Walmart, Costco, And More: Which Brands Have The Best EV Charging Deals?

Anyone who has purchased an electric vehicle recently can take some relief in knowing that EV charging is finally taking hold in the U.S. This is more than just a question of where to charge, such as whether it is along your route and convenient, but also about finding the best price.

First, however, let's set the record straight on where to find the best deal on EV charging — it's in your own garage with a home charging station. Rates vary wildly depending on where you live and which utility you have, but U.S. News & World Reports recently stated the average at-home EV charging cost is around 17.45 cents per kWh (kilowatt hour).

Using per-kilowatt hour charging as a pricing model is a good apples-to-apples comparison. The problem, of course, is that you don't buy an electric car to have it sit in your garage all day. Out on the road, you want to be able to recharge quickly and at a low price.

Fortunately, your options for public EV charging are growing now that Walmart, Costco, and even Starbucks have announced they will offer more public charging stations. As you might expect, when there are more stations available, you can also find the best deal. Here's what we found for the EV road warriors.

Walmart has the potential to become the 900-pound gorilla when it comes to EV charging stations, mostly because the retailer — with nearly 11,000 stores in 19 countries across the world — has a massive physical footprint to make EV charging easier, more ubiquitous and less expensive. This rollout also doesn't include plans to introduce charging stations at many Sam's Club locations in the U.S. where there are about 600 stores currently.

The EV charging station roll-out was announced back in 2023, and the plan is to deploy hundreds of Walmart-owned charging stations by 2030. This rollout will augment the 1,300 charging stations run by third parties already installed at about 280 locations. We're now seeing the early signs of what it might all look like with eight locations for EV charging at Walmart stores in three states: Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

Pricing runs at about 42 cents per kWh, which is lower than every other EV charging station brand except Tesla Supercharger.

The other major retailer to announce EV charging plans is Costco. Late last year, the company installed EV charging stations in states such as Florida, California, Washington, and Colorado. Finding a good deal for EV charging at Costco makes sense, especially if you are already shopping there. After all, it's easier and cheaper to charge an EV when you are traveling if you charge at a location that is nearby and convenient.

Unlike Walmart, which is installing its own EV charging stations to augment third-party providers, Costco is partnering with Electrify America. That means the pricing is a little easier to predict, since that EV charging company has standard rates that run about 46 cents to 54 cents per kWh, depending on the location, or an average of 48 cents. 

The 46 cents per kWh charge is a little higher than Walmart but still a fair price compared to most of the convenience stores we found, which run around 48 cents per kWh or more.

Starbucks is partnering with Volvo and Mercedes-Benz to bring EV charging to some of its 32,000 locations, although the actual charging stations are powered by ChargePoint. There are about a dozen Mercedes-Benz branded charging stations in states like Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The partnership is planned to include at least 100 Starbucks stores across the U.S., starting with locations along the I-5 corridor on the West Coast.

The ChargePoint partnership makes the pricing a bit easier to quantify, although you will see per hour charge estimates instead of per kWh pricing. For instance, ChargePoint charges about $1.76 for two hours of charging in Denver. However, time-based charging can be hard to predict because you don't know how much range you are adding, whereas per kWh pricing helps estimate range. For example, the Chevy Equinox EV gains about 3 miles of range for each kilowatt hour.

Fortunately, you can use the PlugShare app to see pricing by the kilowatt hour for stations near a Starbucks, even if they are not the official vendors, which would be either Volvo or Mercedes-Benz. Just search for the Starbucks you want to use and check the pricing. For example, at a Starbucks location in Saginaw, Michigan, the price is 42 cents per kWh. At another location in Flint, Michigan the rate was 50 cents per kWh.

Overall, Starbucks locations are a mixed bag. You can find official charging stations using ChargePoint but you won't see the per kWh pricing. Using PlugShare, finding EV stations is easier and pricing runs as low as Walmart in some cases or about 42 cents per kWh.

