Appliance Running Cost Calculator

How the running cost is calculated

The whole calculation is one line of arithmetic repeated per appliance: watts multiplied by hours a day, divided by 1,000, gives the kilowatt-hours it uses in a day. Multiply by your electricity rate for the daily cost, by 365 for the year, and by 30.44 — the average length of a month — for the monthly figure. A 2,500 watt tumble dryer run for an hour a day is 2.5 kilowatt-hours, which at 0.25 euro is 62 cents a day and about 228 euro a year. Nothing is rounded until it is printed.

The preset wattages are typical figures for each class of appliance rather than measurements of a model: a fridge-freezer at 150 watts running all day, a dryer at 2,500 for an hour, a dishwasher at 1,800 for an hour and a half, an electric shower at 8,500 for fifteen minutes, a kettle at 3,000 for nine, an EV charger at 7,000 for two hours. They are there to let you compare a dryer against a television without hunting for a rating plate, and your own appliance may differ by a good margin — the label on the back is always better than our preset.

Two limits are built into the model and neither is hidden. It assumes a constant draw, so a fridge that cycles, a dishwasher whose heating element runs for part of its programme and a washing machine that spends most of its cycle spinning cold are all approximations, generally on the high side. And it counts only the appliances you list, so it will never match a bill: standby draw, lighting and everything you did not enter are missing. The comparison line at the bottom uses 3,500 kilowatt-hours a year as a European household's electricity use, which is our round figure priced at whatever rate you entered rather than a published tariff.

Every figure above was read out of the code that runs on this page. Where a number is our own judgement rather than a published one, the note says so and cites nothing. Method last checked 21 August 2026.