The real cost of owning a bike (or an eBike)

What does riding a bike actually cost you? Most people buying a bike or an eBike look at one number: the sticker price. But that figure is just the down payment on a bill that keeps growing, ride after ride, through consumables, tune-ups, the odd unplanned repair, and, for electric bikes, cost lines a mechanical bike never sees at all. Thinking in terms of real bike maintenance cost — what it actually takes to own and use the thing over time, not just to buy it — is the only way to see where the money goes before it surprises you mid-season.

The purchase price is just the opening bid

The usual way people think about a bike's cost is flawed for a simple reason: it spreads the price over years of ownership rather than actual use. Two bikes bought at the same price can end up with wildly different costs per kilometre. One ridden three times a week amortises its price far faster than one that sits in a garage for months and only gets remembered come the first spring outing — often right when it needs an overdue service. The purchase price, in other words, is just the starting point of an amortisation that should be measured against real rides, not the calendar.

The consumables that add up fastest

On the routine maintenance side, the best-selling replacement parts have stayed the same for years: inner tubes, tyres, chains and brake pads. They're the backbone of maintenance cost for any bike, regardless of segment or frame price. On a bike ridden regularly, that's a modest sum per year if servicing happens on schedule; putting it off, though, almost always costs more later, because wear on one neglected part tends to damage others too — a chain stretched past its limit, for instance, chews through a chainring and cassette far faster than it should.

eBikes change the math

On the electric side, things get considerably more complicated. eBikes now make up roughly 20% of bikes sold in Italy, up from about 10% in 2017, and they account for roughly three-quarters of the bikes that come into a shop for repair today. On top of the usual consumables, you're now carrying a battery and a motor — components that don't get "serviced" on a fixed schedule the way a crankset does, but need ongoing monitoring, and that depreciate on their own logic. It's no accident that eBike warranty management became, in 2026, the single biggest operational headache for repair shops: proof that the range of things that can go wrong — and what fixing them costs — is simply wider than on a mechanical bike, and worth factoring in before you buy.

The cost you don't see coming: theft

There's one cost line many people forget until it happens to them: theft. Italy sees roughly 350,000 bikes stolen every year, adding up to an estimated €150 million in damage; it's no surprise that theft risk puts off 72% of people weighing up a new bike purchase. A decent lock, frame marking, or dedicated insurance aren't really an extra expense — they're what keeps a single bad afternoon from wiping out everything you've already put into buying and maintaining the bike.

Think per ride, not per year

The most honest way to get a real read on maintenance cost is to divide the total spend — amortised purchase price, consumables, servicing, any insurance — by the number of rides taken, not by years of ownership. It's a small shift in perspective with real payoff: it lets you compare very different bikes on equal footing, it rewards both frequent riders and regular maintenance (which, counterintuitively, costs less over time than maintenance you keep putting off, since it heads off cascading failures), and it turns a vague feeling — "this bike is costing me a fortune" — into a number you can actually check.

If you want to track your rides and find a shop you trust for maintenance, the CrankPal app makes it easy.