Sprinter vs Transit vs ProMaster for a camper conversion

Almost every professional camper van conversion in America starts on one of three vans: the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, the Ford Transit or the Ram ProMaster. The choice sets your budget, your interior width, your service options and, less obviously, which shops will take the job at all. Here is what each one costs, what it gives up, and who it suits.

The short answer for each of the three vans

There is no best conversion van. There is a best van for how you travel, what you want to spend and how far you are willing to drive for service, and those three questions separate the three platforms cleanly.

Put briefly: the ProMaster gives you the most usable interior per dollar, the Transit is the easiest and cheapest to live with, and the Sprinter is what you buy for diesel range, factory all-wheel drive and the deepest bench of American shops that know it. Each of those comes with a bill attached, and each bill is knowable before you sign anything.

What the three chassis cost before anyone converts them

Mercedes is the only one of the three that publishes a price list you can read without configuring a van, and it is the number every other quote gets compared against. Mercedes publishes the Sprinter Cargo Van from $48,990 to $75,830 across every configuration.

The 170 inch high roof at $57,540 is where most Sprinter conversions start, because it is the shortest Sprinter that carries a lengthways bed, a galley and a garage without one of the three losing out. The 144 is a genuinely good weekend van and a hard van to live in full time.

Neither Ford nor Ram makes the equivalent list this easy to read, and both push you into a configurator for a real number. The size of the gap matters more than the base figures anyway, because it changes depending on which comparison you are making. Base van to base van the three sit closer together than their reputations suggest. Specified the way a builder orders them, with the long wheelbase, the high roof and the heavier trim, the ProMaster comes in roughly $13,000 to $15,000 under a comparable Sprinter before any conversion work begins.

The premium compounds after the van, too. A shop building on a Sprinter is also buying Sprinter-specific windows, roof racks, insulation kits and wiring harnesses, and those parts carry the same premium the van does. Conversion work runs $18,695 to $600,000 depending on the shop, and the chassis premium lands on top of whichever number you settle on.

Interior dimensions, and the standing height trap

Three numbers decide what fits in a van: how wide it is inside, how tall it is inside, and how much floor sits behind the seats. Everything a shop can do for you happens inside those three.

Width, and the crossways bed

The ProMaster is 75.6 inches wide inside. The Sprinter is 70.4 and the Transit 70.2. Just over 5 inches sounds like nothing until you try to sleep across the van instead of along it. Most adults fit crossways in a ProMaster without a wall flare, and in a Sprinter or a Transit they do not, which is why flare kits exist and why so many Sprinter and Transit beds run front to back.

That single decision cascades through the rest of the van, because a crossways bed frees the whole rear wall for a garage rather than a walkway. A lengthways bed in a 70 inch van either eats a third of the floor or turns into a convertible you make up every night, and nobody who has done the second for a month recommends it.

Standing height, roof by roof

The Transit high roof gives 81.5 inches of interior standing height, against 79.1 in the Sprinter high roof and 76.2 in the ProMaster high roof. That is the whole comparison only if you stop at the high roofs. The ProMaster is also sold with a super high roof at 86.6 inches inside, 5 inches more headroom than the tallest thing Ford or Mercedes will sell you, so a standing height figure means nothing until it names the roof it came from.

The practical question is smaller than the specification, because the build eats the number. Put a 2 inch subfloor in and the ProMaster high roof clears anyone under about 6 ft 2, the Sprinter high roof to about 6 ft 5, and the Transit high roof to about 6 ft 7. Above that, the ProMaster super high roof is the only one of the three you can stand upright in, and a thicker floor takes every one of those figures down again.

Floor length behind the seats

Cargo floor length runs from 105.1 inches on the shortest ProMaster to 189 inches on the extended Sprinter. The Transit's longest is 172.2 inches and the ProMaster's is 160.3. That last pair is the reason a fixed bed, a wet bath and a dinette rarely coexist in a ProMaster: the width buys you a crossways bed, and then the length runs out behind it.

