Is vaping cheaper than smoking? When this question comes to your mind, you may consider an alternative to smoking. Apart from the high risks of health problems, the massive cost of cigarettes or rolls-up can turn off a lot of people.
For smokers, the UK is one of the most costly nations in Europe. Owing to the soaring tax and the cost of production, the expenses on cigarettes increase accordingly. Besides, it is of great pressure to make a living at present days since Covid-19 broke out. To loosen the financial burden on your shoulder, it is necessary to find a cheaper choice to switch from smoking.
The cost of smoking is more expensive than the cost of vaping. Why do we come up with this answer? We will prove it in the following paragraphs, including the different costs of both smoking and vaping, and the comparison between them.
How Much Does Smoking Cigarettes Cost?
To figure out the answer more representatively, we adopt an average price for a pack of cigarettes as base data. Look at the chart originated from the UK government below:
From the very beginning, a pack of 20 cigarettes can be bought for just £7.1 on average, by the year 2021, you need to pay £11.51 for a pack of tobacco products. From 2012 to 2021, the average cost of 20 cigarettes is in a stable and growing trend. It is less possible to decline.
Take the price of £12 per pack as a standard number, let’s make a calculation: if you are a heavier smoker, you probably use a pack of cigarettes a day, which means you should pay £12 a day, £84 a week, £360 a month and £4390 a year.
What a huge price it is. If you smoke 10 cigarettes every day, your annual cost will be £2195. Even if you have as little as 5 cigarettes a day, it's still going to set you back £1097.5 each year. All the amount of money mentioned can be used to buy more daily things if you quit smoking.
What Is the Price of Vaping?
Is the cost of vaping more than £4390 a year when getting the equal nicotine as 20 cigarettes? The answer is no, vaping does not need such a huge expense. Different from smoking, vaping involves multiple parts of costs, including a basic vape kit, e-liquid, and coils for replacement.
There are various vape kits in the market. The disposables win the majority of vapers' love because it is easy to use and requires no maintenance. However, despite no extra cost on vape juice and coils, by contrast to other types of vape devices, constantly buying a new vape for replacement still is a bigger amount of money.
Firstly, let’s take the type of disposable vapes for an instance. Based on the price of a popular but affordable Elf bar: £4, which is three times equal to a pack of cigarettes(£12), you may finish a single Elf bar in a day to reach the quantity of around 20 cigarettes. Go ahead, £28 will be spent in a week, £120 in a month, and £1440 in a year.
Have you seen the savings? It is about £2950 that can be saved up in your wallet if you switch to vaping from smoking.
For other vape kits which can be maintained in your own hands, like prefilled pod kits and refillable pod/tank kits, let’s take a refillable pod kit as an example.
Normally the average cost of this kind of kit(one purchased per year) is £20, plus the £3 cost of 10ml e-liquid(equivalent to 50 cigarettes) for filling and £2.5 cost of replaceable coils(one used per week), to match to a pack of cigarettes, you may spend £581 per year.
The Cost of Vaping vs Smoking
It is obvious that vaping expenses are cheaper than smoking costs. To make this conclusion clearer, here is a comparison chart given below:
