Free tool
Cost per kilometre calculator
A monthly figure hides how much you actually ride. Cost per kilometre does not: it falls when you use the vehicle and rises when it sits. Enter your totals below. The arithmetic happens in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
Calculate your cost per kilometre
Enter the ownership costs you want to include and the distance you travelled over the same period.
Fuel per km = L/100 km / 100 x price per litre. Every other category per km = yearly amount / kilometres per year. Total = sum of all lines.
The result is only as complete as the costs you include. Consider fuel, servicing, tyres, insurance, tax, finance, accessories, and depreciation where relevant.
Your values stay in this page. They are not saved or sent to Rydger.
What belongs in the total
A per-kilometre figure is only as honest as what you feed it. Most people count fuel and forget everything else.
- Fuel or charging
- Scheduled servicing — oil, filters, brake pads
- Tyres, the line riders underestimate most
- Insurance and road tax
- Roadworthiness testing (ITV, MOT, TÜV)
- Depreciation: what the vehicle lost in value over the period
- Financing interest, if you are paying any
- Parking, garage or winter storage
How to work out cost per km
Add up everything the vehicle cost you over a period and divide it by the kilometres you rode in that same period. For the kilometres, note the odometer at the start and at the end. For depreciation, take what it is worth today from what it was worth when you started. A full year works best: it catches the insurance, the test and the tyres, which do not come every month.
A worked example
One commuter bike over a year: €780 of fuel, €340 across two services, €260 for a rear tyre, €410 of insurance, €95 for the roadworthiness test and €900 of depreciation. That totals €2,785. Spread over 9,400 km it comes to €0.296 per kilometre, three and a half times the €0.083 that fuel alone would have suggested.
Why per kilometre beats per month
A monthly figure tells you what leaves your account. A per-kilometre figure tells you what the vehicle costs to use, and that is the number behind the questions you actually have: whether the second bike earns its keep, whether commuting by car is really cheaper, whether it is time to sell. It also falls as you ride more, which a monthly figure never does.
Motorcycle or car: the same sum
The formula is the same for both; what changes is which costs weigh most. On a bike it is tyres and the chain and sprockets, broken down in what a motorcycle costs per km. On a car depreciation and insurance count for more, as car cost per km shows. If servicing is your biggest cost, the motorcycle maintenance schedule tells you what is due and when.
Stop recalculating this by hand
Rydger keeps the ledger for you: log a fill-up or a service once and your cost per kilometre updates itself. Free, no account.
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