How we calculate

MilePrice works out what a car costs to fuel or charge, using public U.S. government data refreshed every week.

The formula

Gas car: miles ÷ mpg × price per gallon

Electric car: miles × kWh per 100 miles ÷ 100 × price per kWh

Every figure on the site is those two lines of arithmetic. Headline figures assume 1,000 miles a month; every calculator lets you change the miles, the version and the price.

Fuel economy

Ratings are the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's combined city and highway figures from fueleconomy.gov, for the 2026 model year where one exists and the newest earlier year otherwise. We cover 20 of the best-selling cars, trucks and EVs, with every version EPA rates. Where a page quotes a single figure, it uses the version in the middle of that car's range, so it neither flatters nor punishes the car.

For electric cars, EPA measures electricity from the wall outlet, so energy lost while charging is already included. Cars EPA rates on premium or diesel are priced at that fuel.

Gas prices

From the U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly retail survey, currently the week of September 21, 2026. EIA publishes nine states on their own. Every other state takes its region's weekly average, adjusted for how its fuel tax differs from the average of the states in that region, using EIA's table of state fuel taxes (July 2026 (revised)). Those states are marked as estimates wherever a price appears. Alaska and Hawaii use the plain West Coast average, which usually understates them.

Electricity prices

EIA's average residential electricity price for each state, averaged over the 12 months from August 2025 to July 2026, so a yearly figure is not skewed by one summer month. Charging on a time-of-use plan or at public fast chargers will cost a different amount; enter your own rate in the calculator.

Full charges and trips

The cost of a full charge is the electricity drawn from the wall to drive an electric car's whole EPA range: range × kWh per 100 miles, at the state's average home rate. Because EPA measures at the outlet, that includes charging losses, so it runs about 10–15% above the battery's own capacity. It is our estimate from EPA figures, not a number EPA publishes.

The trip calculator uses the same formula for a single drive: the distance, doubled for a round trip, divided by mpg (or times kWh per mile), at the price where you fill up, split between however many people share the car. For a car we don't cover, type its mpg.

What the figures leave out

Insurance, maintenance, depreciation, tolls, parking and local fuel taxes. Real-world economy also varies with speed, weather, load and tires. These are planning estimates, not quotes.

Sources

Found a figure that looks wrong? Email [email protected].