<p>Maintaining performance of RC bridges over a threshold value in a harsh environment, regular inspection and repair activities are required to ensure their continuous service leading to higher lifetime cost. Furthermore, inspection and maintenance activities can disrupt the continuous flow of traffic over the bridge, potentially resulting in adverse environmental effects and negative implications for social life. To eliminate these kinds of disturbances, reduce corrosion-induced failure probabilities, and minimize the costs incorporated with inspection and repair actions, stainless steel (SS) reinforcement is proposed herein in lieu of conventional/ordinary steel (CS) rebar in constructing RC bridges. The higher initial cost of SS-RC bridge will be completely outweighed by incentives obtained from the lower repair and maintenance costs after a certain time referred to as pay-off time (t_pay-off) for SS rebar cost-efficiency which primarily depends on severity of airborne chloride hazard, price of SS rebar, and design service life of the bridge. The key objective of this paper is to compute t_pay-off for SS rebar cost-efficient by determining time required to obtain identical life-cycle cost (LCC) values of SS- and CS-RC bridges. To fulfil this objective, a holistic flowchart was developed to determine t_pay-off for SS rebar cost efficiency. Furthermore, the proposed methodology was illustrated using an RC bridge girder considering different coastal marine environments in 20 cities in Japan and the variation in SS price. The findings will assist transportation officials in deciding on selecting rebar type and cost of SS rebar to construct sustainable bridge with a nominal lifetime cost.</p>