How much does it cost to charge an electric car at home?
The honest answer is a sum, not an advert: battery size times your unit rate, and the tariff you pick does most of the work.
Charging a typical electric car at home costs about £9.40 for a 36kWh session (20% to 80% of a 60kWh battery) on the July 2026 price cap rate of 26.11p/kWh, or about £2.88 on a typical 8p/kWh off-peak EV tariff. Per mile, that is roughly 7.5p on a standard tariff and 2.3p off-peak, against about 16.5p per mile for petrol.
How much does a full charge cost at home?
The sum is one line of arithmetic: the kilowatt-hours you put in, times your unit rate. A typical family EV has a usable battery of about 60kWh, and most drivers charge between about 20% and 80% rather than from empty to full. That session adds 36kWh.5
From 1 July 2026, the Ofgem price cap sets the national average electricity unit rate for a standard variable tariff at about 26.11p/kWh, so that session costs about £9.40.1 On a dedicated off-peak EV tariff at around 8p/kWh, the same 36kWh costs about £2.88.2 From a three-pin socket or a 7kW wallbox the price is identical; only the time changes.
| Session | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 36kWh (60kWh battery, 20% to 80%) | 26.11p/kWh price cap | About £9.40 |
| 36kWh (same battery) | 8p/kWh off-peak EV tariff | About £2.88 |
| Full 0 to 100%, 60kWh | 26.11p/kWh price cap | About £15.67 |
| Full 0 to 100%, 60kWh | 8p/kWh off-peak EV tariff | About £4.80 |
One common confusion is the standing charge. At about 57.19p/day from July 2026 it applies to your home whether or not an EV is parked outside, so it is a household cost, not a charging cost.1 If a comparison adds it to your EV bill, the comparison is doing it wrong.
What does home charging cost per mile?
Cost per mile needs one more number: efficiency. A typical family EV covers about 3.5 miles per kWh in real-world mixed driving; the most efficient cars reach about 4.5, and winter knocks all of them back.5 Divide the rate by the efficiency:
- Standard tariff, 26.11p/kWh: about 7.5p per mile
- Off-peak EV tariff, 8p/kWh: about 2.3p per mile
- Petrol at 152.5p per litre and 42mpg: about 16.5p per mile3
The petrol figure comes from RAC Fuel Watch’s July 2026 average for unleaded.3 Even on the most expensive way to charge at home, the standard price cap rate, an EV costs less than half the petrol money per mile. On an off-peak tariff it costs about a seventh.
How much can an off-peak EV tariff save?
EV tariffs give you a cheap overnight window, typically five or six hours, in exchange for a smart meter and a daytime rate at or slightly above the price cap. As of July 2026 the main off-peak rates cluster between about 7p and 9.5p/kWh: Intelligent Octopus Go at around 7 to 8p with a six-hour window from 23:30, Octopus Go at about 9.5p, and similar products from E.ON Next and British Gas.2 Rates vary by region, so check your own postcode before switching.
Take a driver covering 8,000 miles a year, all charged at home at 3.5 miles per kWh. That is about 2,286kWh a year:
- At 26.11p/kWh: about £597 a year
- At 8p/kWh: about £183 a year
- Annual saving: about £414
The saving scales with mileage. At 12,000 miles a year it is about £620, and high-mileage drivers save more. The catch is the daytime rate: if nobody is home using power during the day, an EV tariff is close to a pure win; if you run a home office on electricity all day, compare the whole bill, not just the car. Our guide to the best EV tariffs for home charging works through the main products one by one.
What does home charging cost per month and per year?
Putting the same 8,000-mile driver on a monthly basis:
- Off-peak EV tariff: about £15 a month
- Standard price cap tariff: about £50 a month
- Petrol equivalent: about £110 a month3
Against petrol, the off-peak EV driver keeps roughly £1,138 a year. That figure, more than any other, is why home charging matters: it is not a marginal gain, it is most of the fuel bill gone. You can run your own battery size, tariff and mileage through our home charging cost calculator, which uses the same sourced rates as this article.
Which factors change your home charging costs?
Your tariff. This is the big lever, worth around 5p per mile on its own. If you can charge overnight on a smart meter, an EV tariff is the single biggest saving available.
Your car’s efficiency. A small, slippery EV at 4 to 4.5 miles per kWh costs a third less per mile than a large SUV at 2.5. The rate is the same; the car decides how far each kWh goes.
The season. Cold weather cuts battery efficiency, and November to February miles can cost 15 to 25% more than July miles. Budget on the annual average, not the best month.
