2026 UK Cost Index
How Much Does It Really Cost to Own and Run a Motorhome in the UK?
What Motorhome Running Costs Really Include
The purchase price of a motorhome is only the start. The real cost of ownership includes fixed costs such as insurance, tax, servicing and storage, usage costs such as diesel and campsites, and the less visible cost of depreciation.
Most motorhome cost guides rely entirely on broad averages. We can go a step further. Since our first trip away in Rezzy in September 2021, we have logged every campsite bill, diesel purchase, insurance renewal and other regular expense. For this updated 2026 guide we have combined those real-world figures with current UK market evidence, official government rates and advertised prices from service providers, storage facilities and campsites.
Our Own Numbers: 42,500 Miles of Real Motorhome Costs
| Category | Our logged cost | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Campsites and pitches | £8,082.89 | 426 nights; £18.97 a night overall. UK nights averaged £22.80 and European nights about £16.43. |
| Diesel | £11,902.93 | Approximately 28p per mile across 42,500 miles. |
| Insurance | £2,727.14 | Five renewals, from £461.32 initially to £620.05 most recently. |
| Servicing, tyres and parts | £3,284.19 | Irregular expenditure spread across 54 months. |
| PHGV road tax | £831 | Typically £165–£171 a year during our ownership period. |
| AdBlue | £398.88 | A smaller but continuing diesel-vehicle cost. |
| Club memberships and subscriptions | Just over £1,000 | CAMC, CACC, Park4Night, a site-search app and security subscription across the period. |
Your own pattern may be very different. We tour frequently and take long European trips, so our mileage and nights away are comparatively high. The value of these figures is that they show what sustained real-world motorhome use has actually cost rather than what a theoretical owner might spend.
Motorhoming Adventures UK Motorhome Ownership Cost Index 2026
To give our personal figures some context, we reviewed current UK government rates, a large motorhome-insurance quote dataset, dealer asking-price data and advertised prices from habitation-service providers, storage facilities, breakdown providers and campsites. Where there is no credible national average, we use a clearly labelled scenario instead.
A representative owner doing 5,000 miles a year, using 40 paid campsite nights, paying for secure storage and allowing for routine servicing, tyres, gas, breakdown cover and a maintenance reserve comes to approximately £6,000 a year before depreciation or finance. That is a scenario, not a claimed national average.
Motorhome Insurance Costs
Our own insurance rose from £461.32 in 2021 to £620.05 at our most recent renewal. Premiums are shaped by vehicle value, postcode, storage, security, claims history, mileage and the cover selected.
For comparison, Quotezone's 2026 motorhome dataset covers 46,963 quotes from August 2025 onwards. It reports an overall mean premium of £598, but median figures of £395 for Class B van conversions, £396 for Class C coachbuilts and £440 for A-Class motorhomes. We therefore use £400 a year as a rounded mainstream benchmark rather than treating the higher overall mean as typical. See the Quotezone data
For more detail, see our 2026 motorhome insurance cost guide and our broader motorhome insurance guide.
Road Tax, Club Memberships and Subscriptions
Our own motorhome is taxed as PHGV and has cost us £831 in road tax across the logged period, generally around £165–£171 a year. That is our vehicle's tax position; it is not a universal motorhome rate.
Motorhome vehicle tax depends on registration date and tax class. A common 2026/27 engine-capacity rate for some established motorhomes over 1549cc is £375, while other classifications — including private heavy goods and some CO₂-based vehicles — differ. Always check the rate for the individual vehicle. Check current vehicle tax rates
Club memberships and app subscriptions are smaller individually but still worth logging. In our case, CAMC, CACC, Park4Night, a site-search app and a security subscription have totalled just over £1,000 across the whole period.
Fuel, AdBlue and Gas
Fuel has been our largest individual running-cost category: £11,902.93 across 42,500 miles, equivalent to about 28p per mile. We have also spent £398.88 on AdBlue.
