary carpool does not create taxable income. Publication 463, in its section on car pools, says that payments received from passengers “are considered reimbursements of your expenses” and are not included in income — with the exception that operating a car pool for profit, as a business of transporting people for hire, is a different thing entirely. Splitting a tank of gas with three friends is not that.
Why your real bill will come in higher
Every source of error in this calculation points the same way, so the result is a floor rather than an estimate. The efficiency figure, if it came from a window sticker, is a laboratory number produced under standardized conditions, and EPA says of its own ratings that they “may not accurately predict the average MPG you will get”. A loaded car on a long highway drive is the least representative case there is. DOE puts a rooftop cargo box at 6% to 17% of highway fuel economy and 10% to 25% at Interstate speeds, every extra 100 pounds at about 1%, and each 5 mph above 50 at the equivalent of $0.29 more per gallon. Cold weather takes another 15% or so in city driving, and more from an electric car. Stack a roof box, four adults and their luggage, and 75 mph, and a 15% miss on the fuel line is unremarkable. The distance is optimistic too: a mapping app gives you the route, not the wrong turns, the detour or the circling for parking.
What this does not cover
The headline figure is energy and nothing else — this is a fuel cost, not a trip budget. It does not know about hotels, food, a rental car, an oil change the drive will bring forward, or the risk of a breakdown 400 miles from home. It assumes one car with one efficiency for the whole distance, which is wrong if you swap drivers into a second car, tow something for part of it, or drive a plug-in hybrid that covers the first 40 miles on electricity and the rest on gasoline. The all-in comparison uses a national average that is not your car: a paid-off 12-year-old sedan costs far less per mile than the IRS figure, and a new truck costs considerably more. And this is not tax advice — whether any trip is deductible, and at what rate, depends on facts this page never sees.
Last reviewed: August 2026
Frequently asked questions
How much should I actually ask my passengers for?
That is a question about manners as much as arithmetic, but the arithmetic sets the two honest bounds. The lower bound is the fuel: split the pump receipt and the tolls, and nobody has lost anything they can see. The upper bound is the all-in figure, currently 76¢ a mile — that is what the drive actually cost the car, including the tires it wore, the depreciation those miles carried and the share of a year's insurance and servicing they used up. Most people split the fuel, because that is the number everyone recognizes, and the driver quietly absorbs the rest. That is a fine choice as long as it is a choice. It is worth knowing what you are absorbing: on a 600-mile round trip in a 27-MPG car at $3.19 a gallon, the fuel is about $71 and the all-in cost is $456. If you are being reimbursed by an employer or a client rather than by friends, the mileage rate is the figure to use, not the receipt. One thing you do not need to worry about: money you collect from passengers in an ordinary carpool is not income. IRS Publication 463 says payments from passengers "are considered reimbursements of your expenses" — unless you have turned the arrangement into a profit-making business of carrying people for hire, which splitting a tank of gas is not.
Why did my real fuel bill come in higher than this?
Almost always because the trip was harder on the car than the rating assumed, and occasionally because the trip was longer than the map said. The efficiency figure you entered — if it came off a window sticker — is a laboratory number, and EPA states plainly that its ratings "may not accurately predict the average MPG you will get." A loaded road-trip car is exactly the case where they do not. DOE puts a rooftop cargo box at 6% to 17% of your fuel economy on the highway and 10% to 25% at Interstate speeds, and every extra 100 pounds in the car at about 1%. Speed compounds it: mileage falls rapidly above 50 mph, and each 5 mph over 50 is the equivalent of paying about $0.29 more a gallon. Then there is the distance itself — the number a mapping app gives you is the route, not the driving, and it does not include the wrong turn, the detour to the diner or the half hour of looking for parking. Treat the result here as the floor.
Is a long trip cheaper in an EV?
Sometimes, and by much less than the same car saves at home — which surprises people who have only ever charged in a driveway. Two things change on a road trip. You are paying DC fast-charging prices rather than your home rate, and those commonly run two to four times higher; and you are driving at sustained highway speed, which is the worst case for an electric car's efficiency in a way it is not for a gas car's. Enter the price you will actually pay on the road, not the rate on your utility bill, and the tool will tell you the truth about that particular trip. The result can go either way. For the everyday version of the question — the same miles at home rates, over a year — the EV vs. Gas Cost Calculator is the better page, because that is where the gap is real and large.
Can I deduct this trip, or claim the mileage rate for it?
That depends on facts this page never sees, and it is a question for a tax professional rather than a calculator. Two things are worth knowing before you ask. Commuting between home and your regular workplace is never deductible — IRS Publication 463 is blunt about it: "You can't deduct commuting expenses." And if a trip does qualify and you use the standard mileage rate, tolls and parking are claimed in addition to the rate rather than being covered by it, which is why this tool keeps them in their own line instead of folding them into the per-mile figure. The rate itself is 76¢ for July 1 – December 31, 2026; it is used on this page as a benchmark for what a mile of driving costs, not as a claim that your trip qualifies for anything.
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