LPG Cylinder Cost Calculator

Gas is the one household bill that ignores the calendar. Rent falls on the first, electricity arrives on a meter reading date, the internet renews on a fixed day. A cylinder runs out when it runs out, and that date moves every single time.

Which is why treating it as a monthly expense produces a number nobody pays. A cylinder that lasts 32 days comes back 11.41 times a year, not twelve. On ₹1,100 a cylinder that is ₹12,546.88 a year. The household shortcut — call a month 30 days, work out the monthly cost, multiply by twelve — gives ₹12,375.00, because it has quietly assumed a 360-day year and dropped five days of gas. The gap is about a third of a cylinder, and it runs in the direction that matters: you have under-budgeted, every year, forever.

The tool annualises on 365 days instead. Cost per day is the figure it leads with, because a cycle measured in days and a bill measured in months are different units, and the day rate is the only one the calendar cannot distort. At ₹1,100 over 32 days, cooking gas costs ₹34.38 a day.

An average month is 30.4 days. If your cylinder lasts less than that, every refill lands a little earlier in the month than the last one, and the drift accumulates until a calendar month contains two deliveries. On a 28-day cycle that happens about every 13 months: ₹2,200 out in one month against a ₹1,194.94 average, so the month you were not planning for costs ₹1,005.06 more than the month you were.

If your cylinder lasts longer than 30.4 days the drift runs the other way, and eventually a month has no refill at all. That is the pleasant version of the same arithmetic, and it is why a 32-day cycle feels cheap in the month it skips and expensive in the month it does not.

Neither case is captured by an average. The tool names which one you are in and roughly how often it comes around, because a ₹1,100 surprise is only a surprise the first time. Setting aside the monthly figure and letting it accumulate covers the double month without anything else changing — the money is the same, the timing is what breaks budgets.

The second mode exists because the more common worry is not budgeting, it is suspicion. A cylinder finished in three weeks when the neighbour’s lasted six, and the natural conclusion is that it was underfilled.

Usually it was not. A 14.2 kg cylinder holds 14,200 grams of gas, so a 32-day cycle means the kitchen is burning about 444 grams a day. Enter a consumption figure and the tool gives you the cycle it implies, which lets you sanity-check the two against each other. A two-person kitchen running 250 to 350 grams a day should see roughly 41 to 57 days from a cylinder; a family of four at 400 to 500 grams should see 28 to 36. If your measured cycle sits inside that band, the cylinder was fine and the difference is the cooking.

If it sits well outside, there is exactly one way to settle it, and it is not arithmetic. A cylinder is sold by weight, and every cylinder has its empty weight — the tare weight — stamped on the metal collar. Gross weight at delivery minus that stamped tare should equal the rated fill. Weigh it in front of the delivery person, because after they leave you have no case. A short cycle on its own proves nothing; a scale does.

The other explanations worth eliminating first are duller and more likely: a burner running yellow instead of blue is wasting gas, a worn regulator or a perished rubber tube leaks slowly, and a wide vessel on a small burner throws heat around the sides of the pot rather than into it.

Gas is the expense that causes arguments in shared flats precisely because of the timing. Whoever happens to be home when the cylinder runs out pays the whole ₹1,100, and then has to chase three people for their share of something they cannot see or verify. Do that a few times and the person who travels most comes out ahead by accident.

The per-person monthly figure fixes it without a ledger. Four people on a 32-day cycle owe ₹261.39 each a month. Collect that, and the cylinder is already funded whenever it arrives — no chasing, no arguing about who cooked more, and the double-refill month is covered because the collection does not stop when the cylinder is full.

It is a flat split, which is the honest way to describe it. If one person genuinely cooks every meal and another eats out six nights a week, the fair share is not equal, and no formula will settle that for you — it is a conversation. What the flat split does give you is a defensible starting number instead of a running argument.

One steady cycle and one steady price, neither of which holds for long. Cooking rises in winter and around festivals, and cylinder prices are revised periodically rather than fixed. Average two consecutive cycles instead of using your last one, and re-run it when the price changes.

Enter the price you actually pay. If a subsidy reaches you as a bank credit after the purchase, your real cost is the net figure once that lands, and putting the gross amount in overstates the year by the full subsidy on every refill. If it comes off at the point of sale, what you paid is already net.

The tool also assumes the cylinder is correctly filled, which is the thing it cannot check for you. It can only tell you whether your consumption is plausible; the scale at the door settles the rest.

Everything runs in your browser and nothing is stored between visits, so keep your own note of the delivery dates. Those dates are the whole input, and they are the one thing this page cannot remember for you.