What a campervan really costs a year, line by line

What does the usual mileage figure leave out?

55p a mile. That is HMRC’s approved rate for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or van in the 2026 to 2027 tax year, with 25p a mile after that [1]. At 15,000 miles a year the sum is £6,750 (our calculation: 10,000 miles at 55p plus 5,000 miles at 25p), or about £563 a month. It suits a tax return and a campervan poorly, for a reason that is easy to miss: it is a rate for reimbursing business journeys, not a measurement of what any vehicle costs to own.

We found no British yearly ownership study with a stated method, and none that includes vans. The nearest model is American. In the United States, AAA put the cost of owning and running an average new vehicle at $11,577 in 2025, with depreciation the largest single item [2]. We borrow the idea, not the dollars: price each line separately, on a fixed mileage, and say where a number comes from.

So this dossier prices a year at 15,000 miles in the same lines: depreciation, finance, insurance, tax, servicing and fuel. Where a published figure exists for vans (a manufacturer’s price list, this week’s pump price), it goes in. Where none exists, the text says so, and any number we work out ourselves is labelled as our calculation, with the sum shown. You can swap in your own mileage and redo the arithmetic.

How much does the van itself cost, and what does the build add?

Two prices are in play, and they behave differently. The first is the vehicle. Ford’s price list effective 1 June 2026 puts a Transit Custom short-wheelbase, low-roof van with the 2.0 EcoBlue 110PS diesel engine and a manual gearbox, in Trend trim, at £35,150 before VAT and £42,180 with it [3]. A factory-built campervan, the Transit Custom Nugget, starts at £63,150 before VAT on Ford’s website [4], which is £75,780 with VAT at 20% (our calculation).

The second price is the interior, and it is the one nobody can pin down. We found no independent British survey of what owners spend on a conversion, and the figures that conversion firms publish are too far apart to average, so none is quoted. The Nugget gives one rough marker: £63,150 less £35,150 is £28,000 before VAT (our calculation). It compares two different vehicles and trims, so read it as an indication, not as the price of a build.

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Read the table as positions in a market, not as an average. A £10,000 interior spread over ten years is £1,000 a year even if it were worth nothing at the end (our calculation, as an illustration). We keep the interior out of the yearly totals below and come back to it at the end, because no public dataset tracks what a converted van fetches when it is sold.

Depreciation: what does the van lose while you are not looking?

Depreciation is the purchase price minus the resale price, divided by the years you keep the van. The purchase price we have, from Ford’s list. The resale price is the problem: we found no British statistic on used-van asking prices that we could read and check, so this line rests on a formula and one American benchmark, labelled as such.

In the United States, live listings of the Ford Transit van put a five-year-old example at 55.8% below the median price of a new one, and a three-year-old at 38.4% below [5]. Assume, as an assumption and nothing firmer, that a British Transit Custom loses the same shares of its £42,180 price. Over the first three years that is £16,197, about £5,399 a year. Years four and five add £7,339, about £3,670 a year. Over five years the loss is £23,536, which is £4,707 a year (our calculation).

Three caveats apply. The American figures are asking prices on live listings, not prices at which vans sold. They come from a bigger van in a bigger market. And Britain has its own quirks, from VAT on new vans to the MOT test, that could move the real number either way. The cure is cheap: price ten adverts for the same model, age and mileage, and replace £4,707 with your own result.

Fuel: why is it the line furthest from the brochure?

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes weekly pump prices. For the week of 26 October 2026 it lists diesel at 199.22p a litre and petrol at 174.07p, with fuel duty at 52.95p a litre on both and VAT at 20% [6]. Diesel therefore costs 14% more per litre than petrol (our calculation: 199.22 divided by 174.07). The Trend van priced above is a diesel, so diesel is the price used here.

How much it drinks is the harder question. Ford’s price list gives official test figures for the short-wheelbase 110PS manual: 9.0 litres per 100 kilometres on the low-speed part of the test, 6.1 on the high-speed part and 7.2 overall [3]. Converted to miles, that is 14.5, 9.8 and 11.6 litres per 100 miles (our calculation). The test uses an empty panel van. A campervan carries a bed, water, gas, a fridge and people, often under a taller roof, so the table adds a third case at 17.5 litres per 100 miles. That figure is our assumption, not a measurement: your own fuel log replaces it.

The spread is the point. The same 15,000 miles cost between £3,466 and £5,230 depending on the van, the load and the week, which is £1,764 of difference before anyone has changed a single tyre. The yearly table below carries all three cases.

What do insurance, tax and upkeep add?

