RV Trip Cost vs Hotel Calculator

How much does an RV trip cost?

For a week, 500 miles each way, at the published averages: about $1,407 for a couple towing a travel trailer behind a half-ton, which is $201 a night all in, and $1,891 for a family of four. The same nights by car and hotel cost more, and flying costs most:

7 nights, 1,000 miles round trip at $3.50 gas. Truck 18 mpg solo, 60% of that towing; Class C 11 mpg against a car at EPA's 27.2. Campsite $71.32 (Insider Perks' private-campground index, Sept 2026), hotel $183.56 (CoStar's 2025 average $160.54 plus HVS's 14.34% average tax). Groceries at USDA's Moderate-Cost plan with dinner out on the RV trip; restaurants at the GSA meal rate with breakfast in the hotel room. Airfare $428 a person (BTS, Q1 2026, the average domestic fare across one-way and round-trip tickets) and a $46.50 car a day (GBTA's 2026 forecast). The RV's own cost is left out here; owning and renting come below.

Is it cheaper to RV than to stay in hotels?

A campsite at $71.32 against a hotel room at $183.56 is $743 over a week for the couple, and that gap is most of the RV's lead on the receipts. Food is the smaller lever once the RV crew eats dinner out and the hotel crew gets breakfast with the room. The drive runs the other way: towing at 10.8 mpg costs $130 more than the same truck solo.

Hotel trip minus RV trip; a minus is what the RV spends more. Beds = rooms against campsites and propane. The same trips as the table above.

When is a hotel cheaper than an RV?

When the trip is long and fast. The RV costs more every mile and less every night, so miles per night decide it. Take a couple in a Class C eating the same way on both trips, so the kitchen isn't counted, and push the same week farther away:

7 nights; Class C 11 mpg, car 27.2 mpg; every meal out on both trips. "Pulls ahead" is the trip length in nights where the RV's extra fuel has been paid back by its cheaper nights.

The line is about 560 miles a night, round trip: each night saves $106 and each mile costs $0.19 more. A week at a park 500 miles away is far below it. A week-long dash 2,500 miles out and back is over it, and there the car and hotels win by $205. A towed trailer's line sits higher, because the truck that tows it is the same truck that would drive to the hotel.

Is RVing still cheaper once you count owning the RV?

The CBRE report prices ownership per day of use. It takes the purchase price plus seven years of interest, subtracts the resale value and a tax benefit, spreads the result over a seven-year holding period (from a 2011 University of Michigan report), and divides by the 25 days a year that, according to Ipsos, an RV is used. Weighted across new and used buyers, that comes to $94 a day for a travel trailer and $233 for a Class C. Spread the same yearly cost over more nights and it shrinks:

CBRE's per-day figure × 25 days = the year. Its worked ownership tables have lines for purchase price, interest, resale value and the tax benefit only. Insurance appears once, in the summary's list of "published data" the estimate drew on; storage and maintenance appear nowhere in the report. Add yours if you know them. The week: the 500-mile trip above, at 25 nights a year.

Turn it around and ask how many nights a year the RV has to work. A couple's week like the one above saves $111 a night out of pocket in the travel trailer, so the trailer covers its $2,350 from about 22 nights a year. The Class C saves $102 a night against $5,825 a year, so it needs about 57 nights, 2.3 times the 25 days a year the study's average RV is used. On fewer nights than that, the trips still cost less at the register than hotels would, and the gap goes to the payment, the interest and the depreciation instead.

Is renting an RV cheaper than a hotel?

A Class C rents for about $225 a night in Go RV Rentals' price index (as of March 2026), and Cruise America adds 39¢ a mile, collected up front on its estimate of the miles and settled when you return the RV. On a 1,000-mile week that's $390 before any fuel. Rent plus mileage is more than the hotel room it replaces, every night, until the crew needs two rooms:

The week above with $225 a night and 39¢ a mile; rental fees for kits, cleaning and generator hours not included. Go RV Rentals puts a travel trailer at $128 a night, which assumes you already own a truck to tow it.

Renting makes sense as a trial before buying, or for a crew big enough to need several rooms. For the couple and the family of four in the table, the car-and-hotel week costs less.

How much does a campground cost per night?

A free night skips the campsite fee and still fills the tanks, so the tool adds a dump visit each time your tanks fill on free nights, at $10 (Oregon State Parks' pilot fee at 19 dump stations).

Every free night is worth the campsite rate, about $71 at a private park. Three of them in a week, with one dump on the way out, bring a couple's travel-trailer week from $1,407 to $1,203. How many you can string together is a tank question, which the boondocking calculator answers for your rig.

How much does food cost on an RV trip?

A day of food for the crew, from USDA's Moderate-Cost plan for groceries and the FY2026 GSA meal allowance for restaurants ($16 breakfast, $19 lunch, $28 dinner):

USDA, August 2026: adults $12.11 a day; children 6–11 eat 89% of that, applied to restaurants too. GSA's standard tier is $63 of meals a day; travel days count at 75%, as GSA counts the first and last day of a trip.

Two things to keep straight. The groceries are mostly food you'd buy at home anyway, so the RV's food line is barely a trip cost at all. And the saving from cooking comes from having a kitchen: a hotel suite with a kitchenette gets most of it too, which is why meals out can be set separately for each side.

What do RV trip budgets leave out?

Tolls are the line most budgets skip, CBRE's included. Turnpikes charge by axle and height, and a truck towing a tandem-axle trailer has four axles:

Ohio Turnpike fare calculator, 2026, Westgate to Eastgate (eastbound); the car's $16.00 matches the reported full-length E-ZPass toll. "Low" classes are under 7′6″ over the first two axles, and most motorhomes are taller.

The same road costs the trailer 2.1 times what it costs the car, so enter tolls for each side separately. Then propane: about 1.7 gallons a night with the furnace holding 68 °F against 50 °F outside, and 0.33 in summer, on the propane calculator's typical day. The fuel itself depends on speed more than most people expect. The fuel-cost page carries your MPG to the speed you'll drive and counts the stops.