Fuel Cost Calculator: How Much Gas Will My Road Trip Cost?

What This Trip Fuel Cost Calculator Does

This trip fuel cost calculator (people also call it a gas cost calculator, or a petrol calculator in the UK) answers one simple question: how much will the fuel for my trip cost? You choose where you start and where you go. The tool finds the fastest road route and measures it, then uses the fuel consumption of your car and today’s price to work out the fuel used and the cost. It works the same way for an electric car, with kWh and the price of electricity. You can split the cost between passengers, double it for a round trip and see the CO2 of the journey.

How Much Will My Trip Cost in Gas or Petrol?

It depends on three numbers: the road distance, how much fuel your car uses and the price of fuel. As an example, London to Manchester is 199 mi by road. A medium petrol car at 40.4 mpg uses about 22.5 L of petrol, which costs about £31.46 at £1.40 a litre. New York to Boston, about 214 mi, costs about $21.66 in gas at $3.41 a gallon, and Sydney to Melbourne about A$118.06. Type your own figures in the tool to calculate gas for your own trip.

Free, Private and Without Sign-Up

There is no account and no payment. The sums are done in your own browser. Only the places you search are sent, to find them on the map, and the start and destination, to find the road route. A share link holds the places, the vehicle and the prices, nothing else.

Choosing the Start and the Destination

Type a town, an address, a postcode or coordinates such as 51.5074, -0.1278 in From and To, press Find, or click the map: the first click sets the start and the second the destination. Me uses your current position as the start. Drag a marker to move it, use Swap to turn the trip round, and Clear to start again.

Vehicle, Gas Mileage and Fuel Price

Choose the units at the top: L/100 km for km and litres per 100 km, km/L for km and km per litre (the mileage figure used in India and many other countries), UK mpg for miles and imperial mpg with the price per litre, or US mpg for miles, US gas mileage and the price per gallon. This makes it a gas mileage calculator and a fuel cost calculator in one. Then choose Petrol, Diesel or Electric and the size of the vehicle. Each size fills in a typical real-world consumption; type your own figure to replace it. The currency box has 23 currencies, from the pound, euro and dollar to the Indian rupee, Pakistani rupee and UAE dirham. The price starts at an example for the currency you choose, so type the price at your pump or your electricity tariff.

Reading the Results

The green box gives the trip cost and, if more than one person shares it, the cost for each. The cards show the distance, the driving time without breaks or traffic, the fuel or energy used, the trip cost with the cost per km or mile, the cost per person and the CO2. The table below them shows the same trip with nine vehicles at your prices. If no road route can be found, for example across the sea, the tool uses the straight-line distance times 1.3 and says that it is an estimate.

The PDF Report

Download PDF report makes a four-page report with the maplity.com letterhead: the trip and its total cost, six key figures and a sketch of the route; your vehicle and prices, the cost breakdown and a table of the cost if the price goes up or down by up to 20 percent; the same trip with nine vehicles, as a chart and a table; and the method and tips to save fuel. It is made in your browser and saved straight to your device.

1. The Road Distance and Driving Time

The route comes from OSRM, an open-source routing engine, on OpenStreetMap roads. It is the fastest route for a car, and its driving time assumes normal speeds without breaks, traffic or road works, so plan extra time for a long trip.

2. The Fuel or Energy Used

For example 466 km from Paris to Lyon at 7.0 L/100 km uses 32.6 L; at €1.75 a litre that is €57.07.

3. The Trip Cost and the Cost per Person

4. Converting mpg, Litres and Gallons

5. Electric Cars

For an electric car the tool uses kWh per 100 km (km per kWh in km/L units, miles per kWh in UK and US units) and the price of electricity per kWh. Home charging is usually much cheaper than motorway fast chargers, so type the price you will really pay. Charging losses of about 10 percent are already part of the typical figures used for the preset vehicles.

6. The CO2 of the Trip

Burning a litre of petrol releases about 2.31 kg of CO2 and a litre of diesel about 2.68 kg. For electricity the tool uses 0.25 kg per kWh, an average grid figure; where electricity comes mostly from wind, water or nuclear power it is much lower, and where it comes from coal it is higher. The figure covers driving only, not making the car or the fuel.

