Electricity cost calculator
Enter an appliance’s power and weekly schedule to see what it costs per hour, day, week, month and year. It uses the electricity price where you live, which you can change to the rate on your bill.
Cost for your selected use
£1.84 for 7 hours of use
1 hour per day × 7 days = 7 hours of use in total.
26.3p for each hour it runs. Repeating this schedule every week would cost £8.01 per average month.
Monthly and yearly estimates repeat this schedule. An average month is 365 ÷ 12 days (about 30.4), not four weeks.
On the label or in the manual. A kilowatt (kW) is 1,000 W.
The main result totals these hours and days. The estimates below assume you repeat this schedule each week.
Standby, thermostats and off-peak use
Heaters and fridges switch on and off to hold a temperature. 100% for anything that runs flat out.
Drawn while plugged in and not running. Usually under 1 W.
| Period | Cost | Energy | CO2e |
|---|---|---|---|
| An hour of use | 26.3p | 1.00 kWh | 217 g |
| A day, on average | 26.3p | 1.00 kWh | 217 g |
| A week (7 days) | £1.84 | 7.00 kWh | 1.5 kg |
| An average month | £8.01 | 30.4 kWh | 6.6 kg |
| A year | £96.07 | 365 kWh | 79.4 kg |
How we calculated this
Energy is power multiplied by time. 1,000 W running for an hour uses 1.00 kWh.
A day is the average across the week, a month is a twelfth of a 365-day year.
Electricity costs 26.32p/kWh. That is the published figure for the United Kingdom, 1 Oct – 31 Dec 2026, from Ofgem. Average for England, Scotland and Wales, paying by Direct Debit. No VAT on electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027.
Standing charges are left out: you pay them whether or not the appliance runs.
Emissions use 0.217 kg CO2e per kWh, the lifecycle intensity of electricity generated in the United Kingdom in 2025, from Ember, via Our World in Data. Lifecycle means building the power stations and supplying their fuel are counted too. It is the grid’s average, not the particular power station an extra appliance brings on.