Vaping vs Smoking Costs

Vape vs Smoking

The costs of smoking are getting higher and higher with every year.  With more and more legislation coming in to prevent smoking, such as Wales banning smoking outside in 2019, it’s becoming a lot more expensive.

However, the price of vaping has largely remained the same and not experiencing the same levels of increases as regular cigarette smoking.

Switching from sticks to e-cigs can save you a lot of money. This vaping vs smoking guide will show you why you should consider switching.

How Much Does Smoking Cost?

Each brand of cigarette has a different price point than its competitors so for this article, we will use the average cost. In the UK, this is £10.40 for a pack of 20.

For smokers who go through a pack a day, the maths is simple:  

£10.40 per pack x 365 days in a year = a whopping £3,796 a year!

And that is just the cigarettes alone.  Think about all the extra costs that come along with smoking.

Firstly, there’s the smell.  Smoking leaves a stench that lingers on everything it touches; your clothes, your furniture, just everything.  You aren’t going to want to be smelling of smoke all day every day, meaning you will have to do more washing. This in itself is an added expense.

You’re going to have to buy more detergent and other washing related products and pay for more electricity and water to use your washing machine to clean the clothes in the first place!

If you smoke in your car, you will need to buy regular air fresheners to keep your seats stinking.

See where we are going with this?  The costs just keep on adding up and up.  Being a cigarette smoker is like running and maintaining an expensive machine.  

Add on top of that potential time off work for all the health problems that come from smoking, the costs will rack up while your income takes a hit at the same time.

By the time you add up the costs of the cigarettes themselves and all the other expenses on top, you could end up spending around £4,000 on smoking.

How Much Does a Vape Cost?

This will actually need to be broken down into multiple sections as there are multiple parts making up an e-cig.  It might seem a little complicated but in general, vaping is made of the following components:

• The e-cig itself
• Tanks
• E-liquid
• Coils
• Accessories

The E-cig Itself

People are staying away from cigarettes as everyone now knows the health risks that come with it.  The regular intake of tar and carbon monoxide lead to lung cancer and heart disease. Vaping is by far a healthier choice.

A good e-cig set, like this Innokin Endura T18 X starter kits, can be purchased for around the £25 mark but you can find cheaper alternatives that will suit you just fine.  This product actually comes with 2 e-cigs included so is great value for money!

Vaping will require you to buy a tank to store the e-liquid.  These will cost around £20 each. However, if you are looking at sub ohm vaping you will not need this.

So at the moment, we have spent around £45 on getting a good vape kit and a tank.

E-liquid

Next, you will need to buy some e-liquid.  These come in a variety of different flavours and taste great.  Not only do they taste far better than cigarettes, but e-liquids are also a lot healthier so it’s a win-win.

A 10ml bottle will usually last for about 2 weeks but for those of you that are heavy smokers and thus will be a heavy vaper, this will probably last you for about 1 week. 

Let’s say that we will be going through one 10ml bottle a week.  This means that we will be going through about 52 bottles a year. 

A great bottle of e-liquid can cost as little as £3.39 a bottle.  Not to mention that you can even find some deals, for example, there is one right now where you can get 3 different flavours for £10 so your options aren’t limited.  

So to last a whole year, we are going to need around 10 of these multipacks.  This adds up to £150 for a 52 week’s supply of liquid.

Coils

Regularly replacing your e-cig coil is very important.  Without new coils, the taste of the vape will become worse and worse until it burns out.  This will not taste very nice.

A coil can last for about 2 weeks before it needs replacing but it really depends on how often you vape and what kind of e-liquid you are using.

For our example, if we replace our coil every 2 weeks, that's 26 coils a year.

This pack of five costs £10.99 so we will need 6 of these to give us a few spares as well.  This adds up to £65.94 for the year.

Batteries

Since an e-cig is electronic (it’s in the name), it’s power needs to come from somewhere.  They won’t need replacing very often but let’s just buy one just in case.

A decent spare vape battery will cost around £10.

Total Cost

Time to add it all together.  We have:

1. £45 for the e-cigs and tank
2. £150 on e-liquid
3. £65.94 on replacement coils
4. £10 on a spare battery

Altogether, the cost of vaping is £270.94 for the year.

For the entire year! Vape prices are less than what it would cost you to buy one month's worth of cigarettes!  The money you save is the equivalent of an exotic holiday abroad with cash leftover!

So is vaping cheaper than smoking? Clearly, it is. Need we say more?