Where the electricity comes from. Rooftop solar can push the marginal cost of a summer charge close to zero, because the panels have already been paid for. Our guide to charging an EV with solar panels covers when that maths works.
Charging losses. About 10% of the electricity you buy never reaches the battery, lost as heat and conversion overhead along the way. It does not change the comparisons above (petrol has far bigger losses of its own), but it is why your metered bill will always read slightly higher than the battery maths suggests.
How often you use public chargers. Every rapid charge at motorway prices dilutes the home advantage. Drivers who can keep public charging to occasional long trips get the full benefit; drivers without a driveway face a different equation, covered in our guide to charging an electric car without a driveway.
How much does it cost to charge different battery sizes?
Not every EV carries 60kWh. The table below prices a full 0 to 100% charge at both the July 2026 cap rate and a typical off-peak rate, using approximate usable capacities.5
| Usable battery | Full charge at 26.11p | Full charge at 8p |
|---|---|---|
| 39kWh (Nissan Leaf 40) | About £10.18 | About £3.12 |
| 58kWh (VW ID.3 Pro) | About £15.14 | About £4.64 |
| 60kWh (Tesla Model Y) | About £15.67 | About £4.80 |
| 62kWh (MG4 Long Range) | About £16.19 | About £4.96 |
| 77kWh (larger SUVs) | About £20.10 | About £6.16 |
The pattern worth remembering: off-peak charging prices every one of these cars’ full batteries at less than a single gallon of petrol.
How do you find your own unit rate?
Your electricity bill and your supplier’s app both show the unit rate in pence per kWh, usually beside the standing charge. Two cautions. First, the cap figures quoted in the news are national averages across the 14 distribution regions, so your actual capped rate may be a penny or two higher or lower.1 Second, if you are on a fixed deal signed before July 2026, your rate is whatever the fix says, not the current cap. The number on your own bill is the only one that matters for your sums, which is why our calculator accepts a custom rate.
How much does home charging save over petrol each year?
Using the same assumptions throughout (3.5 miles per kWh, 8p/kWh off-peak, petrol at 152.5p per litre and 42mpg), the annual picture by mileage:3
| Annual mileage | EV on off-peak tariff | Petrol | Annual saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6,000 miles | About £137 | About £991 | About £853 |
| 8,000 miles | About £183 | About £1,321 | About £1,138 |
| 12,000 miles | About £274 | About £1,981 | About £1,707 |
Even on the standard cap rate of 26.11p/kWh, the 8,000-mile driver spends about £597 a year, still roughly £724 less than petrol. The tariff simply doubles the advantage.
Will home charging stay this cheap?
The honest answer is that the rate moves, and the gap does not. The price cap has swung between about 24.5p and 26.11p per kWh across the first three quarters of 2026 alone, with April’s reduction driven by the government stripping around £150 of policy levies from bills and July’s rise driven by wholesale gas prices.1 Your cost per mile in 2027 will differ from today’s in pence, but the structure holds: domestic electricity at 5% VAT, bought overnight on an EV tariff, stays the cheapest energy you can put in a car by an order of magnitude. Public rapid charging carries 20% VAT and a convenience premium, and petrol carries fuel duty of about 53p in every litre before VAT on top. Whichever direction prices drift, home charging starts the race several laps ahead.
Is home charging still cheaper than public charging?
Yes, by a wide margin. The UK’s public network passed 119,000 chargers across more than 46,000 locations by spring 2026, and it is genuinely useful on long journeys.4 But public rapid and ultra-rapid charging is priced as a convenience product, typically several times the home rate per kWh, and it carries 20% VAT rather than the 5% domestic rate. Charge at home overnight at 8p and a motorway rapid looks like paying restaurant prices for a packed lunch.
The practical strategy most EV households settle into: charge at home on an off-peak tariff for daily driving, use public chargers for the handful of long trips a year, and keep a three-pin cable in the boot as the backup you hope never to need.
- Key facts
- Price cap electricity rate
- 26.11p/kWh
- 36kWh session (standard)
- About £9.40
- 36kWh session (8p off-peak)
- About £2.88
- Cost per mile (off-peak)
- About 2.3p
- Annual saving vs standard
- About £414
Sources
- Ofgem, energy price cap Accessed 18 July 2026
- Octopus Energy, Intelligent Octopus Go Accessed 18 July 2026
- RAC Fuel Watch, UK petrol and diesel prices Accessed 18 July 2026
- Zapmap, EV charging statistics Accessed 18 July 2026
- ev-database.org, electric vehicle database Accessed 18 July 2026