How much does vaping
actually cost you?

How much vaping costs a year in the UK

A refillable pod kit runs to roughly £300 to £500 a year, depending on how much you vape. The device itself is cheap. The ongoing cost is e-liquid and coils, and since 1 October 2026 the Vaping Products Duty sits on top of that.

The upfront cost

A starter pod kit costs between about £10 and £25, and you buy it once. A more advanced kit costs more, but for most vapers the device is a small one-off next to what they spend on liquid over a year.

The ongoing cost

This is where the money goes. A typical refillable vaper spends somewhere around £15 a month on e-liquid and £10 a month on replacement coils, which puts the running cost near £300 a year before the duty. Prefilled pod kits are simpler but work out dearer over time, because you pay for the pod and the liquid together. Heavier vapers getting through 10ml a day sit closer to £50 to £70 a month.

What the duty adds

£2.20 on every 10ml of e-liquid, with VAT on top, so about £2.64 a bottle at the till. A nic salt vaper buying two or three 10ml bottles a week picks up an extra £230 to £345 a year. Shortfills are hit hardest, because the duty is charged on volume whether or not the liquid contains nicotine. Hardware is not taxed, only the liquid. With the duty in, a refillable kit is more like £480 a year. The calculator above does this sum for your own products.

The hidden extras

The headline figures miss the small stuff. Replacement pods, spare batteries, chargers and the odd new device when one dies all add up over a year. Sweet liquids gunk up coils faster, which means buying more of them.

For context

A pack of cigarettes now averages around £16. A ten-a-day smoker spends close to £2,920 a year, so vaping stays far cheaper even after the duty. That gap is the reason the duty was set where it was.

Where a melt sits

Oral nicotine takes the device costs off the table. A melt has no device behind it, so there are no coils or e-liquid to keep buying, and it is not a vaping liquid, so the duty does not touch it. NYXE Melts are £7.99 for twenty when they launch in 2027.

What the duty adds, by product

Every other UK vape tax calculator asks you for a volume in millilitres. Most people do not know theirs, because the number is not on the front of the box. These are the real volumes, taken from retailer specification sheets.

The big-puff kits are the surprise. A Lost Mary BM6000 refill pack is a 2ml prefilled pod plus a 10ml refill container, so 12ml, and the duty applies to all of it. That is more than a 10ml bottle of nic salt carries, on a product most people think of as one unit rather than twelve millilitres.

How this is worked out

Vaping Products Duty is charged at £2.20 per 10 millilitres of vaping liquid, regardless of how much nicotine is contained. That is 22p per ml. It starts on 1 October 2026, alongside the Vaping Duty Stamps Scheme.

VAT is then charged on the duty as well as on the product, so the amount added at the till is the duty plus 20%. On a 10ml bottle that is £2.20 of duty and 44p of VAT, so £2.64. UK shelf prices already include VAT, which is why this calculator adds the duty and its VAT to the price you pay today rather than asking you to work backwards from a pre-VAT figure.

Why your format matters more than the headline

UK law caps a nicotine-containing pod or tank at 2ml and a refill container at 10ml. Big-puff kits get around that by pairing a 2ml prefilled pod with a separate refill container. A Lost Mary BM6000 refill pack is a 2ml pod plus a 10ml container, so 12ml in total, and the duty applies to all of it.

Shortfills are the sharpest end of this. They are nicotine-free, which is why they come in 50ml and 100ml bottles, but the duty is charged per millilitre of vaping liquid whether it contains nicotine or not. A 100ml shortfill picks up £22 of duty and £4.40 of VAT on that duty, so £26.40 added to a bottle that often sells for less than £15 today.

What is outside the duty

The duty is defined on liquid intended to be vapourised. Oral nicotine products, including pouches, lozenges and melts, are not vaping liquid and fall outside its scope. Medical products and tobacco products are also excluded.

Product volumes taken from retailer specification sheets and checked on 20 September 2026. Prices shown are typical retail prices and are editable, because they vary by retailer and will move. Duty and VAT figures are exact. This is general information, not tax advice.

Sources: HMRC, Introduction of Vaping Products Duty from 1 October 2026. Related reading: the 2026 UK vape tax explained.