Cessna 172 vs Cherokee 180: Cost Per Hour

Most first-time buyers assume the Cessna 172 vs Piper Cherokee 180 question is settled by the fuel burn: the 160-horsepower Skyhawk sips less, so it must be the cheaper airplane to own. That is true by the hour and false by the mile. The Cherokee 180 burns about a gallon more per hour, but it carries more, climbs better loaded, and gets there sooner — and once you divide the bill by distance flown rather than by time on the tach, the gap closes and often flips.

Both airplanes are four-seat, fixed-gear, carbureted trainers-turned-family-haulers built by the tens of thousands. Neither is exotic. The real difference in your checkbook comes from three places: what you paid to get in, what your engine fund has to hold, and how often the airplane leaves the hangar.

The Short Answer

If you fly 50 to 100 hours a year, mostly local, mostly with one or two people aboard, the Cessna 172 is the cheaper airplane — lower fuel burn, a slightly cheaper engine to overhaul, the largest mechanic and parts network in general aviation, and the deepest pool of buyers when you sell. If you fly cross-country with real people and real bags in the back, the Cherokee 180 is the better value, because it hauls roughly 150 to 200 more pounds, carries more usable fuel, and turns the extra gallon an hour into speed instead of noise. The 172 wins on cost per hour. The Cherokee 180 usually wins on cost per trip.

What You Pay to Get In

Acquisition price is the one number that shows up on day one and never goes away, because it sets your insurance hull value, your sales or use tax bill, and your financing payment.

As of October 2026, Flying411 had 9 Cessna 172s listed across all variants, asking $79,000 to $315,000 with a median of $135,000, model years 1959 to 2001 and a median total time of 6,100 hours. Over the same period we had 6 Piper Cherokees listed, asking $62,000 to $175,000 with a median of $91,000, model years 1964 to 1976, median total time 4,600 hours. Those are asking prices on live listings, not sale prices or appraisals, and the two groups are not an even match — the 172 listings reach into the late-model fuel-injected glass-panel era while the Cherokee listings are all 1960s and 1970s airframes. Read them as a map of what each market looks like, not as a valuation.

What the spread tells you is real enough: a clean, mid-time, IFR-equipped Cherokee 180 generally costs less to buy than a comparable 172 of the same vintage. The Skyhawk carries a brand premium that has nothing to do with how it flies. It is the same reason a used four-door from the most common nameplate on the road costs more than the equally good car nobody thought to shop for.

Why It Matters: Every $20,000 of purchase price you avoid is roughly $200 to $400 a year off your insurance premium and, if you financed, something close to $1,500 a year in payments. On a 100-hour year, that is a couple of dollars an hour before you have burned a drop of fuel.

Edge: Piper Cherokee 180 — comparable airframes typically ask less.

Fuel, Speed and the Cost of Actually Going Somewhere

A 172N with the 160-hp Lycoming O-320 plans at about 8 to 9 gallons an hour and trues out around 105 to 115 knots at normal cruise power, depending on altitude, rigging and how tired the airframe is. A Cherokee 180 with the 180-hp Lycoming O-360 plans at roughly 9.5 to 10.5 gallons an hour and trues around 115 to 125 knots. Owners of both report numbers at the lower end of those ranges more often than the top.

100LL has been running roughly $6.00 to $7.50 a gallon self-serve through 2026, with wide regional swings and full-service pricing well above that. At $6.75 a gallon, the Skyhawk burns about $57 an hour and the Cherokee about $66. That is a $9 gap — until you divide by the 10 extra knots. Over a 300-nautical-mile trip, the 172 takes about 2.7 hours and the Cherokee about 2.5, and the fuel difference shrinks to roughly $14 for the whole leg.

The payload difference is harder to argue with. A typical Cherokee 180 has 48 usable gallons and a useful load in the 950 to 1,100 pound range, with a 200-pound baggage limit. A typical 172N has 40 usable gallons standard (50 with the long-range tanks), a useful load around 850 to 910 pounds, and a 120-pound baggage limit. Fill the Cherokee's tanks and you still have roughly 700 to 800 pounds of people and bags. Fill a standard-tank 172N and you have about 600 to 650.

Edge: Piper Cherokee 180 — it costs more per hour to feed and less per mile to use.

Flying411 keeps Cessna 172 and Piper Cherokee listings in one place, so you can compare asking prices, engine times and avionics side by side instead of chasing two markets at once.

