What is the real cost of owning a motorcycle? This year I sat down and worked out how much it cost me to ride my motorcycle last season and was surprised by some of the answers I got. Some of the costs are more readily apparent than others, so I thought I would share my own experiences with the cost of owning a motorcycle.
So how can we break down the costs of owning a motorcycle? Let’s establish some spending categories:
- Initial cost (purchase + taxes)
- Gear
- Modifications (luggage, upgrades etc)
- Annual insurance
- Annual maintenance
- Annual Fuel
- Annual Tires
- Annual Training
- Annual Replacement cost
Initial Purchase: The Bike
This isn’t intended to be a buying guide. I’ve written a good article here on buying your first motorcycle. Let’s say for example that you want to spend $5,000.00 CAD on a used motorcycle.
Where I live, in British Columbia – Canada, you pay full Provincial Sales Tax on any purchase of a motorcycle. So to transfer the title to your name you pay $600.00 or 12% in tax.
That gives you a total purchase price of $5,600.00 CAD.
Initial Purchase: Gear
Once you have your initial purchase price out of the way, you need to look at gear. In my opinion, at a minimum you need a a proper motorcycle helmet and jacket and some sturdy leather gloves, jeans and boots that cover the ankle. Ideally, you can get most of what you need used on Facebook Marketplace or a local used website like Craigslist or whatnot. With the exception of the helmet, avoid buying new if you can, there’s a big premium for that. A new helmet will cost on average $500.00 CAD. A used jacket will cost $200.00 CAD. For budgeting purposes, just assume you will spend $1000.00 CAD on gear. If you spend less, well done!
Initial Purchase: Modifications
It’s very common to want to make some upgrades to your bike when you buy it. Heated grips, luggage or a windscreen are all very common upgrades. Important to factor those into your budgeting process.
How Much Will You Ride?
With all the initial purchases out of the way, we need to look at the annual costs associated with owning a motorcycle. To do that, you first have to try and figure out how much you will actually ride! Will you ride all year? Can you with your local weather?? Two years ago I put 20,000kms on my bike. Last year I did 25,000kms. Now that’s waaaaay above average but it really affects the cost of owning the bike. I’ll explain that later. Google tells me that the average mileage per year is 4,000 miles per year in the United States. That’s just over 6,400 kilometers per year. Some factors to consider are:
- Will you commute to work on it?
- Will you take one or more multi-day trips on it?
- Will you ride every week during your season?
Where I live, I ride about 9 months of the year on average. But I insure for the whole year in case we have a nice mild winter and I can cancel my insurance if the winter looks like it’s not going to be nice enough to ride.
Annual Cost: Insurance
To understand your insurance costs, in most jurisdictions there is a breakdown by engine displacement – cubic centimeters (cc) or cubic inches in the United States. Here, the breakdown is as follows:
- Up to 110cc – $
- 111 – 400cc – $
- 401 – 750cc – $$
- 751 – 1150cc – $$$
- Over 1150cc – $$$$
At 1037cc, my bike falls into the 751-1150cc bracket. I paid for the entire year lump sum with a combination of private and government insurance and it cost me $1194.00 CAD. It’s pretty expensive to insure a motorcycle here.
Annual Cost: Maintenance
Let’s just say for the sake of argument that you will ride 6,400kms for the year. What does that mean in terms of annual cost? One factor that is influenced by how many kilometers you ride is your maintenance costs. To estimate that you need to look up the maintenance schedule for your motorcycle. You can find that in your owner’s manual or online on a site like maintenanceschedule.net. Here’s what mine looks like:
So if you had my bike you would be doing at least one oil change putting 6,400kms on it. An oil change here costs roughly $200.00 CAD. Now an oil change is a pretty easy thing to learn how to do, so you can save yourself at least $120.00 labour by doing the work yourself. However, there’s other things that need to happen at different mileage intervals as you can see from the chart above. The 24km service involves pulling the tank and fairings off in order to access the valves to check them, so it’s a more expensive process. So over 4 years you could expect to pay a total of about $1,600.00 total for maintenance. The more kilometers you ride, the more you will pay per year over the life of the bike. In riding 25,000km I had to do 3 services in 1 year!
