Vaping Cost Calculator
What vaping actually costs you — per day, month, year and decade — and what the same money would be worth invested.
What you pay per bar, before any multibuy deal.
Fractions are fine: 0.5 means two a day.
Cost per year
At today's prices, with nothing else changing
Per day
Per week
Per month
Over 5 years
Over 10 years
If you invested it instead
The same money paid in monthly. Both figures below are yours to change — the return is an assumption, not a forecast.
You'd have paid in
Growth
Worth after 10 years
Nominal returns, compounded monthly. No inflation, tax or fees, and no allowance for a year in which the market falls.
Compare with cigarettes
A price comparison and nothing more.
How it works
Everything starts from one number: what a day costs. The three modes exist because the three ways people buy nicotine reach that number differently — a disposable is one price divided by how long it lasts, pods take two divisions, and refillable has three separate streams of spending that run on their own clocks. From that daily figure the rest is multiplication, at today's prices, with no inflation assumed.
Daily cost, refillable (the mode with more than one stream)
daily = (bottle ÷ mL) × mL/day + coil ÷ coil days + hardware ÷ (months × 30.4)
- bottle ÷ mL
- Price per millilitre of e-liquid
- mL/day
- How much liquid you get through in a day
- coil ÷ coil days
- A coil’s price spread over its life
- hardware ÷ (months × 30.4)
- The device amortised over the months you keep it. 30.4 is the average month — using 30 would make the monthly and yearly totals disagree
A refillable setup, worked through
- $15 for a 60 mL bottle, and you use 4 mL a day
- $4 per coil, replaced every 8 days
- A $60 device you expect to keep for 24 months
- E-liquid: $15 ÷ 60 mL = $0.25/mL, × 4 mL = $1.00 a day
- Coils: $4 ÷ 8 days = $0.50 a day
- Hardware: $60 ÷ (24 × 30.4 days) = $0.08 a day
- Total: $1.00 + $0.50 + $0.08 = $1.58 a day
About $1.58 a day — $578 a year, of which $212 is coils and hardware, not liquid.
Good to know
- Puff ratings are lab figures. A device advertised at 5,000 puffs is measured on a machine under ideal conditions, and real ones frequently fall short — if yours does, lower the rating rather than trusting the box.
- Multibuy deals change the answer more than people expect. Enter what you actually pay per device across a typical month, not the single-unit shelf price.
- The yearly figure assumes today’s prices hold. Tobacco and vape duty changes in several countries have moved these prices sharply, and this page deliberately does not guess at future rates.
- A habit that varies week to week is still worth entering as an average — the point of the yearly and ten-year figures is the order of magnitude, not the cents.
Why the yearly number surprises people
Nicotine is bought in small amounts, often in cash, and usually alongside something else. Nothing about the transaction makes the total visible — there is no monthly bill, no statement line, and no renewal date. A few dollars several times a week is a purchase most people never add up, and the gap between the price of one device and the cost of a year of them is where the surprise lives.
That is the entire job of this page. It holds no prices of its own and makes no argument; it takes the numbers you already know and finishes the sum.
Cost is not risk
This is a money calculator. It can tell you that one habit costs more than another, and that is all it can tell you. Relative health risk is a separate question that public-health bodies continue to disagree about, and a spreadsheet is not the place to settle it. If you want advice about stopping, a clinician or a national quitline is the right place to go.
Related: savings calculator, compound interest calculator, budget calculator.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does vaping cost per year?
Entirely down to what you buy and how fast you get through it, which is why this page asks rather than tells. As an illustration of the arithmetic: an $8 disposable every two days is $4 a day, which is $1,460 a year. Halve the price or double the life and it halves. Nothing on this page is a market average — every figure comes from the numbers you enter.
Are disposables more expensive than refillable kit?
Usually, but not always, and the honest way to find out is to run both modes with your own numbers. Disposables bundle the battery, coil and liquid into one throwaway price. Refillable splits into e-liquid by the millilitre, coils on their own replacement cycle, and hardware you buy once — cheaper per millilitre, but only if you actually keep the device.
Why does the refillable mode ask about coils and hardware?
Because leaving them out is the single most common way people underestimate what they spend. Coils are a recurring cost on a completely different cycle from the liquid, and hardware is real money spread over its life. On a typical refillable setup the two together come to roughly a third of the annual bill, and the breakdown on this page shows you that share rather than burying it in one total.
Is vaping cheaper than smoking?
Often, on price alone, and the comparison panel will tell you for your own numbers — including when it comes out the other way, which a heavy refillable habit against a light smoker genuinely can. What that comparison is not is a safety comparison. Which of two habits costs less says nothing about which does less harm, and this calculator takes no position on that question.
How reliable is the "invested instead" figure?
Treat it as arithmetic on an assumption, not a forecast. It takes your spend, pays it in monthly, and compounds it at a rate you choose — so it is exactly as good as that rate. It uses nominal returns with no inflation, no tax, no fees and no allowance for a year when the market falls. Set the rate to 0% and it will show you the money with no growth at all, which is the one figure in that panel that carries no assumption.
Does this calculator store what I enter?
No. Every calculation happens in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account, no saving and no record of what you typed.