Calculators → Commute cost
Commute cost calculator
What it costs you every year to arrive at work — in fuel, fares, parking, and in hours you are never paid for.
Your result
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Those travelling hours also drag down what you earn per hour given to the job — the true hourly wage calculator puts a rate on it.
How the cost is built up
Everything starts from your annual journey count: days travelled each week multiplied by weeks worked. That number matters more than people expect, because hybrid working has cut it sharply. Three days a week over 46 working weeks is 138 round trips, not the 230 a five-day pattern would give.
For driving, the round-trip distance multiplied by those trips gives annual mileage. Fuel used follows from your car's efficiency, with the units handled properly: UK mpg is converted at 4.546 litres to the gallon and priced per litre, US mpg is priced per US gallon as sold, and litres per 100 kilometres is used directly. Parking is charged per day travelled, and the optional running-cost figure is charged per mile.
For public transport, a daily fare is multiplied by trips, while a season ticket is taken as a flat annual sum — which is exactly the comparison worth making, since a season ticket bought for a five-day habit is poor value on three days a week.
The hours are the bigger number
Fuel is visible and time is not, which is why most people underestimate the second. An hour a day, five days a week, 46 weeks a year comes to 230 hours — close to six full working weeks handed over annually, unpaid, to the act of arriving.
That is why the time cost is shown separately rather than folded into the cash total. It is not money leaving your account, and adding the two together would be double counting in some sense. But valuing those hours at your own hourly rate puts the two on the same scale, and the time side is usually the larger of the two by a wide margin.
It also makes the trade-offs legible. A job £2,000 a year better paid but twenty minutes further each way costs you roughly 77 extra hours annually. Whether that is worth it is your call — but it should be a calculation, not a guess.
Frequently asked questions
How do I work out the fuel cost of my commute?
Take your round-trip distance, multiply by the days you travel and the weeks you work to get annual mileage. Divide that by your car's miles per gallon to get gallons used, convert to litres by multiplying by 4.546 for UK gallons, then multiply by the price per litre. This calculator does all of that, and handles litres per 100 kilometres as well.
Should I count my time as a commuting cost?
It is not money leaving your account, so it is shown separately here rather than being mixed into the cash total. But an hour a day of unpaid travel is roughly 230 hours a year, or nearly six working weeks, and valuing it at your hourly rate makes it comparable with the fuel bill. That comparison is usually what changes people's minds about a long commute.
Is a season ticket cheaper than paying daily?
Usually yes if you travel most days, and usually not if you work from home two or more days a week. Enter your season ticket price and then compare it against the daily-fare total this calculator produces for your actual travel pattern — hybrid working has made annual tickets a poor deal for a lot of people who still buy them out of habit.
Does this include wear, tyres and depreciation?
Only if you add them, via the optional running cost field. Fuel is typically well under half the true cost of driving once servicing, tyres, insurance and depreciation are counted. A figure of around 10 to 15 pence per mile on top of fuel is a common estimate for a mid-range car, and entering it will roughly double the driving total.