Road trip cost calculator

What this estimate covers

Fuel and nights — the two costs that scale with the drive itself. Put in your car’s real consumption and the price where you actually fill up and the total is honest. Tolls, vignettes, ferries, food and tickets are deliberately left out: they depend on the exact roads you take, so they are listed on each route page instead.

What fuel costs across Europe

The same litre swings by about a euro depending on which side of a border you fill up — Bosnia & Herzegovina to Denmark — which is enough to move a long trip by a few hundred euros. On a route that crosses borders, fill up on the cheap side before you cross.

EU-27 average: petrol 2.042 € / diesel 2.107 € per litre.

Pump prices move day to day; these are weekly national averages, not the price at your station today. The calculator only uses them as a starting figure — type in what you actually pay.

Source: European Commission Weekly Oil Bulletin, September 7, 2026 — national averages including all taxes. Countries outside the EU bulletin are marked · and come from a single source. (August 3, 2026)

What the calculator leaves out: tolls and vignettes

Buy before you drive (vignette or e-vignette): Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. Joining a motorway without one is a fine, not a payment.

Pay per kilometre at barriers: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia and parts of Poland — plus Ireland’s barrier-free M50, which you have to pay online by 8pm the next day.

Motorways mostly free, individual crossings not: Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the UK all charge for particular bridges, tunnels or city zones — and Norway bills the car automatically through toll rings that read the plate.

Every route page lists the exact vignettes, tolls and ferries for that drive.

What a vignette costs

In vignette countries you pay for time, not distance — one price covers the whole motorway network for as long as it lasts. Buy it before you join the motorway: every one of these is enforced by number-plate cameras, and the fine is many times the price of the vignette itself.

Read off each operator’s own site on August 18, 2026.

Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria also use vignettes and are not in the table yet: their official price pages could not be read directly, and an approximate figure is worse than none when you are planning a border crossing.

Questions people actually ask

How much does one kilometre by car cost?

On fuel alone, a car using 7 L/100 km pays about €0.14 per kilometre at the European average. An efficient diesel on cheap fuel comes in well under that; a heavy car in the expensive north runs well over it.

How many kilometres a day is realistic?

On motorways, 500–600 km is a long but ordinary day. On the mountain and coastal roads these routes are built from, 250–350 km already fills a day, because the stops are the point. The calculator turns your daily distance into nights, so driving less raises the accommodation cost — as it should.

Is it cheaper to drive or to fly and rent a car?

Driving wins when three or four of you share one tank. It loses when it is just you and there are 2,000 km of motorway before the good part starts. Price both halves: the calculator covers the drive, the rental link covers the alternative.