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Car Care

What your car costs to run

Car Care: Maintenance Tracker, a free car maintenance app for iPhone, shows what your car costs to run per month, per year and overall, from the fill-ups, services and renewals you log with their prices. Your fuel economy comes from the same fill-ups.

Every fill-up adds to the fuel cost

Log a fill-up with the gallons or liters, the price and the odometer reading, and its price counts as fuel in the car's costs. From the distance between full tanks, the fuel log works out your MPG, or L/100 km if you use kilometers. It also shows what you have spent on fuel and the average price you paid.

A service adds each job on the bill

Log a visit to a service center as one service, with each job at its own price. Labor or a shop fee gets a cost line of its own, and the service adds them all up to the total you paid. New tires, a wheel alignment and a shop fee on one visit make three prices, and a scan of the receipt fills in all three for you. Each one counts toward the car's costs, and the service history keeps them with the receipt.

Renewals and your own work add up too

Some costs never pass through a service center. Log an inspection, registration or insurance renewal with its price, and the price joins the car's costs for that month. The same record also starts the countdown to the next renewal.

An air filter you changed yourself counts the same way. Log it as a single record with its price, and that price joins the rest.

What the car costs per month, per year and overall

Every priced record adds up in the car's costs, split by maintenance category and fuel. Put this year beside last year, and you can see whether fuel or the new tires made the difference.

Add every car you own, and each one's costs come only from its own records.

The Car Care Cost Summary screen on its Yearly view, showing the total, the average per year, the all-time total, a year-over-year comparison and the costs by category.

Questions and answers

Which records count toward what my car costs?

Every record you log in Car Care with a price counts toward the car's costs. That covers each fill-up, each job and extra cost line on a service, work you did yourself, and inspection, registration and insurance renewals.

Do I have to type in every price from the service receipt?

No. A scan of the receipt fills in the service with every job and its price, ready for you to check before it is saved. Once saved, those prices count toward the car's costs like any you type in.

Can I see my MPG and what I spend on fuel in one place?

Yes. The fuel log shows your fuel economy in MPG or L/100 km, your total fuel spending and the average price you paid, all from the fill-ups you log. Fuel also appears in the car's costs as a category of its own, beside maintenance.

Get Car Care: Maintenance Tracker on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Free on iPhone, with every feature included, no subscription and no account to create.