What does your car cost you per kilometre?
You know what a tank costs. Almost nobody knows what a kilometre costs, and that is the number that makes a commute, a car choice or a side job comparable to anything else.
Straight off the receipt. It does not need to be a full tank.
The regulated pump price. Every station in the zone charges this.
Petrol 95 unleaded, inland, from 7 October 2026. The next adjustment is due 4 November 2026. Edit it if your receipt says something different.
Reset your trip meter when you fill up and this gets accurate fast.
Optional, and worth it
Turns the cost per kilometre into a real monthly figure.
The figure in the brochure. Compare it to what you actually get.
The price per litre is already filled in. Add what you spent and how far you drove on it, and you will know what your car costs you per kilometre. Almost nobody knows theirs.
Nothing is sent anywhere. This runs in your browser.
Arithmetic on the figures you enter, in your browser. The price per litre is the official one for that grade and area from 7 October 2026, and you can type over it. South Africa adjusts the price on the first Wednesday of each month, so we recheck it then. Our other tools.
What actually moves your consumption
In rough order of how much difference they make, and most of them cost nothing to fix.
Tyre pressure
The cheapest and most ignored. Under-inflated tyres make the engine work harder on every single kilometre, and they wear out faster at the same time.
Short trips
A cold engine uses considerably more fuel until it warms up. A week of five minute trips can consume more than a long drive covering twice the distance.
Traffic and idling
Idling is zero kilometres per litre. A commute that doubles in time without doubling in distance will show up here immediately.
What you are carrying
A permanently loaded boot and a roof rack you never take off both cost fuel every day for something you use twice a year.
How you drive
Hard acceleration and late braking are the difference between a good figure and a bad one on the same car and the same route.
Service condition
A clogged air filter, old plugs or dragging brakes all show up as consumption before they show up as anything else.
Fuel is one line in what a car costs you. The finance and the insurance are usually larger. What the finance really costs and whether your premium is too high.
Questions people ask
- How do I work out my car's fuel consumption?
- Fill up, reset your trip meter, drive normally, then fill up again and note what you spent, the price per litre and the kilometres on the trip meter. Litres divided by kilometres, times 100, gives you litres per 100 km. Do it over two or three fills before trusting it, because one long trip or a week of traffic will skew a single tank.
- Why is my fuel consumption worse than the brochure says?
- Manufacturer figures come from a standardised test, not from traffic, hills, air conditioning, a loaded boot or short trips where the engine never warms up. A gap of ten to twenty percent is ordinary. Much more than that is worth checking your tyre pressures, your service history, and how much time you spend idling.
- When does the fuel price change in South Africa?
- Monthly. The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources announces an adjustment that takes effect on the first Wednesday of each month, based on international fuel prices and the rand over the preceding period. That lag is why local prices move about a month behind the oil price.
- Why is petrol the same price everywhere but diesel is not?
- Petrol is a regulated retail price. Every station in your pricing zone charges the same for 95 or 93, which is why we can fill it in for you. With diesel, only the wholesale price is regulated and each forecourt adds its own margin on top, so the pump price is higher than the official figure and differs between stations. For diesel, your receipt beats our number.
- Why do inland and coastal prices differ?
- Fuel arrives at the ports and refineries on the coast and has to be moved inland, and that transport cost is built into the regulated price. There are two zones rather than nine provincial prices: coastal covers the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape, and inland covers the rest. Gauteng pays the most.
- What is a good cost per kilometre?
- There is no published benchmark worth quoting, because it depends entirely on your car, your driving and the fuel price that month. The number is useful as your own baseline: work it out now, then again after a service, a tyre change or a move to a different commute, and you will see what actually moved it.
Prices in the calculator took effect on 7 October 2026 and we checked them on 14 October 2026. The next adjustment is due 4 November 2026. The department publishes them as attachments rather than readable prices, so ours were cross-checked across three publications before use. Source: Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, fuel price adjustments.