What it costs to run: building the honest annual figure

Running cost across this catalogue spans ₹0.20 to ₹4.20 per kilometre, with a median of ₹2.30. That is the fuel or charging line — what it costs to move the machine one kilometre. It looks trivial because it is written per kilometre, which is precisely why it gets ignored.

A kilometre is the wrong unit to think in. Nobody rides one. Multiply it by the distance you actually cover and it stops being small very quickly.

Those four bands are the ones the finder asks about, and this table is why it asks. A delivery rider covering 25,000 km a year spends roughly ₹57,500 on petrol in a single year — almost exactly the gap between the cheapest machine in this catalogue at ₹75,000 and the median at ₹1.33 lakh. One year of fuel, one whole step up the price ladder.

What matters when you are choosing is not the absolute cost but the gap between the two machines in front of you. Multiply that gap by your distance and by how long you will keep it — another thing the finder asks — and it stops being a rounding error.

Read the bottom right corner. For someone covering 25,000 km a year and keeping the machine five years, the energy gap between the petrol median and an electric machine is ₹2.63 lakh — more than the on-road price of every machine in this catalogue bar the seven dearest. For the rider in the top left, the same gap is ₹31,500 over five years, which will never repay a large premium. Same two machines, opposite answer. Petrol or electric works through the rest of that decision.

Fuel is the only running-cost line this site puts a number on. The rest you fill in locally, and nothing here will invent them for you. What it can do is say which lines belong on the list.

Service

Priced by your dealer or your mechanic, and it varies by city, by brand, and by whether the machine is liquid-cooled and fuel-injected or air-cooled and simple. Ask for the schedule and the price of every service in the first three years before you buy. A dealer who will not put that in writing has told you something useful.

Tyres and chain

Consumables on a distance clock. A pair of tyres and, on a chain-drive motorcycle, a chain and sprocket set are the two predictable replacements, and both arrive sooner for a rider carrying a pillion daily or riding broken roads. Scooters run a CVT belt instead of a chain — different part, same principle. Maintenance and service covers what makes them last.

Insurance and road tax

Both vary by state, and neither can honestly be quoted here as one national figure. Third-party cover is a legal requirement; own-damage cover is not, and whether it is worth buying depends on the value of the machine. Road tax and registration are levied by the state, which is why the prices in this catalogue are indicative on-road figures: the same machine costs different amounts to put on the road in different states. Electric machines are treated differently again in several states, and those schemes change, so check what applies where you will register it.

Charging, if it is electric

The ₹0.20 to ₹0.22 per kilometre for the ten electric machines here assumes a domestic tariff. If there is no way to charge where the machine sleeps, that assumption fails and the figure is not yours. Settle where it charges before you settle which one to buy.

For a machine kept three or four years, depreciation is usually the largest single running cost — larger than fuel for most of the riders in the first table. You never feel it monthly. You feel all of it on the day you sell.

This catalogue scores resale from 35 to 93. That score is an editorial judgement made by this project, not a measured residual value: there is no national used-price index sitting behind it. Treat it as a ranking of which machines the used market tends to want, not as a percentage of anything.

What the spread says is real enough. A machine with a following, a wide service network and parts on the shelf holds its value; one from a thin network does not. Electric two-wheelers are the honest uncertainty: that used market in India is young, and battery health is the one thing a buyer cannot inspect. Anyone who says they know how it resolves does not.

• Keeping a machine longer spreads the depreciation thinner. Ten years of ownership makes resale almost irrelevant and running cost decisive.
• Selling at three years makes resale the dominant line and running cost secondary.
• Condition and a complete service book are the part of resale you control. The rest was decided the day you bought.

Build it once, on paper, before you commit. It takes ten minutes and it is the only way to compare two machines honestly.

1. 1

   Your annual distance

   Check the odometer of the machine you have now and divide by the years you have had it. That is a better estimate than anything you will guess, and usually higher than people expect.

2. 2

   Fuel or charging

   Annual distance times the rupees-per-kilometre figure for the machine. This is the one line you can take straight off the spec.

3. 3

   Service

   The dealer schedule for a year, priced by the dealer. Add a margin for later years, because the first year is always the cheapest one.

4. 4

   Consumables

   A set of tyres divided by the years you expect them to last, plus a chain and sprocket set on the same basis if it is a chain-drive motorcycle.

5. 5

   Insurance

   Get an actual quote for the specific machine at your own address. It varies by state, by machine and by your record, so somebody else’s premium is not your premium.

6. 6

   Depreciation

   Price paid minus what you think you will sell it for, divided by the years you will keep it. Use the resale score to rank two candidates against each other, and remember it is an editorial judgement, not a valuation.

Add the six lines and divide by twelve. That monthly figure, not the showroom price, is what you are committing to. If it does not fit, the answer is a cheaper machine to run rather than a cheaper machine to buy — and those are not the same list. How much to spend handles the purchase side. The commute-cost calculator does the multiplication for any two machines here, at your distance and your petrol price.

This is the most useful conclusion in the guide, so it gets its own heading. A rider covering 25,000 km a year is shopping in a different market from a rider covering 3,000, even though both are looking at the same 64 machines.

At high distance the machine that is dearer to buy and cheaper to run wins, usually by a margin that is not close. At low distance the premium never repays, and the money is better spent on comfort, on brakes, or on a machine that fits you. Delivery and gig work sit at the high end, which is why the finder treats them as a separate use.