Is the Commute Worth It? Free Commute Calculator
Is the commute worth it? A job 30 miles away might pay more, but once you take off tax, fuel and the hours on the road, you could end up with less. Our free commute calculator uses live job adverts to show what your job pays within 5, 15, 30 and 50 miles of home, and how much is left after travel.
Work Out What Your Commute Really Costs
Enter your job title, your postcode or town, how many days a week you travel in and what each mile costs you. The calculator does the rest in seconds, using more than 150,000 live UK job adverts from the Bernoullis job feed.
How the commute calculator works
We find adverts for your job that show pay and were posted in the last 60 days, then group them by how far they are from your home. For each distance band we take the middle (median) advertised pay, work out rough take-home pay after income tax and National Insurance, and take off the yearly cost of travelling there and back.
- Up to 5 miles: jobs close to home, with the lowest travel costs.
- 5 to 15 miles: a typical town-to-town commute.
- 15 to 30 miles: a longer daily drive or train journey.
- 30 to 50 miles: big-city or long-distance jobs, where pay is often higher but so is the cost.
The band with the most money left at the end is marked as the best. If jobs near home come out on top, a longer commute does not pay for itself for your role.
What does commuting really cost?
Most people underestimate commuting costs. A 20-mile drive each way, five days a week, adds up to around 9,000 miles a year. At 25p a mile for fuel, wear and servicing, that is more than £2,000, and it comes out of pay you have already been taxed on.
Time matters too. The calculator shows roughly how many hours a year you would spend travelling to each band. Ten extra hours a week on the road is time you are not paid for.
What cost per mile should I use?
- Petrol or diesel car: 20p to 30p a mile covers fuel plus tyres and servicing for most cars. We use 25p as a starting point.
- Electric car charged at home: often 8p to 12p a mile.
- Train or bus: divide your weekly or season ticket cost by the miles you travel in a week.
- Parking or tolls: add them in by raising the pence per mile.
Is the commute worth it? Questions to ask before you accept
- Can you work from home some days? Change the days a week to see the difference.
- Will the employer pay travel costs or mileage?
- Is there a pay rise or promotion route that makes the extra miles worthwhile later?
- Would a job closer to home with slightly less pay leave you better off overall?
Commute calculator FAQs
Where do the pay figures come from?
From public UK job adverts in the Bernoullis job feed, which collects jobs from job boards, NHS Jobs, Teaching Vacancies and employers’ own careers sites every night. Hourly and daily rates are converted to yearly pay. It shows advertised pay, not what people actually earn.
Is the take-home pay exact?
No. It uses 2026/27 income tax and National Insurance rates for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and leaves out pension, student loan and other deductions. Scottish income tax bands are different. Use it as a guide to compare distances, not as a payslip.
Why does a band say "Too few"?
We only show a figure when there are at least five adverts with pay in that band. Try a more general job title, such as “electrician” instead of “approved electrician”.
How is the distance worked out?
We measure the straight line from your postcode to each job, then add about a third to allow for real roads. Travel cost uses the middle of each band.
Find a job that is worth the journey
Once you know how far you are willing to travel, use our CV job matcher to find live jobs within that distance, or run your CV through the free CV checker first. Want to see which areas are hiring most for your job right now? Take a look at our UK hiring heat map. For official figures on how people travel to work, see the Department for Transport’s transport statistics.
Bernoullis Group helps people find work in engineering, construction, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, IT and logistics across the UK. Get in touch and we will reply within 24 hours.
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