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Car vs. No Car

What a car really costs per mile, bought new or up to eight years old, or leased, against going without. Every cost counts: depreciation, insurance, registration, fuel, maintenance and parking. Pick your state and a car, then add a second to compare.

The Toyota Corolla Hybrid in the US, averaged over a 15-year life at 12,000 miles a year

43¢ a mile

All in
$5,165 a year, $77K over its life
Rideshare
A new Toyota Corolla Hybrid, kept 15 years, beats hailing every trip once you drive more than 1,459 miles a year

Cheapest across all 314 models in the US

Cheapest choice
Toyota Corolla Hybrid, 43¢ a mile Car 1
Next best
No car
83¢ a mile on your rides, transit and rentals

Your car

Type or pick from 314 models, gas, hybrid or electric.

Hybrid small sedan, 47 mpg EPA combined, sold since 2020.

No yearly tax on the car's value in the US.

Type or pick from 314 models, gas, hybrid or electric.

Optional. Pick a second car and the page weighs one against the other.

What each car keeps of its new price, by age Dots are iSeeCars' published figures at 3, 5, 7 and 10 years; the line between them is fitted. The shaded band is the years you'd own a car bought new.
0%25%50%75%100%0246810121416Age in years
  • Toyota Corolla Hybrid (hybrid). Keeps 88% at 3 years, 69% at 5, 53% at 8.
Cost per mile, every way Bought at each age, or leased new if that's how you'd pay for the car. Outlined: the cheapest for that car. Filled: the cheapest of all. A dash: the model is too new to be that old, or the car is leased or bought.
Bought atNew1 yr2 yr3 yr4 yr5 yr6 yr7 yr8 yrLease
Toyota Corolla Hybrid Hybrid46¢46¢47¢49¢47¢45¢44¢44¢——
No car Rides, transit, rentals83¢

The cheapest of each, line by line

Per month, averaged over 15 yearsToyota Corolla Hybrid Hybrid, bought newNo car Rides, transit, rentals
Depreciation What the car loses in value, or what the lease charges for it$87—
Sales tax $8—
Registration Plus any EV surcharge$6—
Insurance $189—
Fuel or charging $95—
Maintenance and repairs Rising with age$44—
Rideshare —$625
Transit pass —$100
Rentals and car share —$108
Per month$430$833
Per mile43¢83¢
Over 15 years$77K$150K
Cash on day one$27K—
Monthly payment——
Worth at the end$9,476—
What a year costs, by how much you drive Every option at the same miles, over the car's whole life. Left of a marker, going without is cheaper; right of it, the car is.
$0$2,500$5,000$7,500$10K$13K0k5k10k15k20k25k30kMiles per yearYou: 12,000Beats rideshare: 1,459 mi/yrBeats no car: 1,966 mi/yr
Toyota Corolla HybridNo car: your mix of rides, transit and rentalsRideshare every trip

The car as a tax on your commute

Framed the way the job-offer tool frames a commute: what the Toyota Corolla Hybrid costs a year against the hours you work and the hours you spend getting there.

The car, per hour you work
$2.75

Toyota Corolla Hybrid costs $5,165 a year, spread over 1,880 working hours.

Weeks a year worked to pay for it
3.2

At $39.89 an hour after tax, 129 hours of your year go to the car before it moves.

Hours a year in the commute
141

3,384 miles of your driving is the commute. Counting those hours as work, your hourly rate after the car is $34.55, not $39.89.

About this tool

Who it's for
For anyone deciding whether to own a car, which one, and whether to buy new, used, lease or go without.
What you can enter
The car models you'd consider, how you'd pay (cash, loan or lease), years kept, miles a year, commute, fuel and electricity prices, insurance, registration and taxes, parking, and what rides, transit and rentals cost you.
What it runs on
iSeeCars resale values by model, AAA per-mile costs, EIA fuel and electricity prices, and each state's insurance, registration and sales tax. Sources and simplifications are under How this is calculated.
Who made it
Sam Wen, co-founder of Square. Free, no sign-up; it runs in your browser. Last updated .

