Brake Pad Wear Calculator

Work out brake pad wear instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Brake Pad Wear Calculator

Pad wear rate is thickness lost divided by distance, and remaining life is the material above the minimum divided by that rate. Only the friction material above the backing plate minimum is usable, so a 12 mm pad has about 9 mm of useful life.

Formula

Pad life

wear rate = (new - current) / km; remaining = (current - minimum) / wear rate

Worked example

With the default values below, Brake Pad Wear Calculator returns Remaining life of 21,636. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

New pad thickness: 12 mm
Current thickness: 6.5 mm
Distance on these pads: 34,000 km
Minimum thickness: 3 mm

Results

Remaining life: 21,636 km
Wear rate: 1.62 mm/10000km
Expected total life: 55,636 km
Pad used: 61.1% %

Step by step

1Values used
2Pad life
3Remaining life= 21,636 km
4Wear rate= 1.62 mm/10000km
5Expected total life= 55,636 km
6Pad used= 61.1 %

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do front pads wear faster?

Weight transfers forward under braking, so the front axle does 60-80% of the work. Front pads typically last half as long as rears.

Does driving style matter much?

Enormously. Urban stop-start driving can wear pads three times faster than motorway use, and towing or hill descents faster still.