How Much Does Van Life Cost? Our Family's Real Numbers

People ask us how much van life costs more than almost anything else. We’ve lived in our vans since 2020, first as a couple, then with Spencer, and now as a family of four with Archie. The honest answer is that it depends a lot on where we are and how we’re eating.

So instead of guessing a monthly number, here’s everything we’ve actually said on camera about what things cost, with the year and place for each one. Prices change, and our family has changed too, so I’m not adding numbers from different years together into one fake total.

Quick facts

• Our one full tally: 15 days in Los Angeles in February 2025, family of three, $2,718.02 total
• Biggest cost in LA: eating out, $1,576.59 of that
• Campsites: anywhere from free on public land to $70-something a night after fees at the priciest campground we’ve mentioned
• Van insurance (2025): about $90 a month on our old van, close to $180 a month on our new one
• Internet: satellite internet was $135 to $175 a month depending on the year; since 2026 we mostly use a 5G hotspot at $50 a month
• Not included anywhere: the van itself

What 15 days in Los Angeles cost us (2025)

In February 2025 we spent 15 days in the San Gabriel Valley in LA, and I tracked every dollar. Back then it was the three of us, Rina, me and Spencer. We were eating out basically every day, breakfast and dinner, because that area has so much good food. You can watch the whole video here.

Here’s how it broke down:

• Eating out: $1,576.59. Breakfast was $344.31 (mostly Hong Kong style cafes and pineapple buns), dinner was $1,112.17, and boba and desserts were $120.11.
• Groceries: $670.80. $287.44 at regular and Asian supermarkets, and $383.36 at Costco over three trips. We weren’t really cooking. This was yogurt, milk, snacks and other things we go through.
• Gas: $228.02. We filled up three times, about $76 each time. That was our old gasoline Sprinter, on regular gas.
• Tolls: a small amount, the rest of the total.
• Experiences: $65.80. The LA Zoo was $22, and a donation-based barn visit came to $43.80 because we also bought something. Almost everything else was free: playgrounds, and a handful of children’s museums we got into through a museum passport program.
• Utilities: $154.51. That covered our internet and charging at EV charging stations. Water was zero. We pay no money for water.

Our last night of that LA stretch: a simple soup with wontons, cooked in the van.

The grand total for 15 days was $2,718.02.

That number leaves out a lot. It doesn’t include the van, our vehicle insurance, our phone bills, or personal purchases like Spencer’s toys and clothes.

And LA was not typical for us. In my words from that video: “being in LA is more like an exception.” We normally don’t eat out every single night. Usually we cook in the van and spend our time exploring, so our spending is a lot lower when we’re on the move and out of a big city.

Steak and eggs at a Hong Kong style cafe in Arcadia. Eating out twice a day is why LA cost what it did.

Food: we don’t have a set budget

Someone asked us in a 2025 live Q&A what our monthly food budget is. The truth is we don’t have one. We watch what we spend, but there’s no set number.

It really depends on where we are. When we’re in LA, we eat out every day. When we’re somewhere like Arkansas, we cook every day. In big cities we eat out more, in the middle of nowhere we cook more, and it kind of balances out. We look at it over about a two-month stretch, because if we have a big expense like a van service coming up, we just cook more.

Stocking up at an Asian supermarket before leaving LA, because we knew we’d be cooking a lot more.

Where we sleep: campsites and free camping

What we pay to sleep depends on the night. A lot of nights cost nothing. We’ve camped for free on BLM land (public land) all over the West, outside places like Sedona, Joshua Tree, Great Basin and Great Sand Dunes.

When we pay for a campground, here’s what we’ve said about prices:

• 2024, Idaho: a primitive campground with a fire ring for $5 a night.
• 2024, Yellowstone: about $38 a night at a campground inside the park, no hookups. On the pricier end, but it was Yellowstone.
• 2024, Page, Arizona: an RV campground at $56 a night, which came to $70-something with taxes and fees. More than we’d normally pay, but it had a hot tub and showers we really needed.
• 2025, Quartzsite, Arizona: public land with a permit was about $40 a month, with water and a dump station. Nearby sites with no services were free.
• 2025, Glenwood Springs, Colorado: $48 a night for a van site with electric only.
• 2025, Minnesota: a gas station with full hookups for $10 a night. We wrote about that night here.
• 2026, Florida: one campground was about $20 a night with power and water. A campground near the Kennedy Space Center was $107 for two nights as non-residents, and that was cheaper than the $65-a-night campgrounds I’d looked at.
• 2026, Great Smoky Mountains and Mammoth Cave: $30 a night each, no hookups.
• 2026, Kentucky: about $50 a night after taxes and fees, and cheaper on weekdays than weekends.