In 2023, 7-Eleven embraced EV charging by launching the 7Charge pilot program that is now in eight states including California, Florida, Illinois, and Texas. They also launched in two provinces in Canada, Alberta and British Columbia. 7-Eleven also offers the 7Charge app, which lets you look up any station to see if it's available, check for the type of charging available or any service interruptions, and monitor the pricing.

In Chicago, rates ran about 48 cents per kWh for a fast charger. In Fort Worth, Texas, the rates went up to 56 cents per kWh for the same type of fast charger. 

Overall, the 48 cents per kWh charge is a little higher than both Walmart at 42 cents per kWh and Costco at 46 cents per kWh. Tesla still reigns supreme with rates that run as low as 25 cents per kWh.

Like 7-Eleven, the Pilot Flying-J convenience store chain is embracing EV charging and making it easier to charge up in your own neighborhood. Through a partnership with General Motors and EVgo, the chain has rolled out 850 EV charging stalls to about 200 locations in about 40 states. The plan is to deploy about 2,000 stalls at 500 Pilot Flying-J locations, although there was no specific timeframe for that goal. The convenience store chain has around 900 locations total.

Finding the best deal is easy since you can use the EVgo app and type in the Pilot store location number you want. For example, the Pilot Flying-J Store #118 located in Mauston, Wisconsin charges 58 cents per kWh. Rates were around that price for other Flying-J stations. Drivers are accustomed to using gas stations to fuel up, so if companies like Pilot embrace EV charging then it means we'll keep following our established patterns. 

This will be particularly helpful in terms of EV adoption as more charging stations proliferate at libraries, government buildings and everywhere in between. We won't need to wait at a Flying-J to charge fully if we know there's another location at our place of work, at another shop across town, and at home. In general, Flying-J stores charge a bit more than most. The rates we found were about 58 cents per kWh, which is higher than Tesla, Walmart, and Costco.

Another convenience store chain that is moving into the EV charging market is Love's with its 644 locations in 42 states. Most of those are gas stations, but the company launched EV charging at 36 locations in 14 states with plans to install many more in the coming years. This means 7-Eleven and Pilot both have some competition in the space. Love's has announced another five stations installing EV charging stalls soon including one in Colorado and four in Texas.

The Love's Connect app lets you filter so that you can focus in on locations that offer EV charging, and then break that down further and select only level one or level two chargers. Unfortunately, the app is somewhat limited. It does not show whether an EV charging port is available in real-time, but only lists EV charging as an amenity that's available. There is a workaround, though. Love's is partnered with Electrify America for the roll-out, so you can use that app to find a Love's location. You will need to type "love's" or "love's travel" when you search.

Pricing ranges from about 56 cents per kWh for locations in Florida and New Mexico to 64 cents per kWh for a location in Quartzsite, Arizona. That's on par with what we found at Pilot Flying-J stores but higher than what you will find for EV charging deals at Walmart, Costco, and Tesla.

Ever since Tesla opened its Supercharger network to EVs made by other manufacturers, it has become a clear leader in terms of price and number of charging stations. However, this is arguably less convenient if you can plug in at a Walmart or a Costco. Walmart claims that nearly 90% of all Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores, so Tesla will have some competition as Walmart continues to deploy EV chargers across the U.S.

This is the main problem for electric vehicles and the Supercharger network, as price is not the only factor. Tesla charging stations might cost less, but if you can charge at a Walmart or Costco while you shop, then you might decide to not drive out of your way to the interstate — especially if your non-Tesla EV is already hard to hook up to a Supercharger.

Tesla has 3,000 charging stations all over the United States, most of which are located along major highways and in densely populated areas. In general, Tesla charges as low as 25 cents per kWh. Those rates vary wildly, though, depending on where you charge. In some locations you will find pricing that runs around that 25 cents per kWh amount but at others it can be as high as 60 cents per kWh.

Tesla leads the pack with EV charging thanks to the sheer number of chargers and the fact that Tesla wants to make it more attractive to buy its vehicles and find lower-cost (and ubiquitous) charging options.