Car depreciation by year calculator
At 15% a year, a car keeps 85% of its price after the first year and 44.37% after five, because each year's loss is taken from what is left. Every year of ownership appears in one table. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Purchase price
- 30,000
- Rate percent
- 15
- Years
- 5
- Interest rate
- 0.15
- Residual
- 0
- Precision
- 2
- Resale value
- 13,311.16
A car starts losing market value the moment it leaves the dealer, and the drop is rarely a straight line. This car depreciation by year calculator projects resale value over the years you plan to keep the vehicle from two numbers every buyer already has: the purchase price and an annual declining-balance rate. Each year the remaining value is multiplied by one minus that rate, so early years shed more currency than later ones—the same pattern lots, insurers, and ownership-cost articles quote when they say a typical passenger car loses around fifteen percent a year after the first hit. An optional residual floor stops the curve from falling through a scrap or guaranteed trade-in minimum.
What declining-balance car depreciation means year by year
Straight-line depreciation would subtract the same dollar amount every year until the car reaches scrap. Real used-car prices do not behave that way. A new vehicle typically loses a large slice of sticker in the first twelve months, then a smaller slice of whatever is left, then a smaller slice again.
Declining-balance captures that curve with one percentage: each year the engine multiplies the opening value by the annual rate and subtracts that charge from the book, so a fifteen percent rate applied to thirty thousand is four thousand five hundred in year one and only three thousand eight hundred twenty-five in year two because the base has already fallen. That is not the tax double-declining-balance method, which forces the rate to two divided by a useful life and is built for ledgers.
Here you choose the market rate yourself—ten percent for a slow-aging truck, twenty percent for a fashion-sensitive compact, zero percent for a collector plate you do not expect to lose value—and the horizon is ownership years, not statutory life. The schedule lists every year with beginning value, depreciation, ending value, and retained percent of the original purchase so you can read both the cash drop and the fraction of sticker still sitting in the driveway.
The same closed form is what a spreadsheet does with value times one minus rate, except this contract also names the residual cap, half-up rounding, and the totals you actually need for a keep-versus-sell decision.
When a year-by-year car value projection earns its keep
Shoppers comparing a three-year keep versus a five-year keep use a car depreciation by year calculator to see how much cash is still in the vehicle when the loan is gone and when a lease residual would have forced a decision. Fleet managers and ride-share operators need a reproducible table they can pin in tests: same purchase, same rate, same years, same residual, same schedule, without a vendor workbook that silently switches to straight-line after year three. Failed validation does not consume balance.
This landing is not an accounting double-declining-balance schedule, not a loan amortization table, and not a make-model used-car appraisal: it is the ownership-side projection of sticker into a year-by-year resale curve from the rate you already believe.
What you can do with it
Road-trip car treated as a depreciating asset
Estimate how much of a tourer's purchase price will still be sitting in the driveway after the trip years, with an optional scrap residual as a floor.
FAQ
How is this different from double-declining-balance depreciation?
Tax DDB forces the rate to 2/useful life. This tool uses the market rate you supply and is built for car resale over ownership years, not a ledger life.
What does residual do?
residual is a floor such as scrap or a guaranteed buy-back.
Why does the car lose less money each year?
Because the rate is applied to the value that is left, not to the original price. At 15% a year the car keeps 85% after year one, 72.25% after year two and 44.37% after year five.
What depreciation rate should I enter for my car?
Use the market rate you expect: around ten percent for a slow-aging truck, twenty for a fashion-sensitive compact, or zero for a collector car you expect to hold its value. Type 15 for 15%, not a decimal.
How many years can I project?
Any whole number of years from one to fifty. For each year the table shows the opening value, the amount lost, the closing value and the share of the purchase price still retained.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/travel/car-depreciation-by-year \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"purchase_price":30000,"rate_percent":15,"years":5}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/travel/car-depreciation-by-year", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"purchase_price": 30000,
"rate_percent": 15,
"years": 5
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/travel/car-depreciation-by-year",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"purchase_price": 30000,
"rate_percent": 15,
"years": 5
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/travel/car-depreciation-by-year", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"purchase_price":30000,"rate_percent":15,"years":5}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"purchase_price":30000,"rate_percent":15,"years":5}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/travel/car-depreciation-by-year", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"purchase_price": 30000,
"rate_percent": 15,
"years": 5
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "travel.car_depreciation_by_year",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Limits
max_abs | 1000000000000 |
max_years | 50 |
max_rate_percent | 100 |
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
Successful API calls cost $0.002 per item; invalid input is not billed.
What declining-balance car depreciation means year by year
An optional residual is a floor, not a numerator inside the rate: if a lease residual, a certified buy-back, or a scrap quote says the car will not go below five thousand, later years shrink the charge so ending value never crosses that floor.
Input contract, worked example, rounding, and errors
Optional precision is an integer from zero through eight that defaults to two and controls half-up rounding on money and percent fields. Year one depreciation is four thousand five hundred against a thirty thousand opening value, leaving twenty-five thousand five hundred. Year two takes fifteen percent of twenty-five thousand five hundred, and so on, until year five ends near thirteen thousand three hundred eleven with about forty-four percent of sticker retained. POST a JSON body with three required fields. purchase_price is a finite number strictly greater than zero for the amount you paid or the financed amount you want to track, in any single currency you keep consistent with residual. rate_percent is the annual declining-balance rate as a percent of remaining value: fifteen means fifteen percent, not zero point fifteen, and must sit between zero and one hundred inclusive. years is the ownership horizon as a whole integer from one through fifty. Optional residual defaults to zero and must be a non-negative number no larger than purchase_price. Aliases are accepted in the same roles: price, cost, purchase, amount, or msrp for purchase_price; rate, depreciation_rate, annual_rate, or percent for rate_percent; ownership_years, n_years, or years_owned for years; salvage, floor, residual_value, or min_value for residual; decimals or dp for precision. Missing fields, empty strings, non-finite values, a non-positive purchase_price, a rate outside zero through one hundred, a non-integer or out-of-range years, a negative residual, or a residual above purchase_price fail with invalid_input naming the problem and are not billed. Example: purchase_price thirty thousand, rate_percent fifteen, years five, residual omitted yields a fifteen percent rate. The success body echoes the inputs, reports rate as a decimal, emits the schedule, and returns resale_value, total_depreciation, retained_percent, and lost_percent plus a formula string. This endpoint does not look up make-model residual guides, does not apply mid-year conventions, and does not mix currencies.
When a year-by-year car value projection earns its keep
Families planning a road-trip car they will sell after a long ownership stretch can set a conservative rate, add a scrap floor, and treat resale_value as the credit against the trip rather than pretending the car is a sunk cost of zero. Keep years in range, keep residual at or below purchase_price, pin the rounded schedule in tests, and you get a stable contract for buyer guides, n8n flows, and edge workers without standing up a residual-guide subscription of your own.
Integration use cases
Keep-versus-sell after a set number of years
Project resale_value at year three, five, or seven from purchase_price and a market rate so a household can compare remaining equity with repair and insurance cost.
Fleet and lease residual checks
Regenerate a year-by-year declining-balance table for a fleet batch or a lease residual quote and pin the JSON schedule in automation tests.
Technical questions
How does the car depreciation by year calculator work?
Each year the remaining value is multiplied by rate_percent/100 and that charge is subtracted, never going below residual. After years periods, resale_value is the ending book.
Is rate_percent 15 or 0.15 for a fifteen percent drop?
Use 15. rate_percent is a percent of remaining value (0 through 100). Fifteen percent per year is 15, not 0.15.
What does the car depreciation by year calculator cost?
The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.