What everything in your home costs to run right now

A dual fuel household on a standard variable tariff pays 57.19p a day for the electricity connection and 29.04p a day for the gas connection. That is 86.23p a day, or £314.74 a year, charged whether the house is occupied or empty, whether the heating is on or the fuse box is off.

That sets a floor under every saving on this page. A habit costing £40 a year cannot be cut to zero, only down to your share of the standing charge. An empty flat, a holiday home or a garage supply still generates a bill. It is also why swapping one appliance moves the total less than most people expect.

Ofgem price cap, direct debit, average across England, Scotland and Wales, 1 July to 30 September 2026. Your own rate varies by region and by how you pay. Prepayment and standard credit rates differ.

Power ratings as published by the Centre for Sustainable Energy, last updated July 2026. Costs recalculated by Look Into at the current capped rate of 26.11p per kWh. Usage times are our stated assumptions and are there so the arithmetic is visible, not because every household runs an iron for exactly half an hour.

A fridge freezer is usually listed at 300W and a freezer at 150W, and those numbers are real. They are the draw of the compressor while the compressor is running. A fridge compressor does not run continuously. It cycles, and the share of the day it spends running depends on the model, the room temperature, how full it is and how often the door opens.

Multiply 300W by 24 hours and you get £1.88 a day, or £686 a year, for a fridge freezer. That figure is wrong by roughly an order of magnitude, and it circulates widely. The Energy Saving Trust puts a 424 litre F rated fridge freezer at around £80 a year, and an A rated dishwasher at £35 a year against £70 for a G rated one.

The general rule: for anything that cycles on a thermostat rather than running flat out, the rated power tells you almost nothing about the annual cost. That covers fridges, freezers, dehumidifiers on humidistat control, and any heater with a thermostat. Use the annual figure on the energy label instead, which is measured over a standardised year rather than assumed.

A single basket air fryer rated at 1,500W, run for half an hour, costs about 20p. An hour in a 2,100W oven costs about 55p. The air fryer earned its reputation on that gap, and the gap is real.

The reason is volume. An air fryer heats a five litre box and starts cooking straight away. An oven heats a sixty litre cavity and spends ten minutes getting there. Every penny of the saving comes from the size of the space being heated, which is the same reason a microwave beats an air fryer for anything it can cook, and a single hob ring beats both for one pan.

It also means the advantage runs out. Cooking for four and running three or four baskets back to back puts you level with the oven, and past that the oven wins. The rule that survives is to heat the smallest space that will do the job, whichever appliance that turns out to be.

The 1,500W figure is a typical rated power from UK retail listings rather than one of the Centre for Sustainable Energy figures used elsewhere on this page. Dual basket models draw considerably more, often over 2,000W.

All at 26.11p per kWh. These are worked examples using the power ratings in the table above, not measurements of any particular household.

Two figures from the Energy Saving Trust are worth setting alongside these. Taking devices off standby saves a typical household around £45 a year, and replacing halogen bulbs with LEDs saves around the same. Both are one off actions rather than habits, which makes them better value per unit of effort than anything in the table above.

Gas and electricity are not comparable per kWh, because neither delivers a full kWh of heat for every kWh you buy. A gas boiler loses some up the flue. A heat pump does the opposite and moves more heat than the electricity it consumes. So the honest comparison is cost per kWh of heat delivered into the house.

The Energy Saving Trust puts an A rated boiler at 90 per cent efficient, and a heat pump at 300 to 400 per cent. At today’s capped rates:

The number to remember is 3.2. At 26.11p for electricity and 7.33p for gas, a heat pump has to average a seasonal efficiency of about 3.2 to break even with a 90 per cent gas boiler on fuel cost alone. Below that it costs more to run. Above it, it costs less, and the gap widens quickly.

The calculation leaves out standing charges, so a household that keeps a gas connection for the hob goes on paying £106 a year for it. It also assumes a modern boiler. Older ones run well below 90 per cent, which drags the break even point down. Most importantly, a heat pump on a time of use tariff buys much of its electricity below the capped rate, and that is the main reason real installations beat this arithmetic more often than the table suggests.

This page prices a unit of heat. For what a heat pump costs to run across a whole UK winter, including the radiator and flow temperature side of it, see heat pump running costs.

Work out the installed cost and grant for your own house

Energy Saving Trust, page updated 3 August 2026. The shares do not sum to 100 because space heating and hot water, which dominate most bills, sit outside this list.

A tumble dryer cycle costs 98p at the capped 26.11p. At a 10p off peak rate the same cycle costs 38p. Air drying the washing and shortening the showers both help and are worth doing, and an afternoon spent checking whether you are on the right tariff moves the number that multiplies all of them.

That is also the short version of this whole page. Chase heat. Anything that warms air, water or food is where the pounds are, so that is where the effort belongs: fewer dryer cycles, smaller cooking spaces, shorter showers, and a rate that fits how you actually use electricity. The kettle, the television and the standby lights can keep their dignity.

The sum behind every figure is the same one: watts divided by 1,000, multiplied by hours, multiplied by the unit rate. The inputs are on the page so you can check the arithmetic yourself.

We have not measured any of these appliances. The power ratings are published figures rather than our own bench tests, and the table above says so instead of leaving you to assume otherwise.

Ofgem sets the cap every three months. The next level takes effect on 1 October 2026 and is announced in late August. This page is rebuilt at each cap change and the date at the top moves with it.

Sources: Ofgem, energy price cap unit rates and standing charges. Centre for Sustainable Energy, how much electricity am I using. Energy Saving Trust, top five energy consuming home appliances, and the in depth guide to heat pumps.

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