Free Mileage Log + Expense Tracker That Gets 2026 Right

What does the free tracker actually do?

Five screens, no learning curve, one file. It is the record-keeping half of accounting software — the part you have to do every day — without the part you pay $20 a month for and use twice a year.

Why do people lose deductions they already earned?

Not to the IRS. To a glovebox. The money is lost between the moment you spend it and the moment anyone writes it down, and the gap is usually about four months long.

Run the numbers on the mileage alone. A one-truck shop that drives 12,000 business miles in 2026 has an $8,892.50 deduction sitting there. At a 22% federal bracket plus self-employment tax, that is roughly $3,200 of actual tax. Nobody hands that back because they were audited. They hand it back because in April they cannot remember whether the Bellmont run was 90 miles or 130, so they put down something conservative, or they skip the whole thing because there is no log and they know what a made-up log is worth.

Expenses go the same way, in smaller bites. Forty dollars of blades at the counter, paid cash. A $225 permit on a card at a county office. Twelve months of a $95 phone bill that is 60% business. Individually forgettable, and together the difference between a return that reflects your year and one that reflects your memory of it.

The failure is always the same: it happened, nobody wrote it down, it is gone. Software does not fix that. A place to write it down that is faster than not bothering fixes that, which is why the whole design of this thing is amount, category, Enter.

What do the paid mileage and expense apps cost in 2026?

Real prices, checked August 2026, with what each one genuinely does better. Some of you should be paying for one of these. If you know you will never type a trip in when you get home, automatic drive detection is worth $168 a year and this page is not for you.

Sources: vendor pricing pages and app-store listings read August 2026; MileIQ increase history and the Everlance and Hurdlr complaints from user reports collected in the same pass. Prices move, often upward and often without notice — check before you subscribe.

The pattern is worth naming, because it is the reason this page exists. MileIQ more than doubled in under a year for a product that did not change. A contractor on r/smallbusiness put it plainly when his renewal went from $90 to $140: "I'm out and done with companies gouging thru subscriptions." The reply under it: "For real... The absurd levels of greed are baffling." Meanwhile the thing most people search for is not an app at all. Type mileage log template into Google and it finishes with excel, google sheets, free, pdf, printable. People want the document. They keep getting sold a subscription.

Is a free tracker enough for your shop?

It is enough if you are one to three people with one or two trucks, you file a Schedule C, you do your own books or hand a folder to a preparer once a year, and you are willing to type a trip in when you park the truck. That describes most of the people who search for a mileage log template, and for them this produces a better document than the $168-a-year app does, because the app is optimised for capture and this is optimised for the thing you hand over.

It is not enough if you need bank feeds and reconciliation, you run payroll, you have five drivers whose logs you have to police, or your accountant insists on QuickBooks Online access. Those are real needs and a browser tab cannot meet them. Pay for the software; the money is well spent. Even then, keeping the mileage log here and exporting a CSV is a reasonable move, because mileage is the one number accounting software still expects you to feed it by hand.

How do you keep a mileage log the IRS will accept?

The 2026 mileage rate, explained properly

For most years there is one number and you multiply. 2026 is not most years. The IRS set the business standard mileage rate at 72.5 cents on January 1 and raised it to 76 cents on July 1, a mid-year adjustment for fuel costs of the kind it last made in 2022. Every trip is priced by the rate in force on the day you drove it.

Rates as published by the IRS in its annual and mid-year standard mileage rate announcements at irs.gov. They apply to business use of a car, van, pickup or panel truck under the standard mileage method. Confirm the current figure at irs.gov before you file; this table is maintained by hand and rates change.

Worked out longhand

Take 12,000 business miles in 2026, 6,500 of them before July and 5,500 after.

• 6,500 × $0.725 = $4,712.50
• 5,500 × $0.760 = $4,180.00
• Total deduction = $8,892.50

Now the two ways people get it wrong. A spreadsheet with 72.5¢ in every row gives $8,700 — you have thrown away $192.50 of deduction. A spreadsheet updated to 76¢ in July but applied to the whole year gives $9,120, which overstates you by $227.50 on a document you signed. On a single 100-mile run the gap is $3.50, which is nothing. Across a working year it is a few hundred dollars in either direction, and only one of those directions is merely expensive.

The same trap catches anyone filing late or fixing an old year. Catch up on 2025 and every mile is 70 cents. Amend 2022 and the year has two rates in it as well. The tracker keeps the whole table and applies it by date, and the rate it used is printed on every line of the log and the CSV, so your preparer can see the arithmetic instead of taking your word for it.

What does the IRS actually require of a mileage log?

Less than people fear, and more than a note on your phone. Vehicle expenses fall under the strict substantiation rules, which is why this is the deduction most often lost outright rather than trimmed.

For each business trip you need three things: the date, the destination or the business purpose, and the business miles. That is it. Odometer readings for every trip are not strictly required, but they are the cheapest proof you will ever produce, so record them.

For the vehicle across the year you need: total miles driven, and how those split between business, commuting, and other personal use. Schedule C, Part IV asks for those numbers directly, and if you claim vehicle expenses on Form 4562 the same figures show up there. This is why the tracker keeps a business-use percentage per vehicle per year and prints those totals on the packet.

The records have to be timely. The standard is a record made at or near the time of the trip, while you still remember it. A weekly log built from notes in the truck is generally acceptable. A log assembled in April from card statements is not, and the penalty for a log that fails is not a haircut — it is the whole vehicle deduction.