For a current benchmark, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's weekly road-fuel data gives UK diesel at 183.49p per litre for the week commencing 31 August 2026. See official weekly fuel prices
| Annual mileage | Assumed MPG | Approx. diesel cost |
|---|---|---|
| 3,000 miles | 30mpg | £834 |
| 3,000 miles | 25mpg | £1,001 |
| 5,000 miles | 30mpg | £1,390 |
| 5,000 miles | 25mpg | £1,668 |
| 7,500 miles | 25mpg | £2,502 |
| 10,000 miles | 25mpg | £3,337 |
Gas is a smaller but regular cost for owners who cook and heat with it. We use Gaslow. If you want to reduce reliance on gas and mains hook-up, our guide to fitting a solar power system covers solar and inverter setups.
Campsites, Aires and Overnight Stops
Our 426 nights away have cost £8,082.89, an overall average of £18.97 per night. UK nights averaged £22.80 and European nights around £16.43, helped by our use of aires and lower-cost stopovers.
That personal figure is lower than the current commercial-site benchmark because it reflects the way we actually tour. Across a wider sample of published 2026 campsite tariffs, ordinary electric pitches commonly sit around £30–£45 a night. For our representative UK ownership scenario we use £35 per night.
| Paid nights | At £35 per night | At £45 per night |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | £700 | £900 |
| 40 | £1,400 | £1,800 |
| 60 | £2,100 | £2,700 |
| 80 | £2,800 | £3,600 |
Mixing full-service campsites with aires, stopovers and suitable off-grid nights is one of the biggest ways to alter annual touring expenditure. Our guide to staying off-grid in a motorhome or campervan covers the practical side.
Servicing, Habitation Checks, Tyres, Parts and MOT
We have spent £3,284.19 on servicing, tyres and parts over 54 months. That expenditure has not arrived evenly: some years are inexpensive and others include tyres, larger services or replacement parts.
Current advertised habitation-check prices from independent UK providers cluster broadly around £190–£275, making about £225–£250 a useful working range. Mechanical servicing is harder to standardise because providers include different parts and levels of work. The government maximum MOT fee for a Class 4 motor caravan is £54.85. Check current MOT fees
Motorhome Storage Costs
Storage is one of the most owner-specific costs. If you can safely keep the motorhome at home, the direct storage bill may be £0. If you need secure commercial storage, our wider 2026 sample found outdoor annual prices of roughly £400–£850, with a central benchmark close to £620 a year.
Storage can also influence insurance, so price is not the only consideration. Our dedicated motorhome storage costs guide covers the options in more detail. CaSSOA's current guidance also shows how location and security level affect storage pricing. See the CaSSOA 2026 storage guide
Breakdown Cover, Tyres and Other Smaller Costs
Specialist motorhome breakdown cover adds another recurring cost. RAC's current Arrival cover starts from around £15 a month, which gives us a £180 annual benchmark for a representative scenario. See RAC motorhome breakdown cover
Tyres are better treated as an annualised cost than as a fixed yearly bill. A set of four suitable premium motorhome tyres can approach £800, for example, but if replaced every five years that is equivalent to roughly £160 a year before allowing for changes in price or replacement interval.
What Does a Motorhome Cost Per Year and Per Month?
Bringing the current benchmark figures together gives a useful scenario for a mainstream owner: 5,000 miles a year at 25mpg, 40 campsite nights at £35, paid secure storage, routine servicing, MOT, insurance, breakdown cover, gas, annualised tyres and a £500 repair reserve.
This is deliberately a model, not an average. An owner storing at home and using more low-cost stopovers could spend much less, while a high-mileage owner using premium campsites and dealer servicing could spend substantially more.
At 5,000 miles a year, £5,996 of running and touring expenditure works out at approximately £1.20 per mile. Our own long-term figure is lower at about 68p per mile, partly because our fixed costs are spread across a much higher mileage and because our average overnight cost has been substantially below the current £35 campsite scenario.
The Hidden Cost: Motorhome Depreciation
Depreciation is potentially one of the largest ownership costs, particularly on a newer or high-value motorhome, yet it does not appear on a bank statement each month. It is also one of the hardest national figures to measure properly because comparing today's new and used asking prices does not produce a like-for-like depreciation rate.