A full hookup site in Florida in 2026, about $50 a night. The best view of all the campgrounds we stayed at in Florida.

When a viewer asked in 2025 what an average campsite costs, my answer was that we’d seen $30 to $60, and $40 to $50 is more typical. National park campgrounds without hookups were usually $15 to $25 a night.

Gas

Gas changes the most from month to month, because it depends on how much we’re driving. In 2024 someone asked what our monthly gas bill is. When we’re moving from place to place, we drive about two hours a day and fill up almost every day, around $20 to $30 each time. My guess back then was somewhere between $500 and $800 a month, and more in places like California, where gas was at least $4 to $5 a gallon.

Three fill-ups in 15 days in LA came to $228.02.

In LA, where we mostly stayed put, three fill-ups in 15 days was $228.02. Our new van runs on diesel, and in 2026 we’ve paid anywhere from $3.14 a gallon (the cheapest diesel we’d seen so far) to $4.99 in Indiana.

Insurance

A viewer asked us this in 2025. Insurance is quoted on the address where the van is garaged. Our old van was on a New Jersey address, and I was paying about $90 a month. That was full coverage, including coverage for the build. The new van is on my parents’ address in New York, and it’s close to $180 a month, about double. It really depends where you live and what coverage you want.

Internet and phones

Internet is one of our steadier bills, and it has changed a lot over the years.

• 2022: satellite internet was $110 a month, plus $25 to use it on the move, so $135 a month, unlimited.
• 2025: satellite internet was $145 a month in the LA video. I also mentioned $160 a month that same spring. The kit itself was about $500 to $600 when we bought it. We also had a phone hotspot plan for $25 a month that stays on all the time, for things like our security cameras.
• 2026: the unlimited satellite plan went up to about $175 a month, which felt too expensive. We switched to a 5G home internet hotspot for $50 a month and keep the satellite internet on standby for remote places.

Our own phone plans are separate. In 2025 I was paying about $80 a month for mine, and Rina about $50.

Showers and laundry

For a while we had a gym membership and showered there every other day. Truck stop showers are good, but in 2025 they were about $14 per shower, which is pricey. A hot shower and laundry are a big part of why we book a campground some nights. More on how we do it in how we shower living in a van.

Campground laundry in Kentucky in 2026: $1.50 a wash, $1 to dry.

Laundry is cheaper at campgrounds too. In Kentucky in 2026, a wash was $1.50 and a dryer was $1, so two loads cost us about $3. At a regular laundromat, the big machine we need is usually about $10. With two kids there’s a lot of laundry, so that adds up. Here’s how we do laundry with two kids.

Van maintenance and repairs

This is the part people forget. On our old van, the scheduled service alternated between two levels, roughly every 10,000 miles or once a year. In 2025 I said the smaller one was about $500 to $600, and the bigger one could be around $1,000.

Repairs come on top of that. In 2025 our radiator had to be replaced, and that was about $1,800 out of pocket. In 2026, our new van’s first scheduled service was $517 at one of the cheaper shops in New Jersey. Another shop had quoted around $700.

Parks, zoos and museums

We go to a lot of these places with the boys. A few things keep admission down:

• National parks pass (2025): $80 a year. We go to about 10 to 15 national parks a year, and most charge around $30 to get in, so it pays for itself.
• Zoo membership (2025): ours is part of a reciprocal program that gives 50% off other member zoos. At one stop in Phoenix that came to about $8 per person, and the membership has already paid for itself.
• Science and children’s museums (2026): our home museum in New York is part of a reciprocal program that gets us into many science centers for free. One museum center in Cincinnati would have been about $75 a day for the three of us, and we went two days. If we paid full admission everywhere, I figured it would easily be $500 to $800 a month.

So, how much does van life cost?

The one period I tracked closely was 15 days in LA in 2025: $2,718.02, more than half of it on eating out. Away from big cities, we cook more and spend less. Everything else moves month to month: campsites, gas, insurance, internet, and maintenance that can run close to $2,000 when something breaks.

If you’re thinking about it, the number that matters most is your own: how much you’ll drive, and how often you’ll eat out. We’re always happy to answer more questions in the comments. We have a whole video on our LA spending: How Much Vanlife in Los Angeles Cost Us.