How FindLader calculates your cheapest way to charge

Your profile is the starting point

The calculator starts from four things about you, because those are what decide what charging actually costs in everyday life. The first is how many kilometres you drive per month — the further you drive, the more energy you need, and the more the kWh price matters. The second is your consumption, that is how many kilowatt-hours the car uses per kilometre; a small EV uses less than a large SUV, and the difference feeds straight through to the bill.

The last two are about where and how you charge. Do you drive fixed routes — for example the same commute every day — or changing routes criss-crossing the country? And how large a share of your charging happens at home at your own charger rather than in public? The more you charge at home, the less public prices weigh. From those four numbers the calculator builds a picture of your real need and works on from there.

What we calculate

For each option the calculator works out a total monthly price. The options are, on one hand, the subscriptions Danish operators offer, and on the other a pay-as-you-go scenario with no subscription at all, which serves as the baseline for comparison. The price of an option is the sum of two things: the fixed monthly fee for the subscription, plus the estimated energy cost for the part of your charging that happens in public at that option's prices.

Some subscriptions give free charging on the operator's own network for a fixed monthly amount. Those we show as a fixed price rather than inventing an artificial kWh figure, because a free-charging subscription costs the same no matter how much you charge. Other subscriptions refund your home charging; when an option does that, the calculator credits you for that home charging, so you see the real net cost and not an inflated one.

Coverage matters

A cheap network is only cheap if you can actually use it. So the calculator weighs coverage in — but in two different ways, depending on whether you drive fixed or changing routes.

On changing routes we don't know in advance where you'll end up, so we assess how likely it is that a network is there when you need it. Small networks with few chargers are demoted, because you'll often be somewhere they don't reach, while a nationwide free-charging network counts fully, because you can almost always get to one of its chargers. On fixed routes the question is different and more concrete: does the network cover the exact stretch you drive? Here it isn't about size nationally, but about whether there's a charger where you actually pass by.

Break-even and comparison

The result is a list of your options, sorted by what they cost you per month with your profile. So you see one number per option and can compare like with like — subscription against subscription against pay-as-you-go.

Besides the monthly price, the calculator also shows a break-even for each option: at how many kilometres per month it would start to pay off. That makes it clear why a subscription suits one driver and not another. Drive well above your break-even and the subscription pays for itself; stay below it and pay-as-you-go is usually cheaper. Move the sliders and the numbers update, so you can see where the line falls for you specifically.

Where does the data come from?

Prices are updated regularly, but they can change at the operator before the change shows up here on the site. So one rule of thumb always holds: the price on the screen at the charger is the one that counts if it differs from what you see here. Use the calculator to pick the right setup, and treat the specific kroner as a well-founded estimate, not a promise.

The numbers rest on a mix of public data sources and data we maintain ourselves. Stations and some prices we pull continuously from open feeds, while subscriptions and their terms are something we curate and keep up to date by hand, because they rarely exist in a machine-readable format. Specifically, we draw on:

• Live feeds for charging stations and selected prices — including OK's open DATEX feed, OpenChargeMap, Monta and Spirii.
• Curated subscriptions and benefits, which we maintain ourselves from the operators' own public price pages.
• Data is updated daily, so the map and the prices keep pace when operators change something.

What the calculator is NOT

The calculator is a decision tool, not a guarantee. It gives you a well-founded estimate of the cheapest way to charge with your profile, but it cannot guarantee the price at the charger — the operator sets that, and it can change. And it is not financial advice; it calculates charging prices, not your overall finances.

Finally, the most important point about independence: sponsored placements are always clearly marked as sponsored, and they never affect the calculation itself. An operator cannot pay for a better position in your result — the ranking is determined solely by what is cheapest for you. You can read more about that on the About page.