A September 2026 dealer-marketplace snapshot covering 885 UK listings reported a median used asking price of £61,995 and a median new asking price of £79,285. These are asking prices, not completed transactions, and should not be used to infer a universal annual depreciation percentage. See the market index
Instead, the table below shows how depreciation changes the true annual cost of a £60,000 motorhome when added to the £5,996 representative running-and-touring scenario:
| Illustrative annual depreciation | Value lost | True annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | £0 | £5,996 |
| 5% | £3,000 | £8,996 |
| 8% | £4,800 | £10,796 |
| 10% | £6,000 | £11,996 |
| 15% | £9,000 | £14,996 |
These percentages are illustrative scenarios, not UK depreciation averages. The most useful personal calculation is based on what you actually paid and the vehicle's current realistic market value.
Are Campervans Cheaper to Run Than Motorhomes?
They can be. Smaller campervans may use less fuel and can sometimes be easier to store at home, removing one significant annual expense. But expensive modern campervans can have purchase prices comparable with coachbuilt motorhomes, so depreciation and finance can still dominate the true cost.
If you are comparing different types of leisure vehicle, the useful comparison is the actual vehicle value, mileage, fuel consumption, insurance, storage and touring pattern rather than the label on the vehicle. We also compare the broader ownership picture in motorhome vs caravan running costs.
How to Reduce Your Motorhome Running Costs
- Compare insurance at renewal rather than automatically accepting the renewal price.
- Track actual MPG and mileage so you know what driving is costing rather than relying on a generic figure.
- Mix full-service campsites with lower-cost aires and stopovers where suitable and permitted.
- Compare secure-storage prices, while considering whether the security level could also affect insurance.
- Keep on top of servicing and smaller repairs before they become larger failures.
- Annualise irregular costs such as tyres so they do not disappear from your budget until replacement year.
- When buying, consider depreciation and finance as well as the purchase price.
Coming Soon: AXLEATOR – Running Costs
AXLEATOR is our new running-cost calculator being developed specifically for motorhomes, campervans and caravans. Instead of looking at fuel in isolation, it is designed to bring together the expenses that determine what a leisure vehicle genuinely costs to own and run.
AXLEATOR will allow owners to record costs such as fuel, insurance, servicing, repairs, storage and other expenditure and use those figures to understand total spend and cost per mile over time.
The reason we are building it is visible throughout this article: two owners with apparently similar motorhomes can have very different real costs. The useful number is not a generic UK average; it is what your vehicle costs you.
Until AXLEATOR is available, our existing membership area includes tools for recording travel and running-cost information. See the Membership Area
How We Calculated the 2026 Motorhome Cost Index
Our own data: 54 months of logged Motorhoming Adventures expenditure since September 2021, covering 42,500 miles and 426 nights away.
Market research date: September 2026.
External evidence: current UK government rates and statistics, motorhome-insurance quote data, dealer asking-price data and advertised prices from UK service providers, campsites, storage facilities and breakdown providers.
Method: where an official rate or large dataset exists, we identify it directly. Where provider prices vary, we use ranges and representative central figures. Where no credible national average exists — particularly repairs and depreciation — we label the number as a scenario or modelling allowance.
Important: our own expenditure is a real case study, not a national average. Similarly, advertised prices are not the same as completed sale prices.
Selected External Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to run a motorhome per year in the UK?
There is no single national figure. Our representative 2026 scenario comes to about £6,000 a year before depreciation or finance. Our own logged figures represent a much higher-use touring pattern and should be read as a real case study rather than an average.
How much does a motorhome cost per month?
The representative scenario in this guide is about £500 a month before depreciation or finance. Storage, mileage, campsite use, repairs and vehicle value can change the figure substantially.
How much does a motorhome cost per mile?
Our own 42,500-mile history works out at about 68p per mile across the costs we have logged. The representative lower-mileage 2026 scenario is around £1.20 per mile before depreciation because fixed annual costs are spread across fewer miles.
What is the biggest hidden motorhome cost?
Depreciation can be one of the largest costs, especially for newer or higher-value motorhomes. It is easy to overlook because it is not paid as a regular bill.
Are campervans cheaper to run than motorhomes?
Sometimes. A smaller campervan may use less fuel and may be easier to store at home, but expensive campervans can still carry substantial depreciation and finance costs.
Written by Nicky Michelmore