How much does it cost to run your appliances?

How the running cost is worked out

Every figure on this page and on each appliance page below comes from one formula: watts ÷ 1,000 × hours × unit rate. Divide an appliance’s power rating in watts by 1,000 to get kilowatts, multiply by how many hours it runs, and multiply that by the price per kWh under the current Ofgem price cap. A 3,000W kettle run for one hour, for example, uses 3kWh; at the GB-average electricity rate of 26.32p/kWh that is 79p for a full hour of continuous boiling — in practice a kettle only runs for a few minutes at a time, which is why each appliance page below also shows the cost of a single typical use, not just a full running hour.

Where a source gives a wattage range rather than one figure, we use the midpoint as the “typical” rating and say so on the appliance page, alongside the source it came from. Electricity figures on this page exclude VAT — VAT was removed from domestic electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 — and gas figures include 5% VAT, matching the Ofgem price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026.