Engines and the Overhaul Fund

Both airplanes run carbureted, four-cylinder Lycoming engines, but their current recommended overhaul intervals differ. Under Lycoming Service Instruction 1009BF, issued July 20, 2026, the Cessna 172N's original O-320-H2AD has a recommended 2,400-hour TBO. The Cherokee 180's O-360 can qualify for up to 2,600 hours when factory-new or factory-rebuilt, while previously overhauled engines generally retain a 2,000-hour recommendation. These are manufacturer recommendations rather than universal legal limits for private Part 91 operations, and the applicable interval depends on the engine's model and maintenance history.

The O-360 in the Cherokee is a bigger engine with bigger cylinders, and it costs more to overhaul — typically a few thousand dollars more than an O-320 for an equivalent job. As of 2025 and 2026, shops have been quoting field overhauls on these engines in the rough neighborhood of $30,000 to $45,000 installed, with the O-320 at the lower end and the O-360 at the upper, and factory rebuilt or exchange engines higher still. Prices move with cylinder and accessory availability, so get a current written quote before you build your budget around a number from a forum post.

Spread over 2,000 hours, that is about $17 to $18 an hour of engine reserve for the Skyhawk and about $20 for the Cherokee. Add a couple of dollars an hour for the fixed-pitch propeller, which is one of the quiet blessings of both airplanes — no governor, no constant-speed overhaul, no blade-by-blade surprises at the prop shop.

Heads Up: If you are looking at a 1977 through 1980 Cessna 172N, find out which engine is actually bolted to the firewall. The original O-320-H2AD had a camshaft and tappet wear problem that Lycoming addressed through service bulletins, an oil additive requirement and parts changes. Many of these airplanes have since been converted to an O-320-D2J or to a 180-hp O-360 under STC. A converted airplane is usually the better buy; an original H2AD with vague logbooks is where first-time buyers get hurt.

That 180-hp STC is worth understanding, because it turns the comparison inside out. Convert a 172 to the O-360 and you get the Cherokee's climb and much of its speed — along with the Cherokee's fuel burn and the Cherokee's overhaul bill. Some STC packages also approve a higher gross weight on qualifying model years, which is where the real payload gain comes from. Ask the shop exactly which serial numbers and models qualify, and get the paperwork in hand at the prebuy.

Edge: Cessna 172 — the O-320 is modestly cheaper to overhaul, assuming you avoid the H2AD trap.

Annuals, Airworthiness Directives and Shop Time

Neither of these is a complicated airplane. A straightforward annual inspection on a well-kept example of either has been running roughly $2,000 to $3,500 in labor at a typical shop through 2025 and 2026, before anything found gets fixed. Budget for findings; the inspection is the cheap part.

Where they differ is in the specific items an inspector goes looking for.

On the Cherokee side, wing spar condition deserves attention, particularly on aircraft with extensive training history. However, FAA AD 2020-26-16 does not include the PA-28-180 Cherokee among its affected models. It applies to certain other PA-28 and PA-32 variants, including the PA-28-181 Archer, subject to specific applicability conditions. A prebuy inspection should still include a review of the Cherokee 180's wing structure, corrosion history, and applicable airworthiness directives. Piper's single cabin door, removable fuel tanks, and oleo struts on all three landing gear legs are routine maintenance items. Fuel tank seals can develop leaks with age, and the struts require proper servicing.

On the Cessna side, the recurring item owners know best is the seat rail and seat-lock inspection driven by AD 2011-10-09, which came out of accidents where a pilot's seat slid aft on takeoff. Worn rails are a known cost on high-time Skyhawks. Beyond that, exhaust system inspections, door and window seals, and corrosion in the tailcone and wing roots are the usual suspects on any 40-year-old airframe of either brand.

The 172's genuine advantage here is not fewer directives, it is familiarity. Textron still builds the 172, more than 44,000 have been produced, and essentially every A&P in the country has worked on one. Parts — new, used and PMA — are everywhere. Piper has built well over 30,000 PA-28s and still builds the Archer, so Cherokee support is strong too, just not quite as dense.

Good to Know: The 172's gravity-feed fuel system with a BOTH selector position means no engine-driven fuel pump, no electric boost pump, and one less set of components to inspect and replace. The Cherokee's low wing requires both. It is a small annual-bill difference, and a real difference in cockpit workload for a low-time pilot who has to remember to switch tanks.