Read the last two rows together and the shape of the decision appears. The ProMaster gives you width and headroom and takes away capability. The Sprinter gives you length and capability and takes away width. The Transit lands between them on almost every row and is cheaper to own than either, which is why it is the right answer more often than it gets chosen.

Payload, and the number that decides what you can build

Payload is the weight a van can legally carry: people, water, batteries, cabinetry, food, bikes, everything. It ends more van projects than money does, and it varies more between trims of the same van than it does between the three platforms.

Mercedes publishes payload by wheelbase, roof and trim, and the spread is the most useful thing on the whole configurator. A 170 inch high roof 2500, the most common camper conversion platform in the country, is published at 3,450 to 3,814 pounds depending on drivetrain. The same van as a 3500 carries 4,269 pounds. As a 4500 it carries 6,382, nearly double the 2500, on the same wheelbase, the same roof and the same footprint in your driveway.

A four-season build spends that faster than people expect. Water is the heaviest thing you carry at 8.34 pounds a gallon, so a 40 gallon fresh tank weighs 334 pounds full, with a grey tank filling up behind it. A 400 amp hour lithium bank with its inverter, charger and cabling weighs about what an adult passenger weighs, which is why sizing the bank to the driving you do is a weight decision before it is a power one. Cabinetry, insulation, flooring and a plywood fixed bed together run 900 to 1,400 pounds on a long wheelbase van.

Add two adults, a week of food and a bike rack, and a 2500 conversion is at its limit with nothing exciting in it. That is the entire argument for the 4500, and for the shops that build in aluminium instead of plywood. Off Highway Van in Salt Lake City works in aluminium at $165,000 to $245,000 for exactly this reason, and several hundred pounds of saved conversion weight is payload you can never add back later.

Then weigh the finished van. A public truck scale costs under $20 and gives you axle weights as well as a total, which is the only way to discover that the water tank and the battery bank have both ended up behind the rear axle. Do it loaded: full fuel, full water, both propane bottles and the gear you actually travel with. A van that passes empty and fails loaded is the normal outcome, and it is a cheap problem the week the van is delivered and an expensive one two years later.

Drivetrain: front wheel, rear wheel and what all-wheel drive costs

The ProMaster drives its front wheels. The Transit and the Sprinter drive the rears, and both offer factory all-wheel drive. No ProMaster is sold with driven front and rear axles in the United States, and for a share of buyers that single fact settles the platform before any other number gets looked at.

Front-wheel drive is less of a handicap than the forums make it. It is where the ProMaster's low floor and tall interior come from, and it pulls better than a rear-drive van on wet grass and loose gravel because the weight sits over the driven wheels. What it will not do is climb a rutted forest road in March with a ton of conversion in the back.

What the factory option costs

Ford offers all-wheel drive on the Transit across the cargo range, and Mercedes has sold an all-wheel-drive Sprinter since the 2023 model year, replacing the part-time system it badged 4x4 from 2015 to 2022. Priced in January 2024, the Transit option ran about $4,190 and the Sprinter option about $6,700. Both figures will have moved since, and the ratio is the durable part: Mercedes charges around half again what Ford does for the same idea.

The systems behave differently, and the difference is engineering rather than marketing. The 2015 to 2022 Sprinter 4x4 split torque 67 percent rear and 33 percent front and could not vary it. The 2023 and later system can go to 50/50. The Transit's all-wheel drive can send all of it to either axle. Crawl ratios tell the same story from another angle: 19.99:1 on the 2015 to 2018 Sprinter, 24.38:1 on the 2019 to 2022 van, and 21.7:1 on the 2023 and later.

One cost of the Sprinter's system never appears in a brochure. The step-in height goes up 4.5 inches over the two-wheel-drive van, which is a daily penalty if anyone in the household has a bad knee or a dog with short legs. The Transit's all-wheel drive carries no step-in penalty at all, and that is the reason some buyers with genuine winter needs still choose the Ford.

Whether you need any of it is a separate question from what it costs. Most all-wheel-drive vans spend their lives on pavement and graded dirt that a two-wheel-drive van on decent tyres would have handled, and the full price of real off-pavement capability stretches from a $4,190 factory option to the $200,000 to $350,000 Benchmark Vehicles charges in Portland for a purpose-built one. Almost nobody needs the far end of that range, and the people who do already know it.

