True cost of owning your car
Quirkpickindx is a dashboard for the numbers most drivers never add up: fuel, insurance, servicing, road tax, finance interest and the silent one, depreciation. Enter your own figures and the cluster converts them into an annual cost, a monthly equivalent and a cost per kilometre.
Calculator ready
Fuel per year£1,170
Cost per km£0.48
Guides index
Each guide unpacks one line of the calculator: how the number is built, what moves it, and where drivers commonly underestimate it. Every page includes its own focused mini calculator.
Turn consumption and pump prices into an annual figure, convert mpg to litres per 100 km, and compare petrol, diesel, hybrid and electric running costs.
Open the fuel guideWhat sets your premium, how the three levels of cover compare, the real cost of paying monthly, and how UK Vehicle Excise Duty is structured.
Open the insurance guideInterim, full and major services, wear items worth a sinking fund, the MOT, and how dealers, independents and mobile mechanics compare.
Open the maintenance guideThe payment formula explained, HP versus PCP versus loans and leasing, and the terms to check before signing any agreement.
Open the finance guideModel how value falls year by year, work out a realistic rate for your own car from listings, and learn which habits slow the drop.
Open the depreciation guideMethod
A car's cost falls into three families. Keeping them separate is what stops the total from being either flattering or double counted.
Fuel scales directly with distance. Servicing scales partly with distance, through the number of service intervals you pass each year, plus a fixed budget for tyres, repairs and the MOT.
Insurance and road tax arrive whether the car moves or not. Low-mileage drivers feel these most, because they are spread across fewer kilometres.
Depreciation is the value your car loses while you own it. Finance adds interest on top. We count interest rather than repayments, so the purchase price is never counted twice.
It is a transparent arithmetic tool: every output comes from the inputs you can see. It is not a quote, a valuation or financial advice, and it holds no data about specific makes or models. For decisions involving credit, read your lender's documents and consider independent guidance such as MoneyHelper.