Edge: Cessna 172 — simpler fuel system, broader mechanic familiarity, slightly less to go wrong at annual.

The Real Cost Per Hour

Here is the arithmetic with every assumption on the table, so you can swap in your own hangar rate and fuel price. The math assumes $6.75 a gallon for 100LL, a $250-a-month hangar, 100 hours flown a year, and a $12-per-hour reserve for unscheduled maintenance — the magneto, the vacuum pump, the starter, the alternator, the tire that goes flat the week before your trip.

The headline: roughly $8 an hour separates them at 100 hours a year, and the Cherokee claws most of that back in speed. Per mile flown, the Cherokee is a few cents cheaper. Per seat-mile with four people aboard, the Cherokee is clearly cheaper, because the 172 with four adults and full standard tanks is over gross and you have to leave fuel or people behind.

Notice the bigger lever in that table. Going from 100 hours a year to 50 hours a year adds about $80 an hour to either airplane. Your flying frequency matters four times more than your choice of make. That is the same finding our Cessna 182 vs 206 cost-per-hour breakdown turns up a class higher, and it holds all the way up the fleet.

Pro Tip: If the per-hour number worries you, the fix is not a different model — it is a second owner. Two people splitting fixed costs on either airplane and flying 75 hours each drops the hourly figure into the $130s without changing a thing about the aircraft.

Flying411 keeps Skyhawk and Cherokee listings with engine times, total times and avionics in one place, so you can see which airframes still have overhaul money sitting in them before you call a broker.

Which One Should You Buy?

You are a new or newly certificated pilot who will fly locally, mostly solo or with one passenger, 50 to 80 hours a year. Buy the Cessna 172. The lower fuel burn matters most when the airplane is light, the 41-knot stall speed and docile landing manners forgive a lot, the two doors make a nervous passenger feel better about getting in, and when you decide in three years that you want something faster, the Skyhawk sells in a week. If you are still weighing the handling and training differences rather than the money, our full Cessna 172 vs Piper Cherokee comparison for new pilots covers that ground, and the 172 vs Warrior comparison looks at the Cherokee's 160-hp sibling.

You have a family of four, or three adults and a dog, and you want to fly 300-mile trips. Buy the Cherokee 180. This is the one place where the answer is not close. The extra useful load, the 200-pound baggage limit and 48 usable gallons mean you load the airplane the way you want to and go, rather than running a weight-and-balance negotiation on the ramp every Friday. A standard-tank 172N simply cannot carry four adults with full fuel, and no amount of careful planning changes that. The Cherokee's one door is the price of admission; everyone learns the wing walk.

You fly off a short, soft or high-elevation strip, or you are buying to build time cheaply. Lean toward the 172. The high wing keeps the flaps and tips out of tall grass and snowbanks, the lower stall speed shortens the landing roll, and the gravity-feed fuel system is one less thing to troubleshoot far from home. For time building, the lower hourly cost and the easier resale are the whole argument. If budget is the dominant constraint, it is also worth looking one notch sideways at the Sundowner, 172 and Cherokee as bargain four-seaters before you commit.

Keep in Mind: Whichever you pick, the condition of the specific airplane will swing your real cost per hour more than the model badge. A 172 with a run-out engine, corroded seat rails and a 1980s radio stack will cost more to own over five years than a Cherokee 180 with 400 hours since major and a clean logbook. Spend the money on a thorough prebuy inspection by a shop that knows the type — it is the cheapest $1,500 to $2,500 in the whole transaction.

Making the Call

The Cessna 172 vs Piper Cherokee 180 question comes down to one honest sentence: the Skyhawk is the cheaper airplane to sit in the hangar and fly on Sundays, and the Cherokee is the cheaper airplane to actually take somewhere with people in the back. Eight dollars an hour separates them on paper. Two hundred pounds of useful load separates them in practice, and that is the number that decides whether you cancel the trip or make it.

Shop condition first, logbooks second, model third. Verify the applicable ADs and structural condition of any Cherokee that worked a flight line, confirm which engine is installed in any late-1970s 172, and get a current overhaul quote from a shop in your region rather than relying on a national average. If you want to see how the same cost logic plays out one step up the ladder, our comparison of the 172 and the Piper Archer covers the Cherokee's modern, tapered-wing descendant.

Flying411 keeps four-seat piston singles from both families in one searchable place, so you can compare engine time, total time and asking price without guessing at what the market is doing.

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