There is a cheaper answer that covers most buyers, and it is unglamorous. All-terrain tyres, a pair of traction boards and the judgment to turn around cost a few hundred dollars between them and handle the great majority of the roads a camper van actually gets driven down. Two-wheel drive on the right rubber gets further than all-wheel drive on highway tyres, which is the reverse of how the option is sold.

Engines, and why horsepower misleads

The Transit takes a 3.5 litre V6 at 275 horsepower or a twin-turbo EcoBoost at 310. The ProMaster runs a 3.6 litre V6 at 276. The Sprinter uses a 2.0 litre four-cylinder diesel at 168 horsepower, or 208 in high output form, which was a $2,800 up-charge in January 2024.

Those horsepower figures flatter the gas engines and mislead. A loaded camper van almost never uses peak power. It uses torque low in the rev range, on a grade, at altitude, and that is where a diesel earns back some of its premium. On a mountain pass at 9,000 feet with 3,000 pounds of conversion aboard, the Sprinter is the calmer vehicle by a wide margin, and the Transit's EcoBoost is the closer of the two gas engines to matching it.

Running costs, dealers and the parts problem

Purchase price is one year of the decision. Service is the other ten, and it is where the three platforms separate hardest.

Two independent repair-cost surveys put the Sprinter's annual bill at roughly twice the Transit's, with the ProMaster between them and much closer to the Transit. The reasons are not mysterious: diesel emissions hardware, Mercedes parts pricing, and a service network built around commercial fleets rather than around you.

Dealer coverage follows sales volume, and the volumes are not close. Between 2016 and 2025 the Transit sold 100,000 to 162,000 units a year in the United States, the ProMaster 40,000 to 82,000, and the Sprinter 34,000 to 46,000. The Transit outsold the other two combined in most of those years. Every Ford dealer in the country can change a Transit's oil. Sprinter service is a shorter list, usually a commercial vehicle department at a specific dealer, and in rural states that is a day out rather than a local errand.

Diesel brings its own chores, and they suit some owners badly. The Sprinter runs emissions hardware that needs diesel exhaust fluid topped up every few thousand miles, and it wants to be driven far enough and hot enough to finish a regeneration cycle. A diesel van that only does 20 mile runs to a trailhead will eventually put a light on the dash, and clearing it is a specialist appointment rather than a roadside fix. The gas Transit and ProMaster have no equivalent chore, which matters more to a weekend owner than the diesel range advantage ever will.

This is a livability question rather than a spreadsheet question. If the van is your house, being three hours from the only shop that can clear a diesel fault code is a different life from being ten minutes from a Ford dealer. If the van does eight weekends a year from a suburb with a Mercedes commercial dealer nearby, none of it touches you.

Before you commit any chassis to a build, put the exact VIN through the federal recall database, because an open recall on a van that is about to have its walls lined is a job you want finished first. It matters most on a used chassis, and a 3-year-old van saves $20,000 to $30,000 on an otherwise identical build.

Which chassis American shops will actually build on

Choosing a chassis does not only choose a van. It shortens the list of shops that will take your job, and it moves the price band those shops work in. That is the half of the decision a specification table cannot show you.

Of the 27 American builders we track, 22 will build a Sprinter, 19 will build a Transit and 16 will build a ProMaster. That looks like a wide field in every direction until you separate out the shops that have committed to one platform and turn the others away.

Single-platform shops deserve more attention than the count suggests, because the discipline shows in the work. Glampervan builds on exactly one van, the 136 inch high roof ProMaster, which lets it develop components that fit precisely instead of adapting one design across three platforms. Vanspeed is Sprinter only and keeps finished vans in stock. VanDOit builds Ford Transits with a modular rail interior that carries bikes on Saturday and sleeps four on Sunday.

Which of them will take your van is a much shorter conversation once the chassis is settled, and comparing shops by the platform they build on narrows the field faster than comparing them by price does. Ask any shop how many of your chassis they have finished in the past year, because the answers that separate one shop from another are usually about repetition rather than taste.