Spot a mistake, or a rule that changed? Tell me.

Frequently asked questions

The dealer says I’m saving money by leasing.

You're saving payment, not money. A lease charges you the steepest part of the depreciation curve, the first three years, plus a rent charge the money factor hides (multiply it by 2,400 to see the APR), plus an acquisition fee going in and a disposition fee coming out, and then you hand the car back and start over at the top of the curve. Set the horizon to six years and look at the grid: the lease column sits next to buying the same car at every age, and two leases usually cost more than one purchase. At the end you own nothing.

Why is a three-year-old car the sweet spot?

Because the first owner ate the worst of it. A new car loses about a fifth of its value in year one and a third more by year three, but it still has most of its life, a few years of warranty, and the same maintenance bill as new for a while. The grid shows every age from new to eight years for the models you pick: cost per mile keeps falling as the car gets older, but past six or seven years maintenance climbs, used-car loans cost more, and you start spending Saturdays at the shop. Some models flip it; a truck or a Toyota that holds its value can make new cheaper than you'd think.

What’s the 20/4/10 rule?

Put 20% down, finance for no more than four years, and keep all car costs under 10% of your gross income. The average new-car loan now runs almost six years, which is how a $50,000 car turns into a $765 payment that outlasts the warranty and leaves you underwater for most of it. Try 48 months and 20% down in the loan fields: the payment hurts, the interest line doesn't.

Does an EV pay back its premium?

Sometimes, and it depends on three numbers you can edit above: your electricity price, how many miles you drive, and what the car is worth when you sell it. Charging at home costs about a third of gas per mile and maintenance is lower, but EVs have been depreciating faster than gas cars, several states charge an EV registration surcharge of $200 or more, and the federal credit ended in September 2025. The more you drive, the better the EV looks; park it most of the week and the premium never comes back.

How much does the second car cost?

About as much as the first, minus the miles. The second car mostly sits, so its depreciation, insurance and registration get spread over a few thousand miles a year, and the cost per mile is brutal. Set miles per year to 4,000 and compare its cost per mile with no car: that's the second car. Most households would come out ahead hailing a ride every single time the second car would have moved.

Isn’t hailing a ride every time I need to go somewhere insane?

Only above the break-even. Below it, it's just arithmetic, and the no-car option lets you mix rides with a transit pass and a few rental days for the weekends that need a trunk. The real question is whether you'd actually take the bus; if the honest answer is that every trip would be a $25 ride, raise the rideshare miles until the number stops flattering you.

Partly jokes. Not financial advice, and the extended warranty is still a no.

