The short answer (prices checked 21 October 2026)
- Cheapest pot: Crock-Pot 1.8L at £19.27. Dearest: Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker 6L at £114.00.
- Best all-rounder: Morphy Richards Accents Sear & Stew, £27.90, and the only one here whose running cost can be worked out from its listing.
- Running cost: that 163W pot costs 34.3p for an eight hour cook on low at the Ofgem cap unit rate for 1 October to 31 December 2026.
- Audit finding: only one of these six listings states a wattage anywhere in its own copy, so for the other five the running cost cannot be worked out from the page you buy on.
The short version
- A 200W slow cooker left on low for eight hours uses about 1.6kWh, roughly 42p at the 26.32p per kWh electricity rate in the October to December 2026 price cap.
- Good ones start at £19.27 for a 1.8L pot and reach £114 for Ninja's 8-in-1, which sears and goes in the oven.
- 3.5L feeds three or four people. Only go to 6L or larger if you actually portion and freeze.
- A hob-safe or oven-safe inner pot is the one feature worth paying extra for, because it saves you browning meat in a separate pan.
Slow cooker searches climb every year from late August, and this year there's an extra push behind them. Ofgem confirmed the October to December price cap on 26 August 2026, and from 1 October it puts electricity at 26.32p per kWh. A slow cooker draws a fraction of what an electric oven pulls and turns cheap cuts into something worth eating. It does not always save on energy, though: it runs for many more hours, and on the one metered comparison we found it used more than an oven for the same pie (we priced it here). Here are six on Amazon UK that we'd actually put money on, from a small pot for one to a machine that replaces three appliances.
If you are waiting for a sale, we are tracking what is and is not confirmed about Amazon's October event on our Prime Big Deal Days 2026 page.
Prices in this table come from Amazon and are refreshed at least once a day, with the date of the last update under the table. The cost-per-use and running-cost figures on this page use prices Look Into read on 21 October 2026, so they can differ from today's price.
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Prices and specs last checked by Look Into on 21 October 2026 · next check 16 December 2026 · how we picked
How we picked these
We're not a test kitchen, so we're upfront about the method. We work from live Amazon UK listings, manufacturer specs, and the running-cost maths, then we cut anything that doesn't earn its place. What we weighted:
- Running cost. Eight hours on low at 26.32p per kWh, the electricity unit rate under the Ofgem cap for October to December 2026. A 150W to 250W pot lands between 31.6p and 52.6p, worked out by the site rates engine on the current cap rate rather than typed in by hand. The same casserole in a 2kW electric oven for two hours is closer to £1.05. Correction, 2 October 2026: that oven figure multiplies the oven's wattage by the hours, which overstates an oven because its thermostat switches the element off once it is hot. On the one smart plug comparison we found, an oven cooked a cottage pie for 0.53 kWh (13.8p) and a slow cooker on low used 1.32 kWh (34.7p). Our cheapest way to cook comparison has the full working.
- Capacity that matches real households. A 3.5L bowl covers most UK families. Buying 6.5L because it looks better value is how slow cookers end up in the loft.
- One pot or two. Ceramic bowls hold heat well but you brown meat in a frying pan first. Hob-safe aluminium and oven-safe pots skip that.
- Cleaning. Removable, dishwasher-safe bowl only. Fixed bowls are miserable.
- Price stability on Amazon UK at the time of writing.
At a glance
| Slow cooker | Best for | Capacity | Wattage on the listing | Price on 21 Oct 2026 | Eight hours on low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crock-Pot 1.8L | One or two people | 1.8L | not stated | £19.27 | cannot be worked out |
| Tower 3.5L | A tight budget | 3.5L | not stated | £24.99 | cannot be worked out |
| Morphy Richards Accents Sear & Stew | Browning in the same pot | 3.5L | 163W | £27.90 | 34.3p |
| Crock-Pot 6.5L | Batch cooking and freezing | 6.5L | not stated | £42.99 | cannot be worked out |
| Crock-Pot Digital 3.5L | Setting a timer and leaving | 3.5L | not stated | £39.99 | cannot be worked out |
| Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker | Replacing several appliances | 6L | not stated | £114.00 | cannot be worked out |
The six worth buying
Crock-Pot 1.8L Slow Cooker
Best for one or two peopleThe cheapest sensible way in. 1.8L is about two decent portions of curry or chilli, which suits a single household or a couple who don't want to eat the same stew for five days. The ceramic bowl lifts out and goes in the dishwasher.