Chassis supply moves the queue as well. A shop with your van already on the floor can start next month, while a shop waiting on a factory order is quoting a delivery date it does not control. Published lead times across our 27 run from 4 to 6 days on Contravans' modular work to 8 to 10 weeks at Vertical Vans, and the wait on a full custom build is measured in quarters rather than weeks.

The price band your chassis commits you to

Chassis choice correlates with price in a way no specification sheet shows. Every Sprinter-only shop in our data starts at $92,000 or above: Brooklyn Campervans at $92,000, Vanspeed at $115,000, Outside Van at $125,000 and Advanced RV at $300,000. The two ProMaster-only shops sit at opposite ends of the market, DM Vans at $97,000 to $105,000 and Glampervan at $30,000 to $65,000. The single Transit-only shop, VanDOit, runs $58,000 to $108,000.

The correlation is not causation and it is not a statement about workmanship. A shop that has decided to build only Sprinters has decided which customer it wants, and that customer is not shopping at $35,000. If your budget is $40,000, the ProMaster and the Transit are not merely cheaper vans. They are the vans that the shops in your price band happen to work on.

The cases where a fourth van is the right answer

Three vans do not cover every buyer, and two groups get pushed onto the wrong platform by a comparison that only has three columns.

Families are the first. Belted seats and berths do not scale with van length, so a 170 inch Sprinter still leaves you hunting for a fourth seatbelt and a second bed, and the roof is usually where the answer lives. Colorado Camper Van sells a pop-top from $15,984 and Rossmönster builds hard-sided ones at $130,000 to $250,000, which means a fourth belted seat and a second berth can cost anywhere across an order of magnitude depending on how the roof gets solved.

The second group is buyers who do not need a full-size van at all. Oasis Campervans converts a Sienna, Odyssey or Pacifica for $12,000 to $30,000 in 3 to 4 weeks, and the result returns around 25 miles per gallon against 16, parks in a normal space and drives like the car it is. For a household that camps eight weekends a year, that is a better vehicle than any of the three on this page and it costs a quarter as much.

Peace Vans in Seattle has been trading since 2011 and covers Volkswagen, Metris and Transit. Contravans in Arvada will convert a Metris or a box truck alongside the big three. The Metris is the forgotten middle of this market: shorter than a ProMaster, no standing room, and a genuinely good two-person weekend vehicle for anyone who has to park it outside a house in a city.

If you are still weighing commissioning a build against buying one finished, the chassis question changes shape completely, because the finished market is 2 shops in our 27 at the top of the American range plus whatever the used listings happen to hold this month. Commissioning is the only route where you pick the van.

What we would buy, and the paperwork that follows

Fair first, then commit. For a first van under $70,000 doing long weekends and a few three-week trips a year, we would buy a ProMaster and put the saving into the electrical system. The width is worth more every single day than the badge is, and the money that would have gone to Mercedes buys the battery, the heater and the second charging source that actually change how the van lives.

For a van doing 20,000 miles a year, working through winter and climbing passes loaded, we would buy the Sprinter, take the 3500 or the 4500 for the payload, and treat the service bills as the cost of the platform rather than a surprise. The 4500 and its 6,382 pounds is the single strongest argument any of these three vans makes.

For everything in between, which is most buyers, the Transit is the answer more often than it gets chosen. It is easy to own, easy to service anywhere in the country, tall enough inside at 81.5 inches, available with factory all-wheel drive, and 19 of the 27 shops we track will build one for you.

One piece of paperwork follows the chassis out of the showroom. Heavier trims fall into heavier registration classes in some states, and an RV title and the insurance behind it turn on the equipment fitted rather than the badge on the grille, so a 4500 with a bed, a galley and a fixed water system is a different document from a 2500 cargo van with a mattress in the back.

A chassis is the one decision in this whole process you cannot revise later. Everything inside the van can be pulled out and done again, expensively but completely. The van underneath it is what you have got, for as long as you have it.