Last fact-checked 28 Feb 2024 | Report a content error
There's no question that vaping is a healthier alternative to smoking. But what about the cost? Can vaping help your pocket as well as your overall health?
In this article, we’ll show you how much you can save by switching to vaping … right down to the penny! Based on up-to-the-minute pricing stats and e-liquid consumption rates from our own site, we'll show you how much money a 20-a-day, 10-a-day and 5-a-day smoker can save.
Whether you’re an occasional smoker or a heavy smoker, we’ll show you the likely savings you can make just by switching to e-cigarettes. We’ll also show you how regular vapers can continue to save money long after they have quit the dreaded cigarettes.
Vaping is much much cheaper than smoking
When we ran the numbers on this, we had to check them a few times before we could believe them. It wasn’t so much the savings that took us by surprise as the sheer cost of smoking. Based on our research, here’s what we can tell you:
A 10-a-day UK smoker can save over £200 a month by switching to e-cigarettes. Heavy smokers save much more than this (£440+ a month), but even occasional smokers can save money (£90+ a month) by switching to vaping.
Vaper Savings: Heavy, Light and Medium
For this comparison table, we start with three types of smoker (a heavy smoker, an occasional smoker and a ‘medium’ 10-a-day smoker). We assume they vape for 6 months, mixing their own shortfill, and that they need to buy a brand new vape device to get started.
Monthly savings: vaping instead of smoking (figures correct as of Feb 2024)
|
Smoking frequency |
Cost (Cigarettes) |
Cost (Vaping) |
Savings |
|
Light (5 a day) |
£117.52 |
£25.82 |
£91.70 |
|
Medium (10 a day) |
£235.05 |
£26.32 |
£208.73 |
|
Heavy (20 a day) |
£470.10 |
£28.32 |
£441.78 |
We’ve triple-checked these numbers. They're accurate. In the next section, we’ll explain the sums behind our savings calculations
Cigarettes get more and more expensive
It was almost 3 years ago when we first released this affordability chart. Back in May 2021, a typical 20-a-day smoker would spend £304.20 every month on cigarettes. Now, in early 2024, that same smoker is looking at a bill of £470.10 a month, because of incremental price hikes.
With every passing month, smoking addiction costs individual smokers more and more money. The only positive about this is that, when you quit smoking, you could be putting more than £400 back into your own pocket every month.
How We Calculated The Money You’ll Save
To arrive at the stats above, we’ve made some assumptions about what the ‘typical’ smoker and ‘typical’ vaper does:
- We took the median cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes (£15.67 as of Feb 2024). We scaled this up based on a 30-day month.
- We’ve assumed a nicotine dosage of either 1.5 mg/ml (‘light’), 3mg/ml (‘medium’) or 6 mg/ml (‘heavy’). We’ve based this on the NHS-recommended nicotine strengths for smoking cessation, which we had already converted into e-liquid nicotine strengths in a previous article (learn more on our ‘Tapering Down’ article). The cost of a 3mg/ml nic shot is typically £1 at time of writing.
- We assume that a vaper consumes 100ml of shortfill e-liquid in a month. The median price of a 100ml e-liquid bottle, at time of writing, is £13.99, so we’ve used that as our shortfill cost.
- We also added the cost of a mid-range box mod starter kit (currently £49.99 — see our full range of starter kits here). We divided this cost evenly over the full 6 month period.
- Just to be 100% accurate, we also added a £4 shipping fee to the monthly vaping expenses ...but if you spend over £20 on our site, you don’t have to pay this! Shop our full e-liquid range here.
This is just the beginning of your savings journey! The savings you make by vaping could potentially be even better than what we’ve shown you above. In the next section, we’ll show you how long-term vapers save even more money by shopping smart.
How to save even more money on vaping
If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool vaper, the novelty of saving money on cigarettes may have worn off by now. The good news is you can still save money on your vaping habit by shopping smart and changing the way you vape. Here are our top five tips for long-term vapers who want to save money!
I hope this savings guide gives you food for thought, especially if you’re a smoker. Don’t underestimate the freedom that quitting smoking gives you financially as well as physically. Quitting smoking is incredibly difficult (I know — I’ve done it myself), but it’s worth the hard work. If you can quit smoking, you will have extra money in your account at the end of each month. That money can be spent on holidays, luxuries or whatever you want.
Get the ball rolling by talking to your local NHS Stop Smoking support service. Trust me — you won’t look back!
Stay safe and happy vaping!
John Boughey