The catch: you can't batch cook in it. A whole chicken won't fit, and neither will a joint worth roasting, so it's a supporting appliance rather than the main one.
1.8L removable ceramic bowl · live price on Amazon
Check price on Amazon →Tower 3.5L Slow Cooker
Best on a tight budgetThree heat settings, a removable dishwasher-safe pot, and up to four portions for a bit over twenty quid. If you've never owned a slow cooker and you're not sure you'll use it, this is the one to find out with rather than spending £114 on a maybe.
The catch: it's a dial and nothing else. No timer, no auto keep-warm, so someone has to be home to turn it off or dinner keeps cooking.
3.5L, up to 4 portions, 3 heat settings · live price on Amazon
Check price on Amazon →Morphy Richards Accents 3.5L Sear & Stew
Best for browning in the same potThe inner pot is non-stick aluminium and goes straight on the hob, so you brown your beef or soften your onions in it, then drop the whole thing back into the base. That's one less pan and one less job, which is the difference between using a slow cooker on a Tuesday and not bothering.
The catch: aluminium doesn't hold heat the way ceramic does, and the non-stick coating scratches if you get a metal spoon anywhere near it.
3.5L hob-safe aluminium pot, 3 heat settings · live price on Amazon
Check price on Amazon →Crock-Pot 6.5L Slow Cooker (SCV655B)
Best for batch cookingCrock-Pot rates this one for eight people or more, which in practice means a Sunday cook-up you portion into tubs and freeze. Fill it once and you've covered a week of lunches for the price of one bag of shin beef and a few onions.
The catch: it's heavy. A 6.5L ceramic bowl full of stew is genuinely awkward to lift out, and the unit takes up a serious chunk of worktop or cupboard.
6.5L removable ceramic bowl, serves 8+ · live price on Amazon
Check price on Amazon →Crock-Pot Digital 3.5L Slow Cooker
Best for setting a timer and leavingYou set anything from 30 minutes to 20 hours and it drops to Auto Keep Warm when the time's up. That's what makes a slow cooker work around a shift pattern, because a nine-hour day doesn't turn your casserole to paste. The bowl is oven-safe and dishwasher-safe.
The catch: the bowl is the same 3.5L as the £24.99 dial models, so you're paying about £15 purely for the electronics. If you're home in the afternoon, you don't need them.
3.5L oven-safe bowl, 30 min to 20 hour timer, auto keep warm · live price on Amazon
Check price on Amazon →Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker 6L (MC1101UK)
Best for replacing several appliancesEight functions in one pot: sear and saute, slow cook, white and brown rice, pasta, braise, steam, keep warm. The pot is oven-safe to 240C, so you can brown a joint, slow cook it all afternoon, then finish a pastry lid under heat without washing anything else up. It handles a 1.8kg meat joint or 800g of rice.
The catch: it's 42cm wide and weighs 5.5kg, so it lives on the worktop whether you like it or not. It also costs more than three basic 3.5L cookers put together, which only makes sense if you'll use the other seven functions.
6L, 8 functions, oven-safe pot to 240C · live price on Amazon
Check price on Amazon →What size do you actually need?
Slow cookers work best between half and three quarters full, so the usable volume is smaller than the number on the box. As a rough guide: 1.5L to 2L for one or two people, 3.5L for three or four, 5L to 6.5L if you're feeding five or more or you cook once and freeze the rest. Going too big is the more common mistake. A half-empty 6.5L pot cooks faster and drier than the recipe expects.
