Total cost of car ownership over 10 years.
Total 10-year cost
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Cost per month
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Annual running cost
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Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Component | Over 10 years |
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A car costs far more than the loan repayment
When people work out whether they can afford a car in Singapore, they usually look at the monthly loan instalment and stop. That is the single most expensive mistake in car budgeting here. The instalment only repays the price. It ignores depreciation that you cannot finance away, and it ignores the steady drip of road tax, insurance, fuel, parking, ERP, and servicing that runs for the full ten years the Certificate of Entitlement is valid. This tool adds all of it up and divides by 120 months, so you see the true cost of keeping the car on the road, not the cost of borrowing for it.
Ten years with a $150,000 car
Take a fairly typical mass-market car bought at $150,000, a figure that already bundles in the COE won at auction, the Additional Registration Fee, excise duty, and GST. Assume a PARF rebate of $15,000 when you deregister at the ten-year mark. Running costs are $1,200 road tax, $1,800 insurance, $6,000 for petrol, parking and ERP combined, and $1,500 maintenance, every year. The arithmetic looks like this.
That is $2,000 a month, every month, for a decade. The breakdown below makes the point that depreciation and running costs are roughly comparable in size, which is why ignoring either one badly understates the real bill.
Where buyers get the numbers wrong
Two inputs trip people up. The first is the scrap rebate. The PARF rebate is based on the Additional Registration Fee, not the price you paid, and COE cars deregistered after the full ten years get no COE rebate at all, so the figure is often smaller than buyers hope. If you are unsure, a conservative estimate is safer than an optimistic one. The second is fuel and parking, which most owners underestimate. Season parking in the city, daily ERP on a commute, and rising petrol prices add up fast, and an electric car shifts that line without removing it. There is no GST or income tax angle to a private car: it is a consumption asset, and Singapore has no capital gains tax to worry about when you eventually deregister it. The honest takeaway is that ownership here is a lifestyle cost of around $2,000 a month for a modest car, so the tool is most useful for testing whether that fits your budget before you commit.
Is buying a car ever cheaper than ride-hailing?
At $2,000 a month, a car has to displace a great deal of Grab and taxi spend to break even. If you would otherwise spend $700 to $900 a month getting around, ownership is a convenience and status purchase, not a saving. The tool gives you the monthly figure to compare directly against your current transport bill.
Does the cost change if I keep the car beyond ten years?
Yes, and not always for the better. Renewing the COE means paying the Prevailing Quota Premium for another five or ten years and forfeiting any PARF rebate, while an older car often costs more to insure and maintain. Model it by raising the purchase price to the renewal premium and setting the rebate to zero, then comparing the new monthly figure against simply buying a fresh car.