By VapeHQ · 9 min read

If you are weighing up whether to make a change, the money side of things is often where the thinking starts. It is a fair question, and one our friendly advisers hear every day. Understanding the real cost of vaping vs smoking can make a genuine difference to your household budget, and once you see the figures laid out plainly, the gap is often larger than people expect. We have served customers across the UK since 2012, and we believe in giving you honest numbers so you can make an informed choice rather than a sales pitch dressed up as advice.

This guide walks through the daily, weekly and yearly cost of a smoking habit, the upfront and ongoing cost of vaping, and a couple of worked examples so you can picture your own situation. If you want a wider view before you dig into the pounds and pence, our complete switching guide covers everything from kit choice to nicotine levels. Here we keep our focus firmly on the maths, so you can decide at your own pace whether making the switch makes sense for your wellbeing and your wallet.

The real cost of a smoking habit

Let us start with the figure that hits hardest. A typical pack of 20 cigarettes in the UK now costs around £16, and many premium brands sit higher still. Put that into a yearly context and the scale becomes clear.

If you smoke 20 a day, that is one pack daily. At £16 a pack, you are spending £112 a week, roughly £485 a month, and around £5,824 a year. For a 10-a-day habit, halve those figures: about £56 a week, £243 a month, and £2,912 a year. For many households that represents a holiday, several months of energy bills, or a meaningful dent in the weekly food shop.

It is worth noting that tobacco duty tends to rise each year in the Budget, so the cost of smoking has a habit of climbing rather than falling. Whatever you spend today is likely to be more next year.

The upfront cost of a vape kit

Vaping does ask for an initial outlay, and we think it is only fair to be upfront about that. Unlike a pack of cigarettes, your first vape kit is a one-off purchase that you will use again and again.

A good refillable starter kit, often called a pod kit, typically costs between £15 and £35. This is the device itself, including the battery and the part that holds your e-liquid. You can browse a range of starter vape kits to get a feel for the affordable options. Disposable vapes exist too, but they work out far more expensive over time and are less kind to the environment, so for value we usually point people towards a refillable device.

That figure can feel like a lot when you are used to buying a pack at a time. But spread across the months and years you will own the kit, it becomes a very small part of the picture. A £25 device used for a year is a little over 6 pence a day.

The ongoing cost of e-liquid and coils

The real running cost of vaping comes from two things: e-liquid and coils. Both are modest compared with tobacco, but you should know what to budget for.

E-liquid

A 10ml bottle of e-liquid usually costs between £3 and £4, and multibuy deals often bring this down considerably. How long a bottle lasts depends on how much you vape, but a moderate vaper might get through one to three 10ml bottles a week. You can explore the full range of flavours and strengths in our vape liquid collection. Nic salt e-liquids, which many people switching from smoking find satisfying, come in the same sized bottles at similar prices.

Coils

A coil is the small heating part inside your kit that needs replacing every one to two weeks on average. Coils typically cost between £2 and £4 each and are often sold in packs, which brings the per-coil price down, so your weekly coil cost usually lands around £1.50 to £3.

Add e-liquid and coils together and a typical weekly running cost for a former 20-a-day smoker comes to between £10 and £20. Lighter vapers spend less. Either way, it is a long way below £112 a week.

A worked example: 10-a-day and 20-a-day

Figures land better when they are personal, so here are two realistic scenarios. These are honest estimates, not promises, and your own numbers will vary.

The former 10-a-day smoker

Smoking cost: around £56 a week, or £2,912 a year. After making the switch, this person buys a £20 kit once, then spends roughly £10 a week on e-liquid and coils. That is about £520 a year on running costs, plus the one-off £20, giving a first-year total of around £540. The yearly saving sits at roughly £2,370.

The former 20-a-day smoker

Smoking cost: around £112 a week, or £5,824 a year. After switching, a £25 kit plus around £16 a week on e-liquid and coils works out at about £832 a year in running costs, plus the kit, for a first-year total near £857. The yearly saving here is around £4,967, comfortably over four and a half thousand pounds.

From the second year onwards, with no new kit needed, the savings grow further. This is where the cost of vaping vs smoking really tells its story over the long term.

Cost comparison at a glance

The table below sets a 20-a-day smoking habit against a comparable vaping habit. These are typical UK figures for illustration and assume a refillable kit with multibuy e-liquid.

