Car Loan & Ownership Costs
Calculate a fixed-rate car loan and ownership costs from depreciation, fuel, insurance and maintenance.
About this tool
Use one currency for the vehicle price, down payment and every running cost. Financing uses a fixed nominal annual interest rate divided by 12, with payments at month end and no balloon payment or fees. This is not an APR calculation including mandatory fees.
The financing summary covers the full loan term; debt at ownership end appears only if a balance remains. With no amount financed, unused rate and loan-term fields disappear. Ownership cost uses only the interest accrued before the earlier of loan payoff and ownership end, not all future interest.
Ownership cost = depreciation + fuel + insurance + maintenance + interest during ownership. The purchase price and principal repayments are not added again, because capital consumption is already represented by depreciation. Average monthly ownership cost is an economic average, not a monthly cash-payment forecast.
Resale value = price × (1 − annual depreciation / 100)^(ownership months / 12). Insurance and distance-related costs scale with the ownership period. At 100% annual depreciation, this model gives zero resale for any positive duration. Cost per distance is not defined when no distance is driven. The full breakdown includes resale, annual cost and cost per mile; values use the input currency.
Example: a cash purchase of 12000, held 12 months with 10% depreciation, 10000 km/year, 5 l/100km at 2 per litre, insurance 500/year and maintenance 0.05/km costs 3200: 1200 depreciation + 1000 fuel + 500 insurance + 500 maintenance.
Software limits: price, down payment and annual insurance up to 10¹²; distance up to 10⁹ km/year; consumption, fuel price and maintenance up to 10⁶; nominal rate and depreciation 0–100%; loan and ownership periods 1–1200 whole months. Decimal comma is accepted. Unrepresentable inputs/results produce errors; very small nonzero amounts use scientific notation. Ideal payments are not rounded to cents monthly. No taxes, registration, parking, fees, inflation or resale guarantee.
Context: CFPB: interest rate and APR.