How this is calculated

The comparison

  • The headline is a lifetime. Each car is priced bought new (or leased, if that's how you'd pay) and kept for its whole life, 15 years by default, and every cost is spread over every mile it drives. Depreciation counts only as the new price less what the car is worth at the end, so which age you'd buy it at doesn't decide which car is cheap. The cheapest choice and next best rank every model this way, in cash with your state's costs. Values and maintenance past ten years are extended from the last years of data. The grid shows the other question, when to buy: the car bought at each age up to 8 and kept the years you set. No car covers the same miles: the share you set by rideshare, the rest by a transit pass, walking and the odd rental.
  • Depreciation is the model's own. iSeeCars publishes the share of its new price a model keeps at 3, 5, 7 and 10 years, from used-car sales. The curve runs through those points and fills in the years between in proportion to a typical car's decline (about 20% in year one, then 10–15% a year), so year one stays steep; past ten years it keeps losing value at its seven-to-ten-year rate. A used car's price is its new price down the same curve. Driving more than 15,000 miles a year costs another 8¢ a mile in lost value on an average new car, per AAA, and fewer miles saves it; the adjustment scales with the car's price, so it's smaller on a cheap used one. A “typical” car is the median of every model with that powertrain (227 gas, 34 hybrid, 53 electric).
  • Each car is bought in cash unless you add a loan to it. A loan charges interest on the balance every month at the rate you give it, whatever the car's age; whatever is still owed at the end is paid off from the sale. A lease charges (price − residual) ÷ term plus the rent charge, (price + residual) × money factor, with sales tax on each payment, a new lease every term for the whole horizon, and the acquisition, disposition and mileage penalties that implies.
  • Yearly car tax is any tax on the car's value, apart from registration. A property tax on what it would sell for, where a state or its towns levy one (Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and eight others). California's vehicle license fee, 0.65% of what you paid, counted at 100% down to 15% over eleven years and starting over when the car is sold, plus its transportation improvement fee by value. Washington's Sound Transit tax, 1.1% of the original MSRP counted at 100% down to 10% by the car's age, only if you live in the district. Montana's registration falls from $217 to $87 at five years and $28 at eleven. A lease pays the taxes on a new car, starting over each lease.
  • Maintenance and repairs follow each model's own costs by age from CarEdge, years one to ten (157 of 314 models); past ten they keep growing at the last year's rate. A model CarEdge doesn't cover takes CarEdge's typical age curve, scaled to the median first year of models in its class and powertrain. A car bought used starts partway along the curve, so an eight-year-old car costs its eighth-year maintenance from day one.
  • An EV's battery costs nothing while it's under the usual 8-year, 100,000-mile warranty (miles before you owned it are taken at your pace). After that, it's a 1% chance a year of buying a new pack, priced at 30% of the car's new price: Recurrent's study of about 15,000 EVs found roughly 8.5% of pre-2016 packs replaced over 8 to 12 years, and newer packs far fewer. It's an expected cost; any one owner pays nothing or the whole pack.
  • Rideshare, under the headline, is the miles a year above which the car, kept its whole life, costs less than hailing every one of them at your rideshare rate. The chart also marks where it beats your no-car mix of rides, transit and rentals, which costs something even at zero miles. Both are found by bisection. The commute view counts hours the way the offers tool does: 260 weekdays less days off, a round trip on office days.

Defaults and simplifications

  • Picking a state fills in gasoline (EIA, week of 2026-09-28; states without their own series use their region), residential electricity (EIA, July 2026), vehicle sales tax with the average local rate where it applies, a typical registration fee, any yearly tax on the car's value, the EV surcharge, statewide EV rebates for a typical buyer, and the average full-coverage premium. Nationally: $4.46 a gallon, 18¢ per kWh, and $2,495 a year of insurance.
  • Fuel economy is the EPA's combined figure, the median across a model's versions from recent model years; plug-in hybrids are priced on gasoline alone, which flatters them less than charging would. The insurance premium's adjustment comes from AAA's 2025 study for the model's class, with hybrids and EVs adjusted by AAA's side-by-side comparison. Each car's insurance is the state's average premium scaled by that adjustment, and its registration adds the state's EV surcharge for an electric car; type your quote over either. New prices are iSeeCars' averages for each model. A loan starts at Experian's Q2 2026 average new-car rate.
  • iSeeCars' new price is what the cars it measured cost new, so it trails this year's sticker; type the price you're quoted. Its figures also carry the used-car price spike after 2020, which is why some models keep 90% of their value at three years, so a new one can come close to a one-year-old. Models too new to be a given age aren't offered at it.
  • The federal EV credit ended on September 30, 2025, so only state rebates are counted, and many of those are funded in windows. Income-qualified programs are left out.
  • Prices don't inflate over the horizon, the car is sold privately with no selling costs, insurance doesn't fall as the car ages, trims within a model share one curve, and the lease's residual is the same share of MSRP for every car rather than each lessor's figure. Parking defaults to free; in a city it isn't.
  • This is a planning estimate, not financial advice.

Sources

Price data compiled 2026-10-03; model data 2026-10-03.