Britain’s cheapest car to run revealed – and the most expensive...

Tom Phillips
Tue, 23 Jun 2026

The Dacia Sandero has been named the most affordable car to own and run in the UK, according to a  comprehensive new study.

Car insurance comparison firm Quotezone selected 50 of the UK's most popular cars, with the aim to discover how much someone running one would spend each year. 

The research factored in costs including finance, fuel or vehicle efficiency in the case of electric cars, insurance, tax and maintenance.

The research highlighted a £16,476 running cost gap between the most affordable and most expensive models on the market. 

At the very bottom of that cost scale sat the petrol-powered Dacia Sandero with a total annual running cost of just £7715 – less than a third of the £24,191 required by the UK’s most expensive model, the electric BMW i4.

Dacia leads the way

The value-champion £14,765 Dacia Sandero was the UK's cheapest car to buy and run. Quotezone calculated that it would cost £7715 to cover the Sandero's costs for a year, helped by the fact that its finance bill of £4337 and insurance at £626 were the cheapest of any car in the data set.

The Renault 5 ranked second, costing an estimated £7985 a year, while the MG 3 came third, as the second most affordable petrol car, costing £8630 a year. 

And the most expensive...

Quotezone estimates that running a new BMW i4 costs an average of £24,191. Despite being the 11th cheapest car to fuel from the 50 cars listed, finance charges for the i4 were a hefty £21,011, while an annual insurance policy added £1430 to the bill.

A major driver of the expensive finance is the first-year depreciation suffered by the BMW. Costing £71,525 new, the i4 selected by Quotezone would lose £17,881, or 25% of its value, in the first year.

Second to the BMW is the Land Rover Defender with yearly running costs of £22,820. The heavy Defender costs an estimated £3248 in fuel, the highest of any of the 50 cars selected, while almost £17,000 in finance costs – pushed up by £14,314 in first-year depreciation – added to the overall bill.

Rounding out the top three is the Audi Q6 e-tron at £22,639 per year – just £180 less than the Defender and costing over £18,000 to finance. The Audi was second to the BMW in terms of depreciation, also losing 25% of its value, dropping £15,329 in the first year compared to £61,315 when new.

How about the average costs?

Using data for its 50 cars, Quotezone states that the average cost of a new car from its list was £33,395, and the average it costs to run a car in the UK is a not-unsubstantial £13,364.

As far as a breakdown of figures goes, finance is by far the biggest factor, costing an average of £9810, while fuel (£2108), insurance (£990), taxes (£253) and maintenance (£203) make up the rest.

*based on second year prices