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EV Charging Cost Calculator

Charging an electric car at home is usually far cheaper than buying gasoline, but two things quietly erode the gap.

Last updated Free, no sign-upHow it works

Your inputs
Your vehicle and driving

The United States average is about 13,500 miles a year.

Location

Optional. Picks the published price for your state; otherwise the US average is used.

Why we ask

A ZIP code is matched to its state with published postal prefix ranges and used only to look up that state’s row in a federal price table. We never ask for a street address, nothing is stored, and your inputs appear only in this page’s URL.

Results update as you type. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored.

Cost to charge your electric vehicle: $910, ranging from $820 to $1,050.

Cost to charge your electric vehicle

medium confidence
$910Per year, home and public combined
$820 lowhigh $1,050

What makes up the typical figure

  • Home charging (85% of miles)$630
  • Public fast charging (15% of miles)$280
  • United States average
  • Assumptions 2026.07.1

Why medium: no state was resolved, so national averages were used; the modeled range spans about 25% of the typical value.

Key figures

Cost per mile
$0.08
Per month
$76($68 – $86)
Electricity used
4,019 kWh(3,617 kWh – 4,555 kWh)At the wall, including charging losses. Your car’s trip computer reports energy at the battery, which is lower.
Equivalent gasoline cost
$1,45712,000 miles at 28 MPG and $3.40/gallon.
Annual fuel saving
$550
Cost of a full 300-mile charge at home
$18.55

Cost breakdown

Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
ComponentLowTypicalHigh
Home charging (85% of miles)Energy3,438 kWh at $0.1834/kWh, including 11% charging losses.$570$630$710
Public fast charging (15% of miles)Energy581 kWh at roughly $0.48/kWh, 2.6x the residential rate.$250$280$310
Cost to charge your electric vehicle$820$910$1,050

The low and high columns above will not add up to the headline range. Each line has its own uncertainty, and every line landing at its worst case at the same time is unlikely, so the total combines them as partially independent rather than summing the extremes.

What moved your estimate

  • Versus gasoline — decreases the estimate

    Driving 12,000 miles in a 28 MPG car at $3.40/gallon would cost about $1,457, so you save roughly $550 a year on fuel.

How this number was produced
  1. Energy to the battery12,000 mi ÷ 100 × 30 kWh3,600 kWh
  2. Energy from the wallbattery kWh ÷ charging efficiency4,019 kWh
  3. Home portion3,438 kWh × $0.1834$631
  4. Public portion581 kWh × $0.48$277

Adjustments applied

  • Midsize sedan×1.00

    30 kWh per 100 miles, relative to a 30 kWh baseline.

  • Charging losses×1.12

    Level 2 — 240 V home charger. Energy drawn from the wall exceeds energy stored in the battery by about 12%.

  • Public charging share×1.24

    15% of miles at 2.6x the home rate.

  • Electricity rate×1.00

    United States residential average of $0.1834/kWh (EIA, June 2026).

Notes and sources3 notes, 2 sources

Worth knowing

  • Real-world efficiency varies a lot with temperature. Cold weather can raise consumption by 20% to 40%, because the battery needs warming and cabin heat comes from the same pack rather than from waste engine heat.
  • Public charging prices vary enormously by network, location, and membership plan, and some networks bill by the minute rather than the kilowatt-hour. The multiplier here is a broad average.
  • This is fuel cost only. Purchase price, insurance, maintenance, depreciation, and any home charger installation are not included.

Sources

  • U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A — Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector, by StateprimaryJune 2026retrieved 2026-09-11
  • Typical power draw compiled from U.S. Department of Energy appliance guidance, ENERGY STAR product criteria and certified product data, and manufacturer nameplate specificationssecondary2026retrieved 2026-07-31

Charging losses mean the wall delivers more energy than the battery stores, and public fast charging often costs two to three times the residential rate. This calculator accounts for both.

Methodology

How this calculator works

Battery energy versus wall energy

Vehicle efficiency ratings describe energy delivered to the battery. Getting it there costs more, because the onboard charger, the battery management system, and thermal conditioning all consume power. We gross the figure up by roughly 11% for Level 2 charging and 17% for Level 1.

Level 1 is less efficient than Level 2 for a slightly counterintuitive reason: the vehicle’s fixed overheads run for four or five times as long to deliver the same energy, so they consume proportionally more of it.

Home and public charging priced separately

Home energy is priced at the Energy Information Administration residential average for your state, or your own rate if you enter one. Public DC fast charging is priced as a multiple of that, defaulting to 2.6 times.

This split matters. Someone charging entirely at home in a cheap-electricity state pays a small fraction of gasoline cost. Someone relying on public fast charging in an expensive state may pay about the same as they would for fuel.