Insurance first, where there is no public statistic for campervans. The nearest published figure comes from the comparison site Quotezone: across 1,100 quotes for van conversions such as the Ford Transit and VW Crafter, the cheapest quotes ran from £233 to £936 a year, with a median of £395 [7]. Because these are the cheapest quotes on one panel, treat £395 as a floor. Quotezone adds that self-build conversions usually need a specialist insurer quoted directly. For scale, the Association of British Insurers puts the average private-car premium actually paid at £566 in April to June 2026, as reported by Which? [8].

Tax is easier to read, with one catch. A van approved as a motorhome (type M1SA) and first registered from 12 March 2020 sits in the private or light goods class for vehicle tax [9], whose rate is £360 for 12 months [10]. The government’s motorhome page lists £230 or £375 a year by engine size for private or light goods motorhomes [11], so check the tax class on your V5C log book before budgeting. We use £360. The MOT test, due from the third year, costs at most £54.85 for a motor caravan, or £58.60 for a goods vehicle over 3,000kg and up to 3,500kg [12]. Using £54.85, tax and MOT come to £415 a year (our calculation). The £55 registration fee is a one-off and stays out.

Upkeep has no public statistic either. Ford’s list gives a service interval of two years or 25,000 miles and a warranty of 100,000 miles or three years [3]. For vans over three years old, Ford’s Essential Service starts at £239 recommended retail price [13]. One service every two years is £120 a year (our calculation). That covers servicing only. Tyres, brakes and repairs have no published figure we could use, so this line is a floor, and the likeliest one to be wrong in your favour.

Finally, the cities. London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone charges £12.50 a day to vehicles that do not meet its standard, including vans up to 3.5 tonnes [14]. Several English cities run Clean Air Zones, and vans are covered in the Class C and Class D zones; the minimum standard to avoid the charge is Euro 6 for a diesel van and Euro 4 for a petrol one [15]. Your V5C or the manufacturer gives your emission standard. None of this enters the totals, because it depends on where you drive.

What does a night cost when the van is the room?

Where the van sleeps is the line that varies most between owners, and the rules are not the same on both sides of the border. In the United States, the fixed points are public-land permits, such as the one in the photo below. We found no equivalent national permit in Britain. The nearest thing is a forest car park where you pay for the night, or a club campsite.

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In Scotland, Forestry and Land Scotland lets self-contained campervans and motorhomes stay one night in some of its car parks, between 6pm and 10am, for £10 at most sites and £13 at four sites with chemical waste disposal. You pay on arrival through RingGo and cannot return to the same car park within 48 hours [16]. In England, Forestry England charges £15 per motorhome per night at Kielder Castle, for a maximum of two nights [17]. On a club campsite, the Caravan and Motorhome Club has a 2026 offer of £25 a night for a standard pitch and two adults at 11 of its sites [18], and its price guide adds £15 a night for non-members on standard pitches [19]. Thirty nights at £10 is £300 a year, and thirty at £25 is £750 (our calculation).

What does a year add up to, line by line?

Put the lines side by side. All three columns share the same van: depreciation from the Transit Custom price and the American ratio, insurance from the Quotezone median, tax and MOT, and servicing. Only the fuel line changes, from Ford’s test figure to two harder cases. Finance charges are left out, because they depend on how much you borrow.

Depreciation and fuel are around 90% of every column: 90% in the first, 91% in the last (our calculation). The remaining three lines together come to £930, and they are the three with the weakest evidence, since the insurance is a floor, the servicing excludes repairs and the tax class depends on your V5C. The scenarios sit £2,353 to £4,117 above the £6,750 that HMRC’s rate implies, which is what you would expect from a rate that was never meant to describe a van.

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What the table leaves out is the list that makes a van a van: the build, which at £10,000 spread over ten years is another £1,000 a year at the very least; the nights, from nothing on a free roadside spot to £750 for thirty nights at £25; the tyres and repairs that no published figure prices; and any city charge. Set aside part of a conversion budget for the unexpected, and treat the unexpected as the one line that is certain to appear.

If sizing the electrical system is part of the plan, two guides on this site cover it: how to size a leisure battery and, for cold months, how heating, insulation and condensation change the picture.

What is the rule to keep?

Until you have twelve months of receipts, budget a campervan at 60p to 72p a mile, not at the 45p that HMRC’s rate averages out to.

Julien de Jurquet

Campervans, motorhomes, cycling and calculators

Julien de Jurquet writes for Outfarer about campervans, motorhomes, cycling and calculators. He reads instruction manuals to the very end and never lets a figure through without its unit, so that your choices rest on sums rather than promises.

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