Learning to drive will cost £2600 in 2026
Mon, 12 Jan 2026
The cost of learning to drive is continuing to rise with the bill for learner drivers set to hit nearly £2600 in 2026.
It means costs will have jumped 30% over the past five years, mainly due to the price of driving lessons that have gone up 37% since 2020.
At this rate, reckon experts at National Scrap Car, the projected cost of learning to drive could hit almost £4300 by 2035.
By 2045, it could top £7500.
Theory test and driving test prices have remained static since 2020, at £46 and £62 respectively. But the price of 45 hours of driving lessons has gone up by nearly £500 in five years.
National Scrap Car says the hourly driving lesson rate was £28 in 2020, but has now risen to £39. In the next five years, it’s set to increase again, to £53 an hour – and, in the next 20 years, driving lessons could cost more than £137 an hour.
Learner driver insurance has become more expensive too, as has the price of fuel, all adding to the cost of learning to drive.
"The reality is that learning to drive is becoming unaffordable to many budding drivers," says National Scrap Car's Dorry Potter.
"While the cost of provisional licences and practical and theory tests has remained stagnant for years, the cost of learning to drive has nonetheless skyrocketed to over £570. That’s more than 30% in the last five years.”
It’s not even as if learner drivers are being fast-tracked onto the road, either. The system is bottlenecked, with recent figures showing that learners are waiting an average of almost 22 weeks for their practical tests.
"Despite recent efforts from the government to address the test backlog, transport secretary Heidi Alexander has said that the target to get wait times down to seven weeks by summer 2026 won’t be met," adds Potter.
With the cost of learning to drive forecast to keep on increasing, this will “undoubtedly create a significant barrier to opportunity for the next generation of drivers”.
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