How Much Are You Saving By Vaping?

Last fact-checked 28 May 2021 | Report a factual error on this article

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’ve put together a tool that shows you exactly 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 up to 90% 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 £125 a month by switching to e-cigarettes. Heavy smokers save much more than this (£275 a month), but even occasional smokers can save money (£50 a month or more) by switching to vaping.

Vaper Savings: Heavy, Light and Medium

The great news is that — even if you’re just an occasional smoker — you can save a lot of money every month by switching to vaping.

For this comparison table, we started with three types of smoker (a heavy smoker, an occasional smoker and a ‘medium’ 10-a-day smoker). We assumed that they would vape for 6 months, mixing their own shortfill, and that they would need to buy a brand new vape device to get started.

Monthly savings: vaping instead of smoking

Smoking frequency	Cost (Cigarettes)	Cost (Vaping)	Savings
Light (5 a day)	£76.05	25.65	£50.40
Medium (10 a day)	£152.10	26.65	£125.45
Heavy (20 a day)	£304.20	28.65	£275.55

This seems too good to be true — especially if you’re smoking 20 cigarettes a day — but we’ve double-checked our numbers and it’s accurate. In the next section, we’ll explain the sums behind our savings calculations

How We Calculated The Money You’ll Save

Every smoker behaves differently, which makes it hard to come up with an accurate ‘savings’ calculator like the one above. Some people smoke 30 a day, whereas some wouldn’t smoke 30 cigarettes in a week. The same goes for vaping. Some vapers will treat a single puff as a vaping session, whereas other vapers need to have their box mod with them at all times. To arrive at the stats above, we’ve made some assumptions about what the ‘typical’ smoker and ‘typical’ vaper does: 

• For our cigarette cost, we took the median cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes (which at time of writing is £10.14), and divided it 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 £2 at time of writing.
• The shortfill consumption rate for all vapers is based on the behaviour of our returning customers. Based on behaviour observed in Q1 of 2021, the typical reorder rate for returning customers is 100ml per month. The median price of a 100ml e-liquid bottle, at time of writing, is £14.99, so we’ve used that as our shortfill cost. 
• We also added the cost of a mid-range box mod starter kit (currently £39.99 — 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 £3 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