Commute Cost Calculator
Enter your commute details — the cost updates as you type, and the link in your address bar always reflects your numbers.
How this calculator works
Your daily fuel cost is the round-trip distance (your one-way distance doubled, since a commute goes there and back) divided by your car's mpg, times the price of gas. Multiply that by how many days a week you drive in, and you get your weekly fuel cost. Monthly cost multiplies the weekly figure by 4.33 — the standard average number of weeks per month (52 weeks ÷ 12 months) — and adds any other monthly costs like parking or tolls. Yearly cost is simply the monthly figure times 12.
Worked example
A 15-mile one-way commute in a car that gets 28 mpg, with gas at $3.50/gallon, costs (15 × 2 ÷ 28) × $3.50 = $3.75 per day. Over a 5-day work week, that's $18.75 per week. Multiplying by 4.33 gives $81.19 per month in fuel (with no other costs added), and over a year that comes to $974.25 — a number most drivers never see added up in one place.
Frequently asked questions
Why 4.33 weeks per month instead of 4?
A year has 52 weeks, not 48, so dividing 52 by 12 months gives 4.33 weeks per month on average. Assuming exactly 4 weeks quietly drops about three commuting weeks a year from the math and understates your real cost — 4.33 is the standard averaging convention and it's noticeably more accurate.
Does this include car maintenance or extra depreciation from the mileage?
No — this tool is fuel-and-fixed-extras only (gas plus anything you enter as other monthly costs). The extra wear on tires, brakes, and oil changes from commuting miles is a real cost, but it's much harder to estimate simply and varies a lot by vehicle, so we left it out rather than guess.
How much could I save by carpooling or working from home some days?
That depends entirely on your numbers, so rather than quote a generic figure, try it yourself: lower the "work days per week" field to match how many days you'd actually be driving (for example, 3 instead of 5 for two remote days) and watch the monthly and yearly totals update instantly.
Should I include tolls in this calculator?
Yes — add them to the "other monthly costs" field along with parking. It's easy to forget tolls because they don't feel like part of the "gas cost" of commuting, but they're a real recurring expense and leaving them out will understate what your commute actually costs you.