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About this tool
Compare wax, sealant, ceramic coating and PPF on true cost per year over your ownership period, not sticker price.
The Car Detailing Cost Calculator compares wax, polymer sealant, Teflon, ceramic coating, graphene coating and paint protection film on cost per year rather than sticker price, by dividing the ownership period by each treatment's real durability and counting how many times you would have to buy it. A carnauba wax lasting about three months is applied twenty times across a five-year period, which changes the arithmetic completely against a ceramic coating rated for two years. Routine washing is added identically to every option, so the difference between rows is purely the protection.
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Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Divides the ownership period by each treatment's real durability and counts the repeat applications.
Applies a body-size multiplier so an SUV quote is not compared against a hatchback price.
Uses realistic service life rather than marketing claims, and flags that machine polish is not protection at all.
It depends on how long you keep the car and how much you value the easy cleaning. A ceramic coating typically protects for around two years with periodic maintenance, so over five years you pay for it roughly three times. Compared against waxing every three months, it usually wins on convenience and consistency of finish, and can be close on cost — run both through the comparison with your own quotes.
Around two years of real protection for a professionally applied 9H coating, and about three for a graphene variant, provided the paint was properly decontaminated and corrected first and the car is washed with pH-neutral shampoo. Claims of five to nine years generally describe the coating's chemical potential rather than what survives real road use.
They solve different problems. Paint protection film is a physical layer that absorbs stone chips and light scratches; a ceramic coating is a chemical layer that resists bird lime, water spots and UV but stops nothing physical. Front-end-only PPF covers the bonnet, bumper and mirrors, which is where almost all stone chips actually land, at a fraction of full-body cost.
Yes, if the paint has swirls or scratches you want removed, because a coating locks in whatever is underneath it. Understand what polishing is though: it removes a thin layer of clear coat, so it cannot be repeated indefinitely on the same panel. On a nearly new car, a light decontamination and a single-stage finishing polish is usually all that is needed.
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