Enter an appliance's power draw, its daily usage hours and your electricity price to see what it costs per day, month and year.
Always-on devices surprise people: a 100W device running 24/7 costs about €245/year at €0.28/kWh, while a rarely used 2000W kettle barely registers. Hours matter as much as watts.
The calculation assumes constant rated power; devices with thermostats or standby modes draw less on average. A cheap power meter tells the truth.
Heating and cooling behave differently from the rest of the list because they are not on for a fixed number of hours: a thermostat cycles them, so average draw is well below rated power and depends on insulation, outside temperature and the target setting. Rated watts times hours meaningfully overstates them.
Heat pumps break the arithmetic in the other direction. Because they move heat rather than generate it, a unit rated at 1 kW of input can deliver three or more kilowatts of heat, so the electricity used is a fraction of the heat produced. Comparing one against a resistive heater on rated power alone gets the answer backwards.
Tariff shape matters as much as the rate. On a time-of-use or economy tariff the same kilowatt-hour costs several times more at 6pm than at 2am, so shifting a dishwasher or a wash cycle overnight changes the annual figure without changing anything else. A single average price hides that entirely.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate an appliance's electricity cost?
Watts × hours per day ÷ 1000 × price per kWh gives the daily cost. A 150 W device running 8 hours a day at €0.28/kWh costs about €10 a month.
Which appliances use the most electricity?
Heating, cooling and hot water dominate most bills, followed by tumble dryers, old refrigerators and anything running 24/7. High wattage for many hours is what hurts.
Is standby power worth worrying about?
A single device drawing a few watts is pennies, but a household's worth of them typically wastes €50–100 a year. Switchable power strips fix the worst offenders cheaply.