Disposable and refillable vapes: the cost per millilitre

Is it cheaper to use disposable or refillable vapes?

Millilitre for millilitre, a refillable system is usually the cheaper of the two once federal excise duty is counted, and the reason is mechanical rather than a matter of brand or price. Canada’s vaping duty is charged on each container by itself, not on the total volume of e-liquid a buyer ends up with, so splitting the same amount of liquid across more containers adds duty every time a new container starts.

That single rule — duty by container, not by millilitre — explains the whole gap. It is worth working through with real numbers rather than taking it on faith.

How the federal vaping duty actually works

Schedule 8 of the Excise Act, 2001 taxes every immediate vaping container on its own: one disposable, one pod, one bottle. The formula is $1.12 for every 2 mL or part of it, up to the first 10 mL of that container, then $1.12 for every additional 10 mL or part of it after that. That per-increment rate has been unchanged since 2024-07-01 and is not adjusted for inflation.

The threshold at 10 mL is what makes container size matter. Below it, every 2 mL adds a full increment; above it, an entire additional 10 mL adds only one. A large container therefore accrues duty more slowly, per millilitre, than a small one — and a disposable is, almost by definition, the smaller container. The mechanics behind the rate itself are covered in full in vape tax in Canada, explained.

The arithmetic: a five-pack of disposables against one bottle

Take 5 disposables holding 5 mL of e-liquid each — 25 mL in total — against one refillable bottle holding that same 25 mL. Each disposable is billed as its own container: 5 mL rounds up to 3 increments of 2 mL, so duty on one disposable is $1.12 × 3 = $3.36. Multiplied by 5 disposables, the pack attracts $16.80 in federal duty.

The 25 mL bottle is one container. Its first 10 mL cost $1.12 × 5 = $5.60; the remaining 15 mL round up to 2 increments of 10 mL, adding $1.12 × 2 = $2.24. Total duty on the bottle: $7.84.

Same 25 mL of e-liquid, two different totals: $16.80 split across five containers, against $7.84 in one. Scaled to a common basis, that is $67.20 of duty per 100 mL bought as disposables, against $31.36 per 100 mL bought as one bottle — 2.1 times as much duty for an identical volume of liquid. Nothing about the liquid changed; only the number of containers it was divided into did.

Does buying a bigger bottle keep lowering the cost?

Up to a point set by law, yes. Past the first 10 mL, duty grows by $1.12 per additional 10 mL rather than per 2 mL, so a larger single container keeps adding proportionally less duty as it grows. That saving has a ceiling in two provinces: by law, a refill bottle cannot exceed 30 mL in British Columbia or 30 mL in Quebec, and a pre-filled tank or pod is capped at 2 mL and 2 mL respectively — a buyer in either province cannot legally push the per-millilitre duty down further with one still-larger container.

Does a province that doubles the duty change the comparison?

10 of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories currently also levy their own additional vaping duty under a Coordinated Vaping Product Taxation Agreement, charged at rates identical to the federal duty — which exactly doubles the total excise on any vaping product sold there. It doubles the disposable pack and the single bottle by the same factor, so the ratio between the two formats holds; only the absolute gap grows. In one of those provinces, the $16.80-versus-$7.84 example above becomes $33.60 versus $15.68.

British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador do not levy that additional duty. Each instead charges its own vapour-specific sales tax of 20% on top of GST or HST, applied to the shelf price however many containers it arrived in — so it raises both formats by the same proportion rather than favouring either one. Saskatchewan’s exact combined total is not confirmed by a primary source: its own bulletin defines the provincial sales-tax base but refers GST questions to the CRA, without stating whether GST is calculated before or after the 20% vapour tax, so the Saskatchewan tax page itemises the stack rather than asserting one blended figure.

What this means for the total price, not just the duty

Duty is one layer of what a shopper pays, not the whole of it. GST or HST, and in some provinces a separate sales or vapour tax, apply on top of the shelf price — which already has duty built in, since a licensee remits it and stamps the product before it reaches a shelf. Those sales-tax layers apply at the same rate whatever format the shelf price came in, so they do not favour disposables or refillables; only the duty layer does, because only the duty is charged per container rather than as a percentage of price.

Put together: format — disposable or refillable — mainly moves the duty component of a price, and province mainly moves the sales-tax component. Dividing a product’s total shelf price by its millilitre count, on a like-for-like basis, is how to compare the two directly, and a refillable bottle’s figure will include less duty per millilitre than a disposable’s, for the reason worked through above.

Where to check current prices

This guide explains the arithmetic; it does not track today’s number. Current shelf prices for both formats are in the catalogue: disposable vapes and e-liquid list what stores are charging now, and pod systems and vape hardware cover the refillable devices themselves.

For the wider market, see vape prices and the price index. For how each province’s tax stacks, see vape tax by province. The full duty walkthrough, including why a five-pack and a single bottle are taxed so differently, is in vape tax in Canada, explained, and the delivered-price breakdown — shelf price plus duty plus tax plus shipping — is in how much vaping costs in Canada. The price per millilitre at each stated refill-bottle size is broken out in e-liquid bottle sizes: cost per millilitre by size.