Everyday & industry
Road Trip Cost Calculator
Estimate fuel use and a complete road-trip budget. Compare one-way and round-trip driving, split costs between travelers and see the effect of a different fuel price.
Use this calculator to estimate the cost of a road trip using your own distance, fuel economy, fuel price, lodging, food and other travel-cost assumptions.
This tool does not calculate driving distance or live fuel prices. Enter the distance and fuel price you want to use.
The dollar sign is generic: use one currency throughout. Fuel prices are per litre for L/100 km and per US gallon for MPG. Changing formats does not convert an entered price or currency. Blank optional costs count as zero.
Calculations run locally in your browser. Your inputs are not saved.
Enter your travel assumptions and choose a calculation mode.
Example: Weekend Road Trip
Example only: 500 km each way makes a 1,000 km round trip. At 8 L/100 km, fuel use is 80 litres. A $1.60-per-litre price gives $128 fuel cost. Two hotel nights at $150 per night cost $300. Three days × two travelers × $50 food per person per day costs $300. Add $20 tolls and $20 parking, with no activities, rental, operating allowance or other costs, for a $768 trip total. Split equally between two travelers, the estimate is $384 each.
About this calculator
What a road-trip budget includes
Road-trip costs often extend well beyond fuel. Lodging, food, tolls, parking and activities can materially affect the total budget.
- A round trip doubles the entered driving distance before fuel use is calculated.
- Travel days, hotel nights and entered trip totals are not automatically doubled when you choose round trip.
- Fuel economy and fuel-price inputs should use compatible units.
- This calculator provides a planning estimate and does not use live route, traffic or fuel-price data.
Units and optional vehicle costs
One mile equals 1.609344 kilometres. L/100 km uses litres; MPG uses US miles per US gallon, not Imperial gallons. Only distance is converted for the fuel calculation. Prices and currencies are not converted.
- Optional allowance for wear, maintenance or other vehicle operating costs. This is separate from fuel.
- The optional allowance uses total driving distance in the selected distance unit and your entered per-km or per-mile rate. No standard rate is prescribed.
- Rental vehicle cost is a user-entered trip total and is added once.
Traveler splits and fuel-price scenarios
Equal split divides the whole trip total by travelers. The shared-cost method divides all non-food costs equally and adds each traveler’s entered daily food allowance. Because everyone uses the same food assumption, both methods produce the same total per person but show the breakdown differently.
- Lodging is hotel nights multiplied by the entered nightly cost; it is not automatically multiplied by travelers.
- Rental vehicle costs and the optional operating allowance are shared non-food costs.
- Fuel-price comparison changes only fuel price. Distance, fuel volume and every other trip assumption stay unchanged.
Planning estimates only. This Tool does not calculate routes, retrieve fuel/hotel prices or traffic, convert currencies, book travel, recommend destinations or save trips. No login, database or external APIs are used.