Garden and DIY, cost per cut
Cost per cut: petrol, electric and manual mowers
A mower gets used maybe twenty times a year, for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, so the fuel or electricity it burns is nearly irrelevant next to what it cost to buy. That single fact decides this comparison before a single litre of petrol is counted.
Some links on this page are affiliate links, which earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra, and it never changes which option comes out cheapest here, because the ranking is arithmetic. How this works.
The answer, before the table
A manual cylinder mower costs about 85p a cut. A petrol mower costs about £3.28, which is roughly 3.9 times as much. Nothing about that gap is fuel. It is almost entirely the price of the machine, divided across how long it lasts and how often it gets used.
| Option | Running | Cost per cut | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual cylinder mowerno engine, £90, push powered | 0p | 85p | |
| Corded electric mower1.4kW, £220, 15 minute cut | 9.14p | £1.94 | |
| Petrol mower125cc, £280, 20 minute cut | 13.5p | £3.28 |
The corded electric mower sits between the two, closer to the manual mower than to the petrol one. It has no engine to service and its electricity costs pennies a cut, but it still has a motor to buy, which the manual mower does not.
The working, for both ends of the table
Same lawn, same twenty cuts a year, for the manual mower and the petrol mower. The only thing that changes between them is what you bought and how long it lasts.
Why the fuel barely moves the number
A petrol mower burns a small fraction of a litre for a twenty minute cut, so its whole year of fuel comes to a few pounds. The purchase price, spread across a ten year life and twenty cuts a year, is a bigger number every time, and that is what decides this comparison, not the tank.
Why almost nobody buys the manual mower anyway
The arithmetic is not in question. What it leaves out is effort, which is most of the reason the manual cylinder mower is a niche product rather than the default. It only really suits a flat, fairly short, fairly small lawn. A slope, long grass, or anything larger than a modest garden turns a fifteen minute job into a considerably longer one, done by hand rather than by an engine.
Cordless battery mowers are left out deliberately: the battery is a large, wearing, replaceable cost that a simple energy price cannot capture honestly. Self propelled and ride on mowers are also out of scope, since both cost several times more and answer a question about lawn size rather than cost per cut. Every figure here also assumes twenty cuts a year. A mower used five times a year rather than twenty roughly quadruples its cost per cut, because the purchase price is unchanged and there are fewer cuts to divide it across.
Where petrol and electric earn their keep
A petrol mower does not care where the lawn is relative to a socket, or whether a trailing cable has to cross it. For a garden with no accessible power point, or one large enough that a cable becomes its own hazard, that convenience is worth paying for and cost per cut stops being the deciding factor. A corded electric mower is the middle ground: cheaper to buy and run than petrol, with nothing to fuel or service, provided the lawn is within cable reach of a socket.
The verdict
If the lawn is small, flat and close to the house, a manual cylinder mower is the cheapest thing here by a wide margin and the arithmetic says so plainly. Almost nobody buys one anyway, because a machine that costs £2.43 a cut more is also a machine that does the work for you, and that trade is a reasonable one to make. Between the two powered options, a corded electric mower beats a petrol one on cost at every stage: cheaper to buy, cheaper to run and nothing to service. Petrol earns its higher price only where cable reach or convenience genuinely matters, not where cost does.
Put your own numbers in
Prefilled with a corded electric mower. Put your own purchase price and lawn size in.
Cost per meal
Set the purchase price to zero for the running cost alone.
Questions
What is the cheapest type of lawnmower to run?
A manual push cylinder mower, at about 85p a cut once its purchase price is spread across its life. It has no fuel or electricity cost and very little to service, but it only suits a small, fairly flat lawn.
Is an electric mower cheaper than a petrol mower?
Yes, on both counts that matter: a corded electric mower typically costs less to buy than a petrol one and has no fuel, oil or spark plugs to pay for, only a small electricity bill measured in pence per cut.
How much fuel does a petrol lawnmower use?
A domestic petrol rotary mower burns roughly a quarter of a litre of fuel an hour, so a twenty minute cut uses well under a tenth of a litre. At current UK pump prices that comes to a few pence, far less than the purchase price contributes to the cost per cut.
Is it worth buying a manual lawnmower?
On cost, yes, by a wide margin: about 3.9 times cheaper per cut than a petrol mower. On effort, it depends entirely on the lawn. It suits a small, flat garden and struggles on anything larger, sloped, or left to grow long.
How much does it cost to mow the lawn each year?
At twenty cuts a year, choosing a petrol mower over a manual one adds about £49 a year, almost entirely because of the higher purchase price rather than the fuel.
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More garden and diy costs, or read how we work these out.
Prices used on this page
- Electricity, 26.11p per kWh. Ofgem price cap, direct debit, average of England, Scotland and Wales, including 5% VAT.. Ofgem energy price cap unit rates and standing charges. Checked 22 August 2026.
- Petrol, E10 unleaded, 168.14p per litre. UK average pump price, ultra low sulphur unleaded.. Weekly road fuel prices, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Checked 16 September 2026.