What is that leak costing you?
A leak nobody can see does not announce itself on the bill until the bill arrives. Put in the kind of leak and what you pay for water, and this works out what it is costing while it runs — and what finding it early is worth.
Your situation
Set from the leak type as a starting point. If you have measured the actual flow, use your figure instead — everything below follows from this number.
National mid-range figure for supply plus wastewater. Prices vary far more between municipalities than between countries, so use the rate from your own bill if you have it.
How long you think it has been leaking, whether or not anyone noticed.
Without remote readings, this is roughly how long a leak runs before anyone sees it.
What it costs
- Water wasted
- 324 m³324,000 litres
- Cost over that period
- €972
- Every day it keeps running
- €10.80
- If it ran for a full year
- €3,942
Found early vs. found at the next reading
The leak costs the same per day either way. What changes is how many days pass before anyone knows about it.
That gap is what a daily reading is worth here — not a discount on water, just fewer days of paying for water nobody used.
How this is worked out
Flow rate × hours × your price per cubic metre. The flow rates behind each leak type are order-of-magnitude figures from water-utility guidance, not measurements of your fixture — a "dripping tap" covers a wide range. That is why the rate is editable: the arithmetic is exact, the starting assumption is not.
An estimate for your own planning, not a bill or a survey. Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
Suspect a leak but cannot find it?
The way this gets caught early is a meter that reports on its own, so continuous overnight flow shows up as a flag rather than as a surprise on the next bill. Installers who fit remote-read meters do this as a service.
Common questions
- How much water does a running toilet actually waste?
- A toilet whose flush valve does not seat properly runs continuously, typically in the region of 150 litres an hour — about 3.6 cubic metres a day. Left over a quarter, that is several hundred cubic metres, which is why a single running toilet can double a small building's bill.
- How do I find the flow rate of a leak I cannot see?
- Take a meter reading late at night and another early in the morning with nothing running. Any difference is continuous flow. Divide the litres by the hours between readings to get the rate, and put that number into the calculator instead of the preset.
- Why does the water price matter so much?
- Combined supply and wastewater rates vary by a factor of five across Europe, and often vary more between neighbouring municipalities than between countries. The same leak that costs a few hundred euros a year in one place costs well over a thousand in another, so use the rate on your own bill.
- Would a smart meter have caught this?
- A meter that reports daily makes continuous flow visible: consumption that never drops to zero overnight is a leak, not a habit. It does not stop the leak, but it changes how long you pay for it — from the next scheduled reading down to about a day.