Cost of ownership
Cheapest Car Brands to Maintain
Ranked from the CarEdge CarEdge Brand Maintenance Cost study (10-year), via The Car Guide (2024). CarOutlay adds the ownership-cost lens — what each result means for the real 5-year cost of owning the car.
The ranking
Cheapest brands to maintain over 10 years, per CarEdge. Lower is better.
- Tesla Cheapest brand No oil changes; far fewer wear parts. $5,867
- Toyota Cheapest mainstream gas/hybrid brand. $5,996
- Lexus Cheapest luxury brand. $7,786
- Mitsubishi $7,787
- Honda $7,827
- Mazda $8,035
- Nissan $8,088
- MINI $8,155
- Volkswagen $8,166
- GMC $8,429
- Kia $8,442
- Hyundai $8,714
Most expensive brands to maintain (10-year)
The costliest brands to maintain over 10 years, per CarEdge — for contrast.
- Porsche Most expensive Nearly 4x Toyota's 10-year cost. $22,075
- BMW $19,312
- Land Rover $18,569
- Jaguar $17,636
- Ram $16,802
- Infiniti $11,830
- Jeep $11,476
- Chrysler $11,304
- Dodge $11,079
- Acura $10,730
Why this matters for your cost of ownership
The brand badge is one of the cleanest shortcuts for predicting your long-run repair bill before you even pick a model. The spread is enormous: an average Porsche projects to roughly $22,000 in 10-year maintenance versus about $6,000 for a Toyota — a gap that can exceed the price of a used car. That difference doesn't show up on the window sticker or the monthly payment, which is exactly why it surprises owners. Treat brand maintenance reputation as your starting maintenance tier, then refine it for the specific model and run the full five-year math in our TCO calculator.
Open the 5-Year TCO calculatorHow this ranking is measured
CarEdge aggregates its model-level maintenance projections up to the brand and estimates the accumulated maintenance and repair cost of an average vehicle from each brand over 10 years. The figures cover scheduled maintenance and unplanned repairs but exclude fuel, insurance, depreciation, and collision damage. The underlying dataset is built from more than 16 million vehicles across 356 models and over $2 billion in real service costs. Japanese mainstream brands and Tesla cluster at the cheap end; European luxury and performance brands sit at the costly end, where complex engineering and pricier parts inflate the bill.
Source: CarEdge, CarEdge Brand Maintenance Cost study (10-year), via The Car Guide (2024). CarEdge's brand-level 10-year maintenance projections, as reported by The Car Guide and Yahoo Finance. CarEdge's underlying maintenance dataset draws on more than 16 million vehicles across 356 models and over $2 billion in service costs. View the original study ↗
Frequently asked questions
What car brand is cheapest to maintain?
By CarEdge's projected 10-year maintenance data, Tesla is the cheapest brand overall at $5,867 and Toyota is the cheapest mainstream gas/hybrid brand at $5,996, with Lexus the cheapest luxury brand at $7,786. Mitsubishi, Honda, Mazda, and Nissan follow. Japanese brands and Tesla dominate the affordable end of the scale.
What car brand is most expensive to maintain?
Porsche is the most expensive brand to maintain in CarEdge's 10-year data at $22,075 — nearly four times Toyota's $5,996. BMW ($19,312), Land Rover ($18,569), Jaguar ($17,636), and Ram ($16,802) round out the costliest brands. Complex engineering, premium parts, and specialist labor drive these bills up.
Why are luxury and German brands so expensive to maintain?
Luxury and performance brands use more complex engineering, premium components, and specialist labor, and their parts and service intervals cost more. They also tend to age less gracefully out of warranty, when repairs land on the owner. That's why brands like Porsche, BMW, and Land Rover sit at the top of the cost-to-maintain list while simpler, mass-produced Japanese cars sit at the bottom.
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