The short answer
At the Ofgem price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026, 26.32p per kWh, a 500Wh e-bike battery costs about 13p to charge from empty, and a 720Wh battery about 19p, before charger losses (Look Into, checked 22 October 2026). Electricity carries no VAT from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, so 26.32p is the full price you pay.
Per mile, electricity costs well under a penny: about 0.42p at Cycling UK's ballpark of 1kWh per 100km. The bigger running cost is the battery itself wearing out, which on a branded pack works out at roughly four times the electricity.
Prices and specs last checked by Look Into on 22 October 2026 · next check 2 January 2027 · how we picked
Find your battery's watt-hours
The number that sets the cost of a charge is the battery's energy in watt-hours (Wh). If the battery or listing only gives volts and amp-hours, multiply them: a 48V 15Ah pack holds 48 x 15 = 720Wh, and a 36V 13Ah pack 468Wh. Divide by 1,000 for kilowatt-hours, the unit your bill uses.
Then cost per full charge = kWh x 26.32p. For 720Wh that is 0.72 x 26.32 = 18.95p.
Cost per charge, by battery size
| Battery | Typical of | Cost of a full charge from empty |
|---|---|---|
| 300Wh | Small folders, lightweight city bikes | 7.9p |
| 400Wh | Budget commuters, compact folders | 10.5p |
| 500Wh | Mainstream branded e-bikes | 13.2p |
| 600Wh | Larger commuters, many Amazon bikes | 15.8p |
| 700Wh | Touring and e-MTB | 18.4p |
| 800Wh | Big-battery e-MTB | 21.1p |
| 900Wh | Largest packs | 23.7p |
Rate: 26.32p per kWh, the Ofgem cap for Great Britain, direct debit, 1 October to 31 December 2026 (Ofgem). Your own tariff may differ; multiply your battery's kWh by your unit rate instead. The standing charge is left out because you pay it whether or not you charge a bike.
Two things the table leaves out. Charging is never 100% efficient, so a little more comes out of the wall than goes into the battery; we found no maker figure for that loss we could cite, so the table shows the battery's own energy. And a battery is rarely charged from completely empty, so a typical top-up costs less than the figure shown.
Cost per mile
What a mile costs depends on how much energy the bike uses per mile, which depends on you, the hills, the wind and the assist level. Three ways to estimate it, from the most general to the most specific:
- Cycling UK's ballpark: "Ballpark figures suggest that e-bikes consume around 1kWh of energy per 100 passenger kilometres" (Cycling UK). That is 10Wh per km, so 10Wh x 26.32p per kWh = 0.26p per km, or about 0.42p per mile.
- A measured study: a 2015 study of e-bike energy use found consumption "from 7 to 12Wh/km" at 15 to 25km/h (Evtimov et al., Transport Problems). At 26.32p that is 0.30p to 0.51p per mile.
- Each maker's own range claim: for the six bikes in our best electric bikes guide, a full charge divided by the claimed range comes to 0.17p to 0.31p per claimed mile. Those are claims, and they are usually the optimistic end; see how far an e-bike really goes.
Whichever you use, electricity is under a penny a mile. For comparison, our EV vs petrol cost per mile tracker puts a petrol car at about 16p a mile and an electric car charged at home off-peak at about 2.2p, on its own dated inputs.
A year of charging
| Miles a year | At 7Wh per km | At 10Wh per km | At 12Wh per km |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | £2.97 | £4.24 | £5.08 |
| 2,000 | £5.93 | £8.47 | £10.17 |
| 3,000 | £8.90 | £12.71 | £15.25 |
Working for the middle cell: 2,000 miles is 3,219km; at 10Wh per km that is 32.2kWh; at 26.32p that is £8.47. Bosch's own battery guide gives "about 40 kWh per year" for an active e-bike commuter, which at today's rate is £10.53 (Bosch Battery Guide, 2018 edition, hosted by a retailer).
The cost that is bigger than electricity: the battery
A lithium-ion battery loses capacity with use. Shimano states a life of 1,000 full charge cycles for its BT-E6010 and BT-E8014 packs, after which more than 60% of the capacity remains (Shimano). We found no cycle figure on any Bosch page.
To show the scale, take a current Shimano 504Wh pack at £529.99 (BT-E8010, Canyon, read 22 October 2026) and assume it lasts Shimano's 1,000 cycles at 10Wh per km. That is 504Wh / 10 = 50km a cycle, 50,400km over its life, and £529.99 / 50,400km = 1.05p per km, or about 1.7p per mile. Applying Shimano's cycle figure from its other packs to this one is our assumption, and capacity falls as the cycles add up, so the real figure is likely higher. Even so, battery wear is about four times the electricity. Our battery replacement cost page has the prices we read.
Servicing, tyres, brake pads and chains are on top. We have not priced them here because we did not find published UK workshop price lists to cite.
Price your own battery
Put your battery's watt-hours into the appliance running cost calculator as a one-hour load (a 500Wh battery is a 500W load for one hour), or use the same 26.32p rate the UK Running Cost Index uses for every household appliance. The October 2026 price cap explainer covers what the rate is and when it changes.
Questions
Is charging at work free? To you, usually; to your employer it costs pennies a charge. Ask before relying on it, and follow any workplace rules on charging batteries indoors.
Does an e-bike recharge while you pedal or brake? A few listings we read claim the battery gains charge as you ride, but none gives a figure for how much. Plan on charging from the wall.
When will these figures change? On 1 January 2027, when the next price cap starts. Ofgem announces it on 25 November 2026. We rebuild this page within 72 hours of the new rate taking effect.
For the rules a bike has to meet before any of this matters, see UK e-bike laws. For how an e-bike compares with an e-scooter, see e-bike vs e-scooter.
Changes to this page
- 22 October 2026: page published at the 1 October to 31 December 2026 cap rate of 26.32p per kWh.