What Every Appliance in Your Home Costs to Run, Ranked
We took 143household appliances, applied each one's typical daily run time, and priced the result at the US average residential rate of 16.48¢ per kWh. The ranking is not the one most people expect.
Tankless electric water heater (18 kW)
18,000 W — the highest wattage here, yet only $433.09 a year at 0.4 h/day. Rank #16.
Mini-split (12k BTU)
Just 1,000 W, but 8 h/day puts it at $481.22 — above the 18,000 W unit.
The finding
Run time beats wattage. The highest-wattage appliance on the list — an 18 kW tankless water heater — costs less per year to run than a 1 kW mini-split, an eighteenth of its draw, because one runs in bursts and the other runs for hours.
Wattage is a rate; cost is a rate multiplied by time. An appliance that draws enormous power for two minutes a day is cheap to own, while a modest load that never switches off is not. That is why unplugging a kettle saves nothing measurable and why the appliances worth attacking are the ones you never think about.
The 25 most expensive appliances to run
| # | Appliance | Watts | Hours/day | kWh/year | Cost/year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Electric furnace (10 kW) | 10,000 | 3 | 10,950 | $1,804.56 |
| 2 | EV charger (Level 2, 40A) | 9,600 | 3 | 10,512 | $1,732.38 |
| 3 | Heat pump | 3,000 | 8 | 8,760 | $1,443.65 |
| 4 | Central AC (3 ton) | 3,500 | 6 | 7,665 | $1,263.19 |
| 5 | Pool heat pump | 5,000 | 4 | 7,300 | $1,203.04 |
| 6 | Hot tub | 4,000 | 4 | 5,840 | $962.43 |
| 7 | Electric water heater | 4,000 | 3 | 4,380 | $721.82 |
| 8 | Window AC (10k BTU) | 1,200 | 8 | 3,504 | $577.46 |
| 9 | Space heater | 1,500 | 6 | 3,285 | $541.37 |
| 10 | Baseboard heater (6 ft) | 1,500 | 6 | 3,285 | $541.37 |
| 11 | Oil-filled radiator | 1,500 | 6 | 3,285 | $541.37 |
| 12 | Portable AC (10k BTU) | 1,100 | 8 | 3,212 | $529.34 |
| 13 | Pool pump | 1,100 | 8 | 3,212 | $529.34 |
| 14 | Mini-split (12k BTU) | 1,000 | 8 | 2,920 | $481.22 |
| 15 | Infrared heater | 1,500 | 5 | 2,738 | $451.14 |
| 16 | Tankless electric water heater (18 kW) | 18,000 | 0.4 | 2,628 | $433.09 |
| 17 | Grow light (600 W) | 600 | 12 | 2,628 | $433.09 |
| 18 | Oxygen concentrator | 300 | 24 | 2,628 | $433.09 |
| 19 | Furnace blower | 800 | 8 | 2,336 | $384.97 |
| 20 | Dehumidifier | 500 | 12 | 2,190 | $360.91 |
| 21 | Electric wall heater | 1,500 | 4 | 2,190 | $360.91 |
| 22 | Home sauna (6 kW) | 6,000 | 1 | 2,190 | $360.91 |
| 23 | Patio heater (electric) | 1,500 | 3 | 1,643 | $270.68 |
| 24 | Electric fireplace | 1,400 | 3 | 1,533 | $252.64 |
| 25 | Pottery kiln (240 V) | 8,000 | 0.5 | 1,460 | $240.61 |
25 of 143 appliances. Full list downloadable below.
Methodology
- Formula: annual cost = running watts ÷ 1,000 × typical hours per day × 365 × rate. Rate is the EIA US residential average, 16.48¢/kWh (2024 annual). Your own rate will differ — see rates by state.
- Running watts, not surge. Motor-driven appliances draw several times more at startup, but only for seconds, so surge barely affects annual cost. It matters for generator and inverter sizing, not for your bill.
- Typical hours are defaults, not a measured survey. They are reasonable averages for a US household; a pool pump or an EV charger in particular varies enormously by household. Treat the ranking as the finding and the individual figures as estimates.
- Cycling loads. Appliances that thermostat on and off — fridges, freezers, heat pumps — are entered at their effective duty-cycle hours rather than their compressor rating, so the annual figure reflects real consumption.
- Totals. Running every appliance listed at these defaults would cost $23,414.56 a year, which is not a household estimate — no home has all 143. For that, use the bill estimator.
- Reuse: free to cite or republish with attribution and a link to this page.