Commuting is not business mileage. Home to a regular workplace and back is personal, however early it is and however much you resent it. Driving from your first job site to your second is business. Driving from home to a temporary work location outside your metro area is business. If you have a qualifying home office, the trip from it to a job site is business, which is one of the better reasons to have one.

Standard mileage or actual expenses: which is bigger?

Two ways to deduct a vehicle, one choice per vehicle per year. Standard mileage multiplies business miles by the IRS rate and calls it done. Actual expenses adds up what the truck really cost and deducts the business-use share of it. Most people pick one out of habit and never check the other, which is why we built the comparison in.

The paid-off work truck

14,000 business miles out of 20,000 total, so 70% business use. Split 7,600 miles before July 1 and 6,400 after. Fully depreciated, so no depreciation left to claim.

• Standard: (7,600 × $0.725) + (6,400 × $0.760) = $5,510 + $4,864 = $10,374
• Actual: gas $4,100 + insurance $2,100 + repairs $1,400 + tires $900 + registration $320 = $8,820, × 70% = $6,174
• Standard mileage wins by $4,200.

The same year, in a truck you just bought

Identical miles, but a $62,000 vehicle with $12,400 of depreciation to claim.

• Standard: unchanged at $10,374
• Actual: $8,820 + $12,400 depreciation = $21,220, × 70% = $14,854
• Actual expenses wins by $4,480.

Same driver, same roads, opposite answer. High miles and a cheap vehicle favour the standard rate. Low miles and an expensive vehicle favour actual. The only way to know is to do the arithmetic both ways once a year, which takes about two minutes once the costs are typed in.

The first-year rule that traps people

If you want the option to switch methods in later years, you have to use the standard mileage rate in the first year the vehicle is placed in service. Take actual expenses in year one — especially with accelerated depreciation or a Section 179 write-off — and you are locked into actual expenses for that vehicle for as long as you own it. On a leased vehicle, whichever method you pick in year one applies for the entire lease. A big first-year write-off can be the right call, but it is a door that closes behind you, so decide it with your tax pro and not by accident.

What the standard rate already includes: gas, oil, repairs, tires, insurance and depreciation. Deducting fuel on top of standard mileage is claiming the same cost twice, and the tracker flags it and leaves those entries out of the estimate rather than quietly inflating the total. What it does not include: parking and tolls on business trips, and the business share of loan interest and personal property tax. Those are deductible under either method, so keep logging them.

Which deductions do contractors miss most?

Preparers say the same thing every April. The money is not lost to the rules; it is lost to records. These are the ones that most often never make it onto a Schedule C.

1. Business mileage. The biggest single line for most trades, and the easiest to lose completely because it needs a log rather than a receipt. 12,000 miles in 2026 is roughly $8,900. No log, no deduction.
2. Cell phone and internet. The business share of a bill you already pay. Sixty percent business use of a $95 plan is $684 a year, sitting in a bank statement nobody categorised.
3. Small tools and consumables. Blades, bits, cords, batteries, extension leads, a new ladder. Individually forgettable, easily over $1,000 a year, and generally deductible the year you buy them.
4. Insurance premiums. General liability, commercial auto, tool coverage, bonding. Paid once a year, usually by bank transfer, and forgotten by the time anyone opens a spreadsheet.
5. Permits, licences and dues. Building permits, licence renewals, trade association fees. Frequently paid at a counter and never recorded.
6. Safety gear and protective clothing. Hard hats, steel toes, hi-vis, gloves, respirators. Deductible. Regular jeans and flannel are not, even if you only wear them on the job.
7. Software and subscriptions. Estimating apps, cloud storage, your website hosting, the plan-viewing app you pay $9 a month for. Small charges, real money over twelve months.
8. Advertising. Yard signs, truck lettering, lead-platform fees, printing, your website. All of it.
9. Dump and disposal fees. Cash at the transfer station, no invoice, no record. Log it the same day or it never existed.
10. Half of business meals. Lunch with the general contractor while you talk about a subcontract counts at 50%. Feeding yourself on a normal work day does not.

What is the rule on business meals?

Ordinary business meals are 50% deductible. The temporary 100% deduction for restaurant meals covered 2021 and 2022 only, and it expired — plenty of advice online still has not caught up, so check the date on anything telling you otherwise. To qualify at all, the meal has to have a business purpose and a business person present: you and a client, you and a sub, you and someone you are bidding work with. Lunch alone in the van because you were hungry is not a business meal, whatever the receipt says.

Practically, that means $2,400 of qualifying meals across a year is $1,200 of deduction, and a running total that shows the full $2,400 is lying to you about the size of your write-off. The tracker's Meals category applies the 50% haircut in every total, on screen and in the exports, so the number you plan around is the number that survives.

Is a deduction the same as a credit?

No, and the difference is roughly three to one. A deduction comes off your income before tax is worked out. A credit comes off the tax itself.

Take $1,000. As a deduction, it cuts your taxable income by $1,000. In the 22% federal bracket that is $220 of income tax. Because a Schedule C deduction also lowers your net self-employment earnings, it usually knocks off roughly another $141 of self-employment tax — 15.3% applied to 92.35% of the amount. Call it about $360 in your pocket, before state tax. The same $1,000 as a tax credit is $1,000 off what you owe, straight down.

Why it matters here: people hear "$8,892 mileage deduction" and mentally bank $8,892. It is worth somewhere around $3,200 in real tax at those rates, which is still a very good day's work for writing down odometer readings, but it is not the same number. Plan quarterly set-asides against the tax saving, not the deduction.

The honest limits

Common questions