Pick 2-3 appliances for a head-to-head, or scroll down for every appliance on the site ranked and priced in one sortable table. Either way you can price it at your own state's rate and open the appliance's own calculator from there.
Both tools on this page assume an appliance draws its nameplate wattage the whole time it is on, which overstates anything that cycles a thermostat. For an oven, the cost to run an electric oven page prices in the preheat and the duty cycle. They also compare electricity only — if you heat with gas, a therm and a kilowatt-hour cannot be added together; cost to run a furnace compares gas against electric heating on delivered heat instead. Appliances that run in short bursts are hardest to place here at all, because an hours-per-day figure cannot express them; the cost to run a sump pump page prices one in minutes a day instead.
$/kWh
Select at least 2 appliances above to see a cost comparison.
Watch out for wattage on its own: a microwave draws more power than a window air conditioner, yet costs a fraction as much to run, because you use it for minutes rather than hours. See what a microwave actually costs to run.
Which appliances cost the most to run?
The 10 biggest of the 36 appliances on this site, by what each one adds to a month's electricity bill at the US average of 16.0¢/kWh. Every figure below assumes the appliance is used the typical number of hours a day the calculator for it opens on.
Changing the rate never reorders this list. A kilowatt-hour costs the same whichever appliance burns it, so a state paying double the national rate doubles every bar and moves none of them. Hours are what reorder it. A crypto mining rig draws 1,500W, no more than a space heater, and costs 3× as much a month because it never switches off. Further down, a refrigerator at 150W costs $17.28 a month while an electric oven at 2,500W costs $12.00 — roughly 17× the power for less money, because the fridge never stops and the oven runs an hour a day.
Every appliance, side by side
All 36 appliances at the US average of 16.0¢/kWh. Sort by any column, then open a row to put your own wattage and hours in: 27 of the 36 carry this rate straight into their own calculator, and the rest answer their appliance in prose with no calculator to set.
Wattage, typical daily runtime, monthly energy use and monthly running cost for every appliance on this site, sortable by column.
Monthly figures are 30 days of the hours shown; annual figures are 365. Wattage is nameplate, so anything that cycles a thermostat — a fridge, a freezer, an air conditioner — is priced above what it really draws, and the appliance's own page is where that gets corrected. To change the rate rather than the state, see electricity rates by state; to see which machines these figures reward replacing, see the most efficient appliances.