Annual Cost: Fuel
What I did was figure out how much I spent on fuel for the entire year and divided it by the number of kilometers I rode to come up with a per kilometer cost. My per kilometer cost was .07 cents CAD per kilometer. That’s probably a pretty average number given the year and size of the bike I have. So if you’re going to ride 6,400 kilometers, you can budget $450 CAD for fuel. It could be a bit more or a bit less, but it’ll do for budgeting. Obviously, the more you ride, the more fuel you will consume.
Annual Cost: Tires
If you are going to ride 6,400kms per year, you can count on a new set of tires lasting 2 seasons, maximum. So, every third season you will need to spend $600.00 on tires/labour. So, call it $200.00 CAD per year on tires. Again, if you put more kilometers on, you will burn through tires faster and this cost goes up.
Annual Cost: Training
You do you, but I recommend and budget to be able to afford 1 course per year. Here’s an article I wrote on the value of training. I spend $500.00 per season on training.
Annual Cost: Replacement
So you likely won’t keep your bike forever. I haven’t owned a bike more than 4 years yet. I try to keep upgrading. Also, your first bike likely won’t last more than a season or two before you want to upgrade to something different or more powerful. It’s just the way it goes sometimes. So say you keep your bike for 4 years and you put 25,000 kilometers on it. So it’s relative value has decreased by at least 30%. Let’s say you spent 5k on it and it’s now worth $3,500.00. You want to upgrade and in doing so will spend 10k on your next bike. So in 4 years you need to save $6,500.00 in order to make your next purchase. You could simply finance it, but either way you have to come up with at least $6,500.00. So split that over 4 years and that’s $1,625.00 per year you want to save ideally.
I was so proud of the 25,000 kilometers I put on last year until I realized what it was costing me. Not only in basic costs, but replacement. If I put 100,000km on the bike in 4 years, what will it be worth?? I’ll have to pony up more cash in order to replace it in 4 years. So one thing I added to my budget was kilometers. I don’t want to burn through my motorcycle in 4 years and so need to seek a little balance in life and find different ways to enjoy my life besides simply riding. (Or, make more money)
Summary of Costs:
So what does that leave us with?? Let’s use an example of a $5,000.00 CAD bike that is 650cc. You’re going to insure it for 9 months and ride it 6,400kms. Nothing is going to go wrong with the bike.
- Initial Cost + Taxes: $5,600.00
- Gear: $1,000.00
- Mods: –
- Insurance: $600.00
- Maintenance: $400.00
- Fuel: $450.00
- Tires: $200.00
- Training: $500.00
- Replacement: $1625.00
- Total Initial Costs: $6,600.00
- Total Annual Costs: $3,775.00
So a $5,000.00 bike is going to cost you over $10,000.00 in the first year and at least $3,775.00 per year onwards. You can expect your maintenance costs to vary over each year. Also, if you leave off the replacement cost and just deal with that when it happens, the annual cost is only $2,150.00 per year.
If you ride 9 months of the year, that means your monthly expenses are going to amount to $420.00 per riding month. If you were to dump that into a motorcycle account every month you’re insured, you would easily be able to keep yourself on budget and have a place to put money aside for unexpected expenses and for when it comes time to replace the bike. I use a google spreadsheet to keep track of things throughout the year so I can understand where I am at versus my budget. Here’s an example.
Now it’s time to talk about the big elephant in the room when it comes to motorcycle expenses. Food and drink. No exaggeration, I spent more on food and drink last year than I did on fuel, so over $2k. This year to reduce my costs, I am going to load my thermos on my bike and avoid buying coffee and snacks when on rides. It’s potentially a huge expense, especially when you ride as much as I do. So, my advice to you is bring your own beverages and snacks when you go out on rides with people and save your money for more important things, like your next course or motorcycle!
The point of this article was to lay out the criteria for budgeting ownership of a motorcycle. Hopefully this process gives you a basic idea of what it costs to own a motorcycle and helps you make smart decisions around budgeting and spending when it comes to your bike! Thanks for reading, ride safe!