Location and data

Where the numbers come from

Location is optional, and we only ask for a ZIP code or a state — never a street address. A ZIP code is matched to its state using published postal prefix ranges, and that state is used to look up labor and price rows in the tables below. If you leave it blank, or your ZIP cannot be matched, the estimate falls back to a national average and says so on the result.

Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and the only place your inputs appear is in the page URL, so you can bookmark or share a result if you choose to.

  • primaryJune 2026v2026.06

    U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A — Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector, by State

    Residential sector average retail price. State averages blend all utilities and rate classes in the state; an individual household bill can differ substantially, especially in deregulated markets and for customers on time-of-use tariffs.

  • secondary2026v2026.07.1

    Typical power draw compiled from U.S. Department of Energy appliance guidance, ENERGY STAR product criteria and certified product data, and manufacturer nameplate specifications

    Running watts describe draw while actively operating, not standby. Appliances that cycle on a thermostat (refrigerators, freezers, window air conditioners) are modeled with a duty cycle rather than continuous operation, because nameplate watts times hours would overstate their use several-fold. Individual units vary widely by age, size, efficiency tier, and setting; treat these as class averages.

Full detail on every dataset is on the data sources page. Spotted something wrong? Report incorrect data.

Calibration

The judgements behind this estimate

These are the figures we chose rather than measured. For each one we record the range of values found across references, what we selected, and why — because an estimate you cannot interrogate is not much better than a guess. The 0 marked high risk are the ones most likely to be wrong and most consequential when they are.

  • Charging losses between wall and batterymedium confidence
    Observed range
    0.8 — 0.94 (typical 0.89)efficiency fraction
    Why this value
    Measured charging efficiency clusters around 85-90% for Level 2 AC charging and 90-94% for DC fast charging, which bypasses the onboard charger. Level 1 is lower, near 83%, because the vehicle's fixed overheads run four to five times longer to deliver the same energy. Values below 0.8 generally reflect cold-weather battery conditioning, which is disclosed separately rather than folded into this figure.
    Applies to
    Not regionally variable. Cold climates see worse real-world figures.
    Known limits
    No additional limitation recorded.
    Sources
    Recorded before the richer schema; see rationale for provenance
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed biennial
  • Public DC fast charging price premiummedium confidence
    Observed range
    1.4 — 4.5 (typical 2.6)multiple of residential rate
    Why this value
    Public network pricing ranges from near parity with residential rates on subsidised or membership plans to more than four times on ad-hoc pricing in expensive markets. Some networks bill per minute rather than per kWh, which makes the effective multiple depend on charging speed. We narrowed to 1.8-3.6 to represent typical ad-hoc and membership pricing, and expose the multiplier as a user-editable input because it varies more than almost anything else on the site.
    Applies to
    United States, highly variable by network and metro.
    Known limits
    Fast-moving. Public charging prices have changed materially year over year.
    Sources
    Recorded before the richer schema; see rationale for provenance
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed semiannual

Cost factors

What changes the price most

Where you charge
The largest single factor. Public fast charging typically costs two to three times the home rate.
Your electricity rate
Varies more than fourfold across states. Many utilities offer discounted overnight EV tariffs that are worth asking about.
Vehicle efficiency
An electric pickup uses nearly twice the energy per mile of an efficient sedan.
Temperature
Cold weather can add 20% to 40% to consumption, since cabin heat and battery conditioning both draw from the pack.
Charging losses
Roughly 11% on Level 2 and 17% on Level 1. Real but easy to overlook, and the reason wall energy exceeds trip-computer energy.
Driving style and speed
Not modeled. Sustained highway speeds hurt electric range more than they hurt gasoline economy.

Questions

Frequently asked

How much does it cost to charge an electric car at home?

At the national average rate of about 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, a midsize electric sedan costs roughly 6 cents a mile, so around $700 a year for 12,000 miles. In a cheap-electricity state it can be under $450; in Hawaii or California it can exceed $1,400.

Is charging an EV cheaper than buying gas?

Usually yes, and often by half or more when charging at home. The advantage narrows sharply if you rely on public fast charging or live somewhere with very expensive electricity. The comparison above uses your own numbers rather than a national average.

How much does it cost to fully charge an EV?

For a 300-mile charge in a typical midsize electric sedan, roughly $16 at the national average residential rate. The same charge at a public DC fast charger commonly costs $40 or more.

Is Level 2 charging cheaper than Level 1?

Slightly, yes — about 6% less energy for the same miles, because the vehicle’s overheads run for far less time. The bigger reason to install Level 2 is speed: 25 to 40 miles of range per hour against 3 to 5 for a standard outlet.

Why does my car report using less energy than my electricity bill suggests?

Because the trip computer measures energy leaving the battery, while your meter measures energy entering the charger. The difference is charging losses, typically 10% to 17%, and it is real electricity you are paying for. This calculator uses the meter figure.