How much does vaping cost?
By the OffPuff team · September 14, 2026
The short answer
In the most recent nationally representative US survey (April-May 2023, 801 adult vapers), the average monthly spend on e-cigarettes was $82.22. That's about $987 a year - call it a thousand dollars. Your number could be half that or double it depending on what you vape and how often; the calculator below will tell you in ten seconds. But "around $1,000 a year" is the honest average to start from.
Why nobody feels like they spend $1,000 a year
Because nobody spends it at once. Vaping money leaves in $15 chunks - a disposable here, pods there - and small repeated purchases are the hardest spending to see. There's no monthly statement. This is why the average surprises people, and it's also why adding up your own number matters more than reading an average.
The math by device type
Device choice moves your cost more than almost anything else:
- Disposables are the most expensive way to vape per puff. A typical 600-puff disposable runs about $12-18. At 100 puffs a day, that's a new bar roughly every six days - $60-90 a month.
- Pre-filled pod systems sit in the middle: the device is cheap once, the pods are the subscription you didn't mean to start.
- Refillable tank systems are the cheapest per puff by a wide margin. In the US survey, exclusive tank users had meaningfully lower spending - and in Great Britain's five-year population study, people who mainly used disposables spent about 50% more per week than people on reusables.
The pattern to notice: the more convenient the format, the more it costs per puff. Convenience is the product being sold.
Calculate your own number
Defaults are typical US prices - edit them to yours.
Averages cited in this guide come from the 2023 US survey above; your receipts are the real number. The same math runs the meter on our homepage.
What quitting is worth, in money
This is the rare part of quitting you can count exactly. At the US average, stopping puts back about $82 a month, $987 a year, just under $5,000 over five years. At a heavy disposable habit - say $120 a month - it's $1,440 a year, $7,200 over five. Nobody's health improves on a spreadsheet, but this column of the ledger is unambiguous: the gear you don't buy is money you keep.
One honest note
OffPuff is a quit-vaping app in development - it doesn't exist yet. The calculator on this page is free and works whether or not the app ever ships, and the savings math on it is the same math running the meter on our homepage. No part of this article depends on buying anything.
Sources
- Cost Comparison and Spending on Tobacco Products: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample of Adult E-Cigarette Users (US, 2023 survey)
- Changes in expenditure on vaping in Great Britain, 2021-2025 (population study, 4,072 participants)
- Vybrant 2024 Vaping Trends Report (retailer order data, 8,500 orders)
How this was written: researched against the sources above, drafted with AI assistance, and reviewed by the OffPuff founder before publication. Not financial advice - your receipt history knows your number better than any article.