Comparison
Campervan or caravan: an honest comparison
The two most common shortlists in British road travel rarely overlap on paper, and almost always overlap in the buyer's head.
- Van, 5 nights
- £0 extra vehicle
- Caravan, 5 nights
- Car retained
- Van depreciation
- ~8%/yr
- Caravan depreciation
- ~10%/yr
The question is not comfort
Buyers usually frame this as space versus convenience, which understates it. The real variable is how you travel. If your trips consist of two or three nights in different places, a van wins decisively, because pitching and unpitching a caravan four times in a week is work.
If your trips are a fortnight on one site with day trips by car, the caravan is the better instrument and roughly a third cheaper for the equivalent internal space.
Costs over five years
A £52,000 campervan and a £30,000 caravan plus a suitable tow car are not comparable purchases, but over five years the totals converge more than most people expect once you include storage, insurance, servicing and depreciation.
The caravan's advantage narrows if you must buy a larger car to tow it. The van's advantage narrows if it replaces nothing and sits unused for nine months.
More guidance
Review
The compact coachbuilt, reconsidered
Six metres, a fixed island bed and 400kg of payload. We spent three weeks establishing whether the shortest coachbuilt in its class asks too much of its floorplan.
Buying guide
Buying used: the first hour of an inspection
Most expensive mistakes in the used market are visible within sixty minutes, if you know the order to look in.