Vaping figures exclude the one-off kit cost, which is usually under £35 and lasts a long time. Even allowing for it in full, the first-year saving remains close to £4,950.

How multibuy deals and refillable kits offer excellent value

The numbers above already show a healthy gap, but a couple of straightforward choices can stretch your money further still.

The first is choosing a refillable kit over disposables. Refillables cost a little more at the outset but a great deal less to run, because you only ever buy e-liquid and the occasional coil rather than a whole new device. Over a year this is the single biggest factor in keeping costs down.

The second is making the most of multibuy e-liquid deals. Bottles bought individually at £4 each add up, but buying in multipacks often drops the effective price to around £2.50 or less per bottle. For a regular vaper, that difference alone can be worth a few hundred pounds across a year. These are the kind of affordable options our advisers are happy to talk through with you.

Choosing the right device from the start helps too. Our guide on how to choose your first vape kit when quitting smoking can steer you towards something that matches your needs and budget, and picking the right nicotine level early, covered in our nicotine strengths explained guide, means you are less likely to chop and change.

The benefits that are not about money

While this guide is about cost, it would be incomplete to pretend money is the only thing that changes. Many people who have completed their own vaping journey tell us the financial saving was the prompt, but other benefits became just as meaningful.

There is no lingering smell on clothes, in the car or around the home. Public bodies are clear that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking, though it is not risk free, and the NHS includes it among the tools people use when stopping smoking. You can read more on the NHS Better Health quit smoking pages, and the charity Action on Smoking and Health publishes balanced information. For an even-handed comparison, our article on whether vaping is better than smoking takes an honest look at the wider picture.

Many people also find a sense of being back in control of an expense that once felt fixed. Seeing that weekly spend fall is its own quiet reward, and it makes the new routine easier to stick with. If you are still settling in, our notes on common switching mistakes and how to avoid them can help you sidestep the small slip-ups that cost time and money.

Frequently asked questions

How much does vaping cost per week in the UK?

For most former smokers, the ongoing cost of e-liquid and coils lands between £10 and £20 a week, depending on how much you vape. Lighter vapers often spend less. This compares with around £56 a week for a 10-a-day smoking habit and £112 for 20 a day.

Is the upfront cost of a vape kit worth it?

A refillable starter kit usually costs under £35 and lasts a long time, so spread across the months you own it the upfront cost is very small. Most people recover it in savings within the first week or two of making the switch.

Are disposable vapes lower cost than refillable kits?

They cost less to buy on day one but far more to run, because you replace the whole device rather than just topping up e-liquid. For value over weeks and months, a refillable kit is the more affordable option for most people.

How much can I realistically save in a year?

A former 10-a-day smoker might save around £2,370 in the first year, and a former 20-a-day smoker close to £4,950. These are honest estimates, but the savings are substantial in every realistic scenario.

Will I save even more after the first year?

Usually, yes. After the first year you should not need to buy a new kit, so your costs fall to just e-liquid and coils. With tobacco duty tending to rise each year, the gap between the cost of vaping vs smoking generally widens over time.

Can your advisers help me work out my costs?

Absolutely. Our friendly advisers in any of our 30 UK stores are happy to look at your habits and suggest affordable options that suit you, with no pressure to spend more than you need.

Summary

The maths is hard to argue with. The cost of vaping vs smoking favours vaping by a wide margin in every realistic scenario, with typical yearly savings ranging from well over two thousand pounds for a lighter habit to nearly five thousand for a 20-a-day one. There is a modest upfront cost for a kit and a small ongoing spend on e-liquid and coils, yet both are dwarfed by what a tobacco habit takes from your budget each year. Whatever you decide, do it as an informed choice and at your own pace, and know that our advisers are here whenever you want to talk it through.

More From Our Resource Library

• How to Choose Your First Vape Kit When Quitting Smoking
• Common Switching Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• Is Vaping Better Than Smoking? An Honest, Balanced Look
• Nicotine Strengths Explained: Finding the Right Level for You

This article is intended for adults aged 18 and over. Vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking but is not risk free, and is intended as an alternative for existing smokers. Nicotine is an addictive substance. The figures given are typical UK estimates for illustration and your own costs and savings will vary. If you do not currently smoke, we would not encourage you to start vaping.