What a Camper Van Really Costs: A Year, Line by Line

What does the usual ownership number leave out?

$964.78 a month. That is what AAA says it costs to own and run an average new vehicle in 2025, or $11,577 a year [1]. It is a sound number for a sedan and a weak one for a van, for a reason that is easy to miss: none of AAA’s nine categories is a van. The study covers small and medium sedans, three sizes of SUV, mid-size and half-ton pickups, hybrids and electric cars, with five top-selling models in each [1] [2].

The number also rests on assumptions that are not yours. AAA assumes five years of ownership, 15,000 miles a year and 75,000 miles in total, and its fuel line uses regular gasoline at an average of $3.151 a gallon over the 12 months to May 2025 [2]. Change any of those and the total moves. A van changes most of them at once: a higher purchase price, a thirstier engine, and a fuel price that has since climbed.

So this dossier keeps AAA’s method and replaces its inputs. Where a published figure exists for vans (a median price from used-van listings, this week’s fuel prices), it goes in. Where it does not, AAA’s average stays, and any number we compute ourselves is labeled as arithmetic, with the sum shown. The yardstick throughout is 15,000 miles a year, so you can swap in your own mileage and redo the sums.

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. One builder of Sprinter conversions budgets about $67,000 for an all-wheel-drive Sprinter cargo van on the 144-inch wheelbase and $71,000 for the 170-inch, vehicle only, and puts a new 2026 Sprinter at $65,000 to $78,000 depending on wheelbase, roof, drivetrain and options [3]. Live US listings put the median new Ford Transit van at $56,565 [4].

The second price is the interior, and it is where numbers stop agreeing with each other. The same builder says interior work runs from $12,000 to more than $250,000, and recommends setting aside 10 to 20 percent of the project budget for the unexpected [3]. That is a spread of more than twenty to one, from one source whose business is selling conversions. We found no independent survey of what owners actually spend, so none is quoted.

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Read the table as positions in a market, not as an average. A $12,000 interior spread over ten years is $1,200 a year even if it were worth nothing at the end; a $50,000 one is $5,000 a year. 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 largest line in AAA’s study: $4,334 a year on average, calculated as the gap between the purchase price and the estimated trade-in value after five years and 75,000 miles [1] [2]. Against the study’s average sticker price of $38,938, five years of that comes to $21,670, or 56% of the price (our arithmetic).

Used-van listings land on the same percentage. A five-year-old Transit lists at a median $24,995, which is 55.8% below the $56,565 median for a new one, and a three-year-old lists at $34,850, or 38.4% below new [4]. In dollars, the first three years cost $21,715, about $7,240 a year, and the next two cost $9,855, about $4,930 a year. Over five years the loss is $31,570, which is $6,314 a year against AAA’s $4,334 (our arithmetic).

Two caveats apply. These are asking prices on live listings, not the prices at which vans sold, and the new-van median is today’s, not what a five-year-old van’s first owner paid. Still, they are the only van figures with a stated method that we could find, so the van scenario below uses $6,314.

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

AAA’s fuel line is 13 cents a mile [2]. At the $3.151 a gallon it assumed, that implies about 24 miles per gallon (13 cents divided by $3.151 is 0.041 gallons a mile). A raised roof, a bed and a loaded cabin make that figure something to test, not something to assume, and the pump price has moved too: the Energy Information Administration put regular gasoline at $4.269 a gallon and on-highway diesel at $6.352 for the week of October 26, 2026 [5]. Gasoline is 35% above AAA’s assumption, and diesel costs 49% more per gallon than gasoline.

The second figure matters for the engine choice. Because diesel costs 49% more per gallon, a diesel van has to cover 49% more miles per gallon than its gasoline twin just to cost the same per mile. The table below shows what that does to 15,000 miles. The miles-per-gallon figures are assumptions for the sums, not measurements; your van’s own log replaces them.

The spread is the point. The same 15,000 miles cost between $1,950 and $4,760 depending on the engine, the economy and the week. The van scenario below carries the range from $2,640 to $4,760, from the best gasoline case to the worst diesel case.

What do insurance, registration and upkeep add?

For these three lines, AAA’s averages are the only published figures with a stated method, so they stand in until you have quotes. Insurance is $1,694 a year, priced for a full-coverage policy on a car used personally, with a driver under 65 who has more than six years of experience and no accidents and lives in a suburb or city. Licence, registration and taxes are $813 a year, counting both the taxes at purchase and the annual fees [2].

Maintenance, repair and tires are 11.04 cents a mile, or $1,656 at 15,000 miles. AAA defines that line as routine maintenance to the manufacturer’s schedule, a comprehensive extended warranty, repairs to wear items and one set of replacement tires [2]. A van that is driven at its weight limit may wear tires and brakes faster, but we found no published figure that says by how much, so the scenario keeps AAA’s number.

The profile behind the insurance figure is a commuter with a clean record. Whether an insurer treats a converted van as a car, a commercial vehicle or a motorhome, and whether it covers the interior, is a question for the insurer, in writing, before you spend on the build.

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 only fixed points are public-land fees. On national forests, the federal regulation does not set one number of days: it prohibits camping for longer than an order allows [7]. The number to know is the one in the order that covers the forest you are in.

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The Bureau of Land Management sells permits for its long-term visitor areas. The long-term permit costs $180 and covers continuous use from September 15 to April 15, a total of seven months, or any length of time between those dates; that is about $26 a month if you stay the full season. The short-visit permit costs $40 for any 14 consecutive days and can be renewed as often as you like. From April 16 to September 14, the fee is $10 per vehicle for day use, $15 for overnight use, or $75 a year, with a maximum stay of 14 days in a 28-day period [8].

National parks work differently. The Resident Annual Pass costs $80 for U.S. citizens and residents and covers one private vehicle or four per-person fees [9]. Without it, a single park charges its own entrance fee: Zion’s standard pass is $20 to $35, and its dump station costs $5 a use for people who are not camping there [10].

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

Put the lines side by side. The first column is AAA as published; the second replaces depreciation with the Transit listings and fuel with the range from the fuel table. Finance charges are left out of the van column, because they depend on how much you borrow and AAA’s $1,131 is calculated on a car with an average sticker price of $38,938 [1] [2].

The van scenario costs about $2,700 to $4,800 a year more than AAA’s average without finance, and by construction the whole gap sits in two lines: $1,980 from depreciation and between $690 and $2,810 from fuel. That is 87 to 102 cents a mile, against 70 cents for AAA’s average car once finance is removed. For a published point of comparison, AAA’s pickup average is $6,402 a year above its small sedan [1]; on the small sedan’s 55.87 cents a mile, that puts a pickup at about $14,780 a year (our arithmetic), inside the van range.

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What the table leaves out is the list that makes a van a van: the build, which at $12,000 spread over ten years is another $1,200 a year at the very least; the nights, from $0 on suitable public land to $180 for a winter on a BLM permit and far more in private campgrounds; and the repairs nobody can price in advance. A builder’s advice to hold back 10 to 20 percent of a conversion budget for the unexpected is a reasonable place to start on the build side [3].

If sizing the electrical system is part of the plan, two guides on this site cover it: how to size a house 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 van like a pickup, not like a sedan.

Julien de Jurquet

Vans, RVs, biking and calculators

Julien de Jurquet writes for Outfarer about camper vans, RVs, biking, and calculators. He reads manuals cover to cover and never lets a number slide without its unit, so your choices rest on math, not promises.

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