A heat pump tumble dryer is the cheapest way to dry a load of washing indoors at the October 2026 price cap, once you count where the water ends up. It dries a 3kg load for about 15p. A dehumidifier beside an ordinary airer costs about 32p for the same load. Every heated airer we have priced costs more than that. Radiators come in lower still, at about 11p of gas, but only because the 1.74 litres of water in the load stays in your room.
Those figures use the Ofgem cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026: 26.32p per kWh for electricity and 7.97p for gas, paid by direct debit. We worked them out on 28 September 2026. We also read 47 tumble dryer listings on Amazon UK the same day. Seven publish any energy figure in kWh. None of them tells you what a load costs.
Key findings, 28 September 2026
- A heat pump dryer uses about 0.59 kWh for a 3kg load, 15p at the October cap. That comes from Hisense’s own label figures for the DH3S802BW3, scaled from its half-load test.
- A vented dryer uses 3.3 times as much: 1.93 kWh, or 51p a load. A condenser dryer works out at about 47p.
- A dehumidifier next to an unheated airer costs about 32p a load, on Meaco’s published figures for the Arete One 12L in a 20°C room.
- Drying on radiators costs about 11p of gas while the heating is on. It is the lowest figure here, and it leaves every drop of the water in the room.
- Of 47 tumble dryer listings read on 28 September 2026, 7 give an energy figure in kWh and none prices a load or a year in pounds.
- The same Hisense dryer is A+++ on the label still used in Great Britain and C on the newer A to G label. We call this the label letter swap.
What each method costs per load
Every row prices the same job: one 3kg wash, spun at an ordinary speed, dried until it is ready to put away. The first column is the energy the method uses to do it. The last column matters as much as the price, because water that stays indoors has to go somewhere.
| Method | Energy per load | Cost per load | A year | Where the water goes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washing line outside | None bought | 0p | £0 | Outside, on the days it will dry |
| Radiators, or an unheated airer, with gas heating on | 1.35 kWh of gas | 11p | £28 | Into the room |
| Heat pump tumble dryer (Hisense DH3S802BW3) | 0.59 kWh | 15p | £40 | Into the dryer’s tank or drain |
| Unheated airer plus dehumidifier (Meaco Arete One 12L) | 1.21 kWh | 32p | £83 | Out of the air, into the dehumidifier’s tank |
| Condenser tumble dryer (Hoover HLEC10DE) | 1.80 kWh | 47p | £123 | Into the dryer’s tank or drain |
| Heated airer, covered, in a warm room | 1.84 kWh | 48p | £126 | Into the room |
| Vented tumble dryer (Candy CSEV9DF) | 1.93 kWh | 51p | £132 | Outside, through the vent hose |
| Heated airer, open rack, in a cold room | 3.06 kWh | 81p | £210 | Into the room |
One number sits under the whole table. Turning a kilogram of water into vapour takes about 0.70 kWh of heat. A 3kg load comes out of a normal spin holding 1.74 kg of water, so something has to find about 1.22 kWh to dry it. That is the evaporation floor from our heated airer guide, