How much does motorhome travel cost? It is the first question everyone asks and the one that motorhome owners give the most evasive answers to. "It depends" they say, before changing the subject to talk about the sunset they watched from a clifftop in Cornwall.
Well, I am going to give you actual numbers. Not vague ranges or best case scenarios. Real motorhome travel costs from someone who has been doing this for years and has the credit card statements to prove it.
Buying vs hiring a motorhome
Let us get the big one out of the way first. Buying a motorhome is expensive. A decent secondhand one that is not going to leave you stranded every other weekend will cost somewhere between fifteen and thirty thousand pounds. A new one? Forty thousand upwards, and that is for something modest. The fancy ones with island beds and garage storage will cheerfully relieve you of seventy thousand or more.
If you are not sure motorhome life is for you, hiring is the sensible first step. Expect to pay between eight hundred and fifteen hundred pounds per week during peak season for something that sleeps a family of four. Off peak is cheaper, sometimes significantly so. A week in October might cost you half what July does.
We bought ours secondhand for around twenty thousand. It was not the cheapest option and it was not the most expensive. It was the one that did not smell weird and had a recent habitation check. That is genuinely how the decision was made.
Running costs that add up fast
Here is where the dream starts meeting reality. Diesel is the obvious one. A motorhome drinks fuel the way a teenager drinks milk. Ours does roughly twenty miles to the gallon on a good day with a tailwind. On a bad day it is closer to sixteen. At current diesel prices that works out at roughly twenty pence per mile. A two hundred mile trip to the coast costs you about forty pounds in fuel alone.
Insurance varies wildly depending on the value of the vehicle, your age and how many years you have been driving something this size. Ours costs around five hundred pounds a year. I have heard of people paying three hundred and others paying well over a thousand.
Road tax for a motorhome is currently three hundred and twenty pounds a year. MOT is about the same as a car. The habitation check, which is essentially an MOT for the living quarters, runs between one hundred and fifty and two hundred pounds annually.
Then there is the storage question. If you are lucky enough to have a driveway that fits a seven metre vehicle, you are sorted. If not, secure storage costs between fifty and a hundred and fifty pounds per month depending on where you live. That is up to eighteen hundred pounds a year just for somewhere to park the thing when you are not using it.
Campsite fees and what you actually pay per night
This is the bit that adds up faster than most people expect. A standard pitch with electric hook up at a decent campsite costs between twenty five and forty pounds per night. In peak season at a popular location you can easily pay fifty. The Caravan and Motorhome Club and the Camping and Caravanning Club sites tend to be at the lower end if you are a member. Membership costs around fifty to sixty pounds a year and pays for itself within a few trips.
In Europe the range is broader. France is generally cheaper than the UK for campsites. Spain is cheaper still. The municipal sites in France are often brilliant value at around fifteen euros a night with decent facilities.
There is also wild camping, or what the polite motorhome community calls aire stops. These range from free to about fifteen euros per night. We mix in a few of these on longer trips and it makes a noticeable difference to the overall bill. I wrote a separate guide to planning your first European motorhome trip that covers the logistics of getting across the Channel and finding sites.
Food costs and the "we will save money cooking" myth
One of the selling points of motorhome travel is that you have a kitchen, so you save money on eating out. This is technically true. It is also the thing that motorhome owners lie about most enthusiastically.
Yes, you can cook every meal in the motorhome. Yes, it is cheaper than restaurants. But you will also discover that the farm shop next to the campsite sells incredible cheese. And the pub in the village does a cracking Sunday lunch. And the fish and chips at the harbour are too good to walk past.
Budget roughly the same as you would on any self catering holiday. We tend to cook breakfast and lunch in the van and eat out for dinner two or three times a week. For a family of four that works out at roughly three hundred to four hundred pounds per week on food and drink total.
Maintenance and the inevitable surprises
Motorhomes break. I wish I could tell you otherwise but they just do. Things rattle loose, seals fail, appliances decide to stop working at the most inconvenient possible moment. Our fridge died on the first day of a two week trip in France. The repair cost three hundred and fifty pounds and a full day of the holiday.
Budget at least a thousand pounds a year for maintenance and repairs. Some years you will spend less and feel smug about it. Other years you will spend considerably more and feel considerably less smug. The heating system alone can cost several hundred to service, and if the water heater goes you are looking at a few hundred more.
Tyres are another one people forget. Motorhome tyres need replacing roughly every five years regardless of mileage because the rubber degrades. A set of four will cost between four hundred and eight hundred pounds depending on the size.
What a two week trip actually costs
Let me add this up properly for a two week summer trip in the UK. Pitch fees at thirty pounds per night for fourteen nights is four hundred and twenty pounds. Fuel for six hundred miles of driving is about a hundred and twenty pounds. Food and drink at three hundred per week is six hundred. A couple of activities and entry fees, say a hundred and fifty. That is roughly thirteen hundred pounds for a two week family holiday.
For comparison, two weeks in a holiday cottage would cost you fifteen hundred to three thousand depending on location. A hotel would be significantly more. So yes, motorhome travel can be cheaper per trip. But it is not the massive saving some people claim once you factor in annual ownership costs.
The annual running total for owning and using a motorhome regularly, including insurance, storage, maintenance and depreciation, sits at around five to seven thousand pounds before you go on a single trip. That is the number most people conveniently forget to mention.
How to keep motorhome costs down
The biggest single saving is membership of one of the major clubs. The discounted pitch fees add up quickly over a season. After that, travelling off peak makes an enormous difference. A campsite that charges forty five pounds in August might be twenty in April, and April weather in the south of England is often perfectly decent for it.
Doing your own basic maintenance helps too. Learning to check seals, top up fluids and fix minor issues saves both money and the frustration of waiting three weeks for a mobile mechanic who specialises in leisure vehicles.
And if you can manage it, working remotely from the motorhome changes the economics completely. If you can turn travel days into work days, the whole thing stops being a holiday expense and becomes a lifestyle cost. That is how we think about it, anyway. Sitting in the Lake District with a laptop and a view beats any office I have ever worked in.
Is it worth the money?
Yes. Absolutely yes.
Motorhome travel is not cheap. Anyone who tells you it is either has a very different definition of cheap or is not counting properly. But the value you get from it is extraordinary. My kids have seen more of the UK and Europe from a motorhome than I saw in my entire childhood. The adventures we have had are worth more than any number sitting in a spreadsheet.
You just need to go in with your eyes open about what it actually costs, rather than believing the forums where everyone claims to travel for pennies. They are either wild camping in a lay by or they are fibbing. Know the real numbers, plan accordingly, and you will never regret a single penny of it.
