The Cheapest Vape Juice Format After The UK Vaping Duty — And Why Longfills Win
The duty is a flat charge per ml — it hits cheap juice and expensive juice equally in cash terms. That means the format with the lowest price per ml before tax keeps the biggest advantage after it. Here’s the maths.
£3.99 Bottle Post-Duty
£18.99 Kit Post-Duty
Same tax rate. Same rules. But because the longfill started from a much lower per-ml price, it finishes the race about a third cheaper than the small bottle — even after both have been taxed identically.
The duty is charged at the point the liquid is manufactured or released for sale, not on the final diluted product. So a concentrate shot, a nic shot, and a base bottle are each taxed on their own volume when sold separately — which is exactly why buying in bulk keeps the per-ml maths in your favour.
Anything bought and on the shelf before the duty kicks in was never taxed. This is the closest thing to a real loophole — buy your longfill bases and concentrates now, while pricing still reflects pre-duty costs.
Once the duty is live, it adds the same flat charge to everything. Your best defence is buying liquid in a format where the underlying price per ml is already low — so the fixed tax add-on eats a smaller share of the total. That’s longfills and QuickMix kits, not small 10ml bottles.
What Is The UK Vaping Products Duty?
The UK Vaping Products Duty lands on 1 October 2026, and it’s going to hit every single millilitre of e-liquid you buy. No exceptions, no loopholes, no “unflavoured liquid doesn’t count.”
The new tax will drastically increase the price of all e-liquids. Because the tax adds a flat rate of £2.20 per 10ml (plus VAT), a standard 10ml bottle will nearly double in price, while 100ml shortfills will jump by over £26.
For people already squeezed by the cost of living crisis, this sudden spike will make vaping significantly harder to afford and access
The resources below breakdown the costs you’ll be paying after October 2026, what you can do about it to reduce your costs, and there’s also a section highlighting why we decided to move towards longfill and QuickMix formats inside our store (they’re cheaper overall).
What the Vape Tax Actually Taxes
Let’s clear up a myth first, because it’s floating around and it’s wrong. Some vapers think shortfill base or longfill base liquid dodges the tax because it’s nicotine-free. It doesn’t.
HMRC has confirmed the Vaping Products Duty applies to all vaping liquid “whether the liquids contain nicotine or not.” That means your 10ml nic salt, your nicotine-free shortfill base, your flavour concentrate, all of it gets taxed the same way: a flat £2.20 per 10ml, before VAT.
So if anyone tells you longfills “skip the tax” because the base is unflavoured, they’re working off an old assumption that never made it into the final rules. Every millilitre pays.
The question is which format still ends up cheaper, and that’s where longfills actually do win, just not for the reason people think.
The Real Reason Longfills Still Come Out Cheaper
Because the duty is a flat amount per ml, not a percentage of the price, it hits cheap liquid and expensive liquid equally in cash terms. That means the products with the lowest price per ml before the tax keep the biggest chunk of their price advantage after it.
- Take a typical 10ml nic salt bottle at £3.99.
- Add the duty plus VAT (roughly £2.64 in real terms per 10ml, once VAT is applied on top) and you’re looking at around £6.63 a bottle.
- That’s a 66% jump, and it works out to about 66p per ml.
Now take a 120ml longfill kit, currently around £18.99. The same flat duty applies to every 10ml equivalent in that kit, so the total tax hit is roughly £31.68.
Post-tax, that’s about £50.67 for the full 120ml, working out to roughly 42p per ml.
Same tax rate. Same rules. But because the longfill started from a much lower per-ml price, it finishes the race about a third cheaper than the small bottle, even after both have been taxed identically.
The duty is charged at the point the liquid is manufactured or released for sale, not on the final diluted product. So a concentrate shot, a nic shot, and a base bottle are each taxed on their own volume when sold separately, which is exactly why buying in bulk keeps the per-ml maths in your favour.
Your Two Actual Moves Here
If you want to genuinely reduce what you pay, there are two things worth doing, and neither of them involves pretending the tax doesn’t apply to you.
1. Stock up before 1 October 2026.
Anything bought and on the shelf before the duty kicks in was never taxed. This is the closest thing to a real loophole, buy your longfill bases and concentrates now, while pricing still reflects pre-duty costs.
2. Buy in bulk formats going forward.
Once the duty is live, it adds the same flat charge to everything. Your best defence is buying liquid in a format where the underlying price per ml is already low, so the fixed tax add-on eats a smaller share of the total.
That’s longfills and QuickMix kits, not small 10ml bottles.
- If you’re mixing yourself, our Crystalize Bar Salt Longfills give you that bulk pricing without you having to source base and concentrate separately.
- Want it even simpler, no measuring, no syringes? Crystalize QuickMix Bar Salts use a plug-and-shake nozzle system, so you get the same per-ml savings with none of the faff.
Shortfill, Longfill, QuickMix: Quick Recap
If you’re new to the formats, here’s the short version:
- Shortfill: a bottle of unflavoured or lightly flavoured base, sold under-filled so you can add nicotine shots.
- Longfill: a concentrated flavour shot plus a nicotine shot, designed to be topped up to a much larger final volume, usually 60ml or 120ml.
- QuickMix: a simplified longfill format with a male/female nozzle so the flavour and nic shots combine directly, no separate base bottle needed.
All three now sit under the same duty rules. What hasn’t changed is the underlying economics: buying concentrated, bulk-format liquid still costs less per ml than buying it pre-mixed in small bottles, tax or no tax.
The Vaping Products Duty taxes every ml of vape liquid equally from 1 October 2026, nicotine or not, flavoured or not. Longfills were never going to dodge that.
What they do is protect the price gap that already exists between bulk and small-bottle formats, so once the flat charge lands, bulk buyers are still paying less per ml than bottle buyers.
Buy now if you can, buy in bulk going forward, and don’t believe anyone selling you a “tax-free” e-liquid story.