What the listings tell you about running cost
A slow cooker is sold on the idea that it is cheap to run, so on 21 October 2026 we checked whether the six listings here give you what you would need to prove that. The scope was each product’s own copy on Amazon UK: the listing title, the bullet points, the product description and the specification tables. Related-product carousels were excluded.
One of the six states a wattage. The Morphy Richards Accents Sear & Stew gives 163W, which is enough to work out that an eight hour cook on low costs 34.3p at the current cap rate. The other five say nothing about power draw anywhere in their own copy, so the running cost of the Crock-Pot pots, the Tower and the Ninja cannot be calculated from the page you are buying on. That is the opposite of what the category sells itself on.
One note on the live table above. It pulls prices from Amazon’s own product feed, which on 21 October 2026 showed £14.99 for the Crock-Pot 1.8L against a £19.27 buy box. The buy box is what you actually pay, so that is the figure used in the prose and the at-a-glance table here. The other five matched exactly.
What changed at this check
Checked on 21 October 2026. All six picks are still listed on Amazon UK and in stock, so none has been replaced. Every price had moved, most of them up: the Crock-Pot 1.8L from about £15 to £19.27, the Tower from about £23 to £24.99, the Morphy Richards from about £30 to £27.90, the Crock-Pot 6.5L from about £32 to £42.99, the Crock-Pot Digital from about £35 to £39.99 and the Ninja from about £96 to £114.00. The at-a-glance table now carries dated prices instead of rounded ones, plus each listing’s stated wattage and the cost of an eight hour cook where that can be worked out. Running-cost figures are now produced by the site rates engine from the current cap rate rather than typed in by hand, so they move when the cap does.
Questions people ask
Is it cheaper to use a slow cooker than an oven?
Not on the one metered comparison we found. A 200W slow cooker on low for eight hours uses about 1.6kWh, which is roughly 42p at 26.32p per kWh. An electric oven pulling 2kW for two hours uses 4kWh, about £1.05. Correction, 2 October 2026: that oven figure multiplies the oven's wattage by the hours, which overstates an oven because its thermostat switches the element off once it is hot. On the one smart plug comparison we found, an oven cooked a cottage pie for 0.53 kWh (13.8p) and a slow cooker on low used 1.32 kWh (34.7p). Our cheapest way to cook comparison has the full working. The real case for a slow cooker is that it makes cheap cuts like shin, brisket and shoulder worth buying.
Can you leave a slow cooker on all day when you're out?
They're designed for it, and that's the whole point of the appliance. Sensible precautions still apply: put it on a heatproof surface with clearance around it, don't run it under a wall cupboard, and don't leave it plugged into an extension lead buried behind other appliances. A model with an auto keep-warm setting removes the worry about overcooking.
Do you have to brown the meat first?
You don't have to, but browning adds a depth of flavour you can't get any other way, and it renders off some fat that would otherwise sit on top of the sauce. If you know you'll skip it on a weeknight, buy a sear-and-stew model with a hob-safe pot so the step takes one extra minute rather than an extra pan.
Can you put frozen meat straight in?
No. Defrost it fully in the fridge first. Frozen meat sits in the bacterial danger zone for too long as a slow cooker warms up. The Food Standards Agency's general advice is that food should reach 70C for two minutes in the middle, and starting from frozen in a low-temperature appliance makes that hard to guarantee.
Ceramic or aluminium pot?
Ceramic holds heat more evenly and won't scratch, which is why most traditional models use it. Aluminium is lighter, heats faster and can go on the hob for searing, at the cost of a non-stick coating that eventually wears. If you cook a lot of meat dishes, take the aluminium. If you mostly do soups and puddings, ceramic.
Sources
- Ofgem, Energy price cap
- Ofgem, Changes to the energy price cap between 1 July and 30 September 2026
- Food Standards Agency, Cooking your food
Prices checked on 20 August 2026 and change often. Look Into earns a commission from Amazon links at no extra cost to you.