The cost to charge an EV at a public charger in the UK in 2026

Public charging is now the single biggest variable in the cost of running an electric car. Home charging has stayed relatively cheap, but the price of plugging in on the road has climbed, and it varies hugely depending on where and how fast you charge. Here is what it actually costs in 2026, and what you can do about it.

The short answer

There is no single "public charging price" in the UK. Costs depend on charger speed, network, membership status and even time of day. As a rough guide across the market today:

• Slow and fast chargers (up to 22kW), often found on street furniture or in car parks: roughly 40 to 60p per kWh
• Rapid chargers (50kW): roughly 55 to 75p per kWh
• Ultra-rapid chargers (100kW+), common at motorway service stations: roughly 65 to 90p per kWh

For a typical family EV using around 3.5 miles per kWh, that puts the cost of a public rapid top-up somewhere between 16p and 25p a mile, compared with 2p to 4p a mile charging at home on a cheap overnight tariff.

Why public charging costs so much more than home charging

A few things push the price up:

• Standing charges and hardware costs. Rapid and ultra-rapid chargers are expensive to install and maintain, and that cost is built into the per-kWh rate.
• Grid connection charges. Many rapid chargers pay commercial electricity rates and demand charges that domestic customers do not.
• VAT. Public charging has historically been charged at 20% VAT, while domestic electricity is charged at 5%, although this gap has narrowed for some public charging, covered in our separate article on the VAT cut.
• Membership and roaming fees. Pay-as-you-go rates are usually the most expensive; subscribing to a network or using a roaming app can knock 10 to 20% off.

How the numbers add up over a year

Take a driver doing 10,000 miles a year with no home charging access, at 3.5 miles per kWh:

• Energy needed: about 2,860 kWh
• At an average public blended rate of 55p per kWh: around £1,570 a year

Compare that with a driver who can charge at home overnight at 8p per kWh: the same mileage costs around £230 a year. That gap, over £1,300 a year, is almost entirely down to access to off-street parking, not the car itself.

Who is affected most

Around nine million UK households have no off-street parking, so home charging on a cheap tariff simply is not an option. These drivers, disproportionately renters and flat dwellers, are paying the highest per-mile running costs of any EV driver in the country, often more than the equivalent petrol car would cost to run. We cover the practical side of this in EV charging without a home charger.

How to bring the cost down

• Use an app that aggregates networks, so you can compare live pricing rather than guessing at the plug.
• Subscribe where you charge often, since membership tariffs are usually cheaper than ad hoc rates.
• Avoid ultra-rapid chargers for routine top-ups if a slower, cheaper charger will do the job.
• Charge through salary sacrifice. This does not change the price per kWh, but it changes what that cost is worth to you: paid from gross salary, a pound of charging effectively costs 50p to 80p depending on your tax band.

What salary sacrifice does to the maths

The Charge Scheme lets employees pay for charging, at home, at work or across 76,000+ public chargers, through a single app and charge card, with the cost deducted from gross pay. On the £1,570 example above, a higher rate taxpayer saving 42% would bring the effective annual cost down to around £911, a saving of nearly £660 a year, without changing a single charging habit.

You can see the effect on your own numbers with our savings calculator.

Next steps

If you are an employer wanting to give your EV drivers a fairer deal on public charging costs, book a demo and we will show you what it looks like for your workforce.