Work out what your drive to work costs per day, month and year in fuel, parking and tolls, plus the CO₂ and hours, and compare it with a transit pass.
A tank of fuel never feels like much on the day you buy it. Spread across 240 working days it can be one of the biggest lines in a budget, and most people have never added it up. Put in how far you drive, what your car uses and what fuel costs, and the calculator gives the bill per day, per month and per year.
Parking and tolls are added on top, because they often cost more than the fuel. The same figures then show the fuel burned, the CO₂ it releases and the hours spent behind the wheel. Type the price of a monthly transit pass and the page tells you which option is cheaper, and by how much.
The page opens on a commute of 18 km each way, five days a week for 48 weeks, in a car using 7.5 L/100 km at€1.85 a litre, with €6 a day for parking. That is 8,640 km and 648 litres a year: €1,198.80 of fuel plus €1,440.00 of parking, so €2,638.80 a year, about €219.90 a month. The parking costs more than the fuel. A €49 monthly pass comes to €588 a year, so switching would save €2,050.80 in running costs.
Load Sample also steps through a US drive measured in miles and mpg with a toll road, a motorbike commute in Dhaka priced in taka, and a three-day hybrid week in the UK on diesel.
Fill in Minutes each way and the time is added up too: 35 minutes each way over 240 days is 280 hours, or 35 eight-hour working days a year spent commuting.
This counts what each trip spends: fuel, parking and tolls. Insurance, servicing, tyres and the car losing value are not included, and for most cars they add as much again, so treat the result as the minimum the commute costs. The CO₂ figure is tailpipe only and leaves out the energy used to produce and transport the fuel.
Inputs are checked before anything is worked out. A typo in the schedule stops with “Days per week must be a whole number from 1 to 7.”, and one-way trips above 1,000 km are refused. Switching between km and miles relabels the fields but does not convert numbers you already typed, so pick the units first. Electric cars are not covered yet: the fuel maths assumes petrol or diesel.
Units
Fuel
Per day
€11.00
Per month
€219.90
Per year
€2,638.80
240 commuting days
Where the money goes (a year)
€0.31 per km driven, before insurance, servicing and depreciation.
The rest of the bill
A transit pass costs €588.00 a year. Switching would save €2,050.80 a year in running costs alone.