How much money can I save by making my own e-liquid?

Tue 22 Mar 2016

ELFC breaks out the calculators to find out how much your bank account could benefit from DIY e-liquid.

Okay, let’s do the maths…...

For these examples we’re going to use our Decadent Vapours premium flavour concentrates, our 100ml nicotine concentrate (72mg) in VG and our 500ml bottles of PG and VG.
 
We’re going to compare them to a budget e-liquid brand charging £2.49 per 10ml bottle, a midrange e-liquid brand charging £3.99 per 10ml bottle, and a premium e-liquid brand charging £5.99 per 10ml bottle.

We’re using 10ml bottles as an example because of the forthcoming TPD regulations. More information about e-cigarette regulation can be found in our TPD section.

Using our DIY supplies, we know that 1ml of flavour concentrate will cost £0.43, 1ml of nicotine concentrate will cost £0.15 and 1ml of VG and PG will cost £0.03 (based on prices at the time of writing).

For our recipes, we’ll use 2ml of flavour concentrate as this is within the recommended mix percentage.

Let’s get mixing!

18mg 70PG/30VG 10ml Bottle Recipe:
Nicotine = 2.5ml
Flavour Concentrate = 2ml
PG = 5ml
VG = 0.5ml
Total Cost = £1.40

12mg 50PG/50VG 10ml Bottle Recipe:
Nicotine = 1.7ml
Flavour Concentrate = 2ml
PG = 3ml
VG = 3.3ml
Total Cost = £1.31

6mg 60VG/40PG 10ml Bottle Recipe:
Nicotine = 0.8ml
Flavour Concentrate = 2ml
PG = 2ml
VG = 5.2ml
Total Cost = £1.20

3mg 80VG/20PG 10ml Bottle Recipe:
Nicotine = 0.4ml
Flavour Concentrate = 2ml
PG = 0ml
VG = 7.6ml
Total Cost: £1.15


So how much can you save?

Vaping the 18mg e-liquid would save you £1.09 compared to the budget e-liquid brand, £2.59 compared to the midrange e-liquid brand and £4.59 compared to the premium e-liquid brand. That’s an average saving of £2.76 per 10ml bottle!

The lower your nicotine level, the more you save!

12mg users would save an average of £2.85.
6mg users would save an average of £2.96.
3mg users would save an average of £3.00.


How much can you save in a whole year?

Let’s say that a vaper using 18mg e-liquid at 9 watts goes through 30ml per week, a vaper using 12mg e-liquid at 15 watts goes through 50ml per week, a vaper using 6mg e-liquid at 25 watts goes through 70ml per week and a cloud chaser using 3mg e-liquid at 100 watts goes through 120ml per week. How much will they save in a year?

The vaper using 18mg e-liquid will go through 156 10ml bottles per year. Using our averages from earlier, that works out at a massive annual saving of over £430!!!

And yes, the more you vape, the more you save.

The vaper using 12mg e-liquid would save over £740.
The vaper using 6mg e-liquid would save over £1000.
And our cloud chaser? Well, he’s going to be over £1800 better off. Imaging how many new mods and atties that could pay for!


Remember, making your own e-liquid is about more than just saving money. It can be fun and creative too. Also, not all flavour concentrates require a mix as high as 20%, so the savings could be even higher.

ELFC sells everything you need to make your own e-liquid, including flavour concentrates from some of the world’s best brands, VG, PG and Nicotine.

Check out our DIY mixing guide and our DIY calculator for all the information you need to get started.