How Much Should a Car Service Cost in the UK?

The short answer

A full service costs £170 to £210 for a small car and £210 to £300 for a medium one, on the RAC's own bands. Which? asked owners in 2025 what they spent on servicing in a year. Dealer customers averaged £361. People who use an independent garage averaged £260.

Those figures measure different things. The RAC band is a price for one job. The Which? figure is a year's spend, parts included. There's no single "average", whatever a garage's blog tells you.

Each figure below is labelled by type: a survey of owners, one network's quote data or a live menu price you can check today. Compare a quote with the right one.

If a bill is already in front of you and looks high, read our guide to signs a garage is overcharging you instead. This page is for the budgeting stage, before you book. It sits in our ownership advice section.

Interim, full or major: what's the difference?

The names mean different things at different garages. So judge a service by the list of jobs, not the label.

The RAC's own lists are a fair benchmark. An interim service covers an oil and filter change and a check for leaks. It then inspects tyre condition, tread and pressures, brakes and pads, fluid levels, seatbelts and airbags, and wipers and washers. The RAC suggests one every six months or 6,000 miles, whichever comes first.

A full service goes further. The RAC's list starts with the oil and filter change, a leak check and fluid top-ups (power steering, coolant and washer fluid). It adds a seatbelt and airbag test, tyre and brake inspection, an exhaust check and a full suspension check. The RAC's interval is every 12 months or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first.

A major service is looser. The RAC describes it only as "a more extreme version of a full service, for a vehicle that hasn't had one in a long time". There's no standard itemised list, so ask the garage what's in theirs. Kwik Fit's menu, for one, has no major tier at all.

Your handbook beats all of this. The RAC's own advice is to "stick to your manufacturer's service schedule", and the six-month and 12-month intervals are generic. Some cars run longer intervals and some need shorter ones. Check the book before you book.

What should you expect to pay in 2026?

Three kinds of number exist. Know which one you're looking at.

First, published bands. The RAC gives these full-service ranges by car size. It doesn't say where the figures come from, so treat them as the RAC's own bands and nothing more.

Source: RAC, "Car service: how much does it cost and what's included?", page updated 29 July 2026.

Second, one network's quote data. The RAC also publishes average full-service quotes by make. These are RAC mobile mechanic quotes collected between 1 October and 31 December 2025. They're one channel's prices for one quarter, not a UK average for that make.

Source: RAC, same page. Quotes collected 1 October to 31 December 2025.

Third, a live menu price you can check today. Kwik Fit publishes "from" prices banded by engine size. The "from" matters, because the final price moves with the oil your car needs and the centre you book. On 25 September 2026 its menu showed these prices.

Source: Kwik Fit service pricing page, checked 25 September 2026.

Some garages price a service and MOT together. On the same day, Kwik Fit's interim service plus MOT started from £221.95 for the smallest engine band. That's one chain's bundle. But not everyone who services cars can offer one: the RAC points out that a mobile mechanic can't carry out an MOT.

The spread is wide, then, and these numbers don't join up into one range. The RAC's large-car band starts at £400, above every Kwik Fit "from" price, and a "from" price is a floor rather than a ceiling. So compare a quote with the figure of its own kind: a menu price for the same engine size, or the RAC band for your car's size. A quote well above both deserves a question before you agree to it.

Main dealer or independent garage?

Which? has the best evidence here. Between April and June 2025 it surveyed 63,334 car owners about 72,470 cars. It asked whether they'd used a professional mechanic in the past 12 months. Those who had were asked how much they'd spent on servicing in total, replacement parts included.

Read that carefully. It's a year's spend, and it isn't a menu price for one service. The gap works out at about £100 a year. Across models still on sale new, the pair narrows to £331 against £262, but that's a subset of the same survey rather than a second finding.

You'll see percentage claims online too, such as "main dealers charge 50% more per hour". Treat any figure without a source with care.

One sourced figure is old: Warranty Direct's labour-rate study put main dealers' hourly rate 44.9% above independents' in 2014. That's an hourly rate from more than a decade ago, not a service bill. The Which? pair is the recent, sourced number for what owners actually spend.

The usual worry about going independent is the warranty. Servicing at an independent garage to the maker's schedule, with parts and fluids that meet its specification, doesn't by itself void it. Our guide to main dealer servicing and your warranty covers the rules and their limits, including what happens if the work is done badly.

Are electric and hybrid cars cheaper to service?

There's less to do. A battery electric car (a BEV, with no petrol or diesel engine at all) has no engine oil to change. Kia's own UK servicing page says so, and adds that regenerative braking "eases pressure on the brake pads and discs". Volkswagen puts its all-electric ID cars on an inspection service every two years, with no mileage interval.

Hybrids sit in between. A full hybrid or a plug-in hybrid (a PHEV, which you charge from a socket) still has an engine, so it still needs oil.

Less work doesn't always mean a smaller bill, though. Search for "EVs cost X% less to service" and you'll find plenty of percentages. Some trace to dated UK research.

In October 2018 Cap HPI put electric cars' servicing and maintenance costs 23% below petrol cars' over three years and 60,000 miles. In March 2025 The Car Expert, using Clear Vehicle Data's figures, put electric cars around 29% cheaper to service than fossil-fuel cars over the first five years.

Neither is what owners actually paid. The Car Expert's figure is costed from the maker's schedule and leaves out wear items such as tyres and brake pads.

For a menu price, Kwik Fit's EV service started from £230.95 on 25 September 2026.

For what owners spend, the figures are Which?'s, and they're annual spend, like the dealer figures above.

Owners of electric cars up to four years old reported £351 a year on servicing, against £335 for petrol and £400 for diesel. At five to nine years old the electric figure fell to £283, with petrol at £305 and diesel at £350. Plug-in hybrids reported the most in both age bands, at £444 and £445.

How to keep the cost down

Start with the handbook. Book the service your car is actually due, at the interval the maker sets. A full service you don't need yet is money spent early.

Get the price in writing before you book, and ask what it covers. Only compare quotes for the same list of jobs.

Then comes the judgement call. I'd get a second quote before agreeing to anything added on top of the routine service, such as brakes, tyres or a "recommended" extra. Routine servicing is priced on a menu. Extras are where a bill can grow.

Dealers and networks also sell service plans. You pay a fixed monthly amount and the plan covers set services for a set period. Ford's Service Assure plan, for one, covers scheduled servicing on cars up to 10 years old for a monthly payment, at participating dealers.

That's a description rather than a recommendation: add up the payments and compare them with paying as you go.

Keep every invoice. A stamped book or a digital record is part of what a buyer pays for later. Our guide to what good service history looks like shows what to keep and why.

FAQs

The questions people ask before they book.