Typical Real-World Consumption

These are the figures the calculator fills in for each vehicle. Your own car may use more or less; the trip computer is the best guide.

How to Spend Less on Fuel

• Drive smoothly and look ahead: hard acceleration and braking can raise consumption by 10 to 20 percent.
• Keep to the speed limit. Above about 90 km/h (55 mph) consumption rises quickly.
• Check the tyre pressure before a long trip, and take off roof boxes and racks you do not need.
• Fill up before the motorway; service stations on motorways are often the most expensive.
• Share the car: with four people in the car, each pays a quarter of the fuel.

1. Planning a holiday road trip

Use it as a road trip gas calculator before you book: see what the drive will cost in fuel next to the price of the hotel, the train or a flight. Round trip shows the full cost there and back, and the PDF report is easy to keep with the other travel papers.

2. Sharing the cost with friends

Set the number of people in the car and the tool works out a fair share for each person. Send the result on WhatsApp so everyone sees the same figure before the trip.

3. Business trips and mileage claims

See the road distance and the fuel cost of a business trip, and keep the PDF report as a record. Check your company or tax rules for the rate you can claim; many use a fixed rate per mile or km.

4. Car, train or plane?

Compare the fuel cost of driving with the price of train or plane tickets for the same trip. For two or more people the car is often cheaper; for one person on a long trip, the train may win.

5. Choosing petrol, diesel or electric

Thinking about a new car? Enter a trip you make often and look at the comparison table: it shows the cost and CO2 of nine vehicles, from a small petrol car to a large electric car, at your prices.

6. Moving house or hiring a van

Choose a large vehicle for a van and see the fuel cost of the move, including the drive back with Round trip. Add the hire cost to get the full price of the move.

7. Commuting to work

Work out the cost of one trip to work and back, then multiply by the days you drive. It helps to compare driving with public transport, or to agree a fair share in a car pool.

8. Weddings, festivals and family events

Guests travelling to a wedding or a festival can check the fuel cost from their town and share a lift. Organisers can send the share link so everyone sees the route.

9. Students driving home

See what a trip home from university costs in fuel, and how much each passenger should pay if you give friends a lift.

10. Small businesses and deliveries

Estimate the journey fuel cost of a delivery or a visit to a customer before you give a price. The cost per km or mile on the results is a quick figure for quotes.

How to Read These Tables

The tables give the road distance, the driving time and the fuel cost of 100 popular trips between cities in the USA (25), the UK (20), Europe (25), Canada (15) and Australia (15), one way and there and back. They use a medium petrol car at 7.0 L/100 km (40.4 UK mpg, 33.6 US mpg) and example prices of £1.40 a litre in the UK, €1.75 in Europe, $3.41 a gallon in the USA, CA$1.60 a litre in Canada and A$1.95 in Australia. Prices change every week, so press View on map to open the trip in the gas estimator and type today’s price.

The longest trip in the tables, Chicago to New York City, is 790 mi and costs about $80.14 one way; Berlin to Munich is 585 km, about €71.69.

Gas Cost of 25 Road Trips in the USA

Petrol Cost of 20 Journeys in the UK

Fuel Cost of 25 Road Trips in Europe

Gas Cost of 15 Road Trips in Canada

Petrol Cost of 15 Road Trips in Australia

Road Routes: OSRM and OpenStreetMap

Road routes come from the OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine) demo server, on road data from OpenStreetMap, through Maplity’s own server. The 100 trips in the tables were routed once with the same service.

Place Search

Place search uses LocationIQ, OpenCage and Geoapify, with Photon and Nominatim as free fallbacks, all through Maplity’s own server, which spreads the searches between them and keeps answers for a day so a repeated search costs nothing.

Maps and the PDF Report

The street map is Maplity’s own vector basemap built from OpenStreetMap data, with CARTO and OpenStreetMap maps as fallbacks; the satellite map is Esri World Imagery. The map uses Leaflet 1.9, the PDF report is made in your browser with jsPDF, and the page runs on Next.js and React.

More Free Map Tools

• Distance Calculator on Map: measure the distance between several points.
• Halfway Point Calculator: a fair place to meet between two locations.
• EV Charging Stations Map: charging points near any place.
• Isochrone Map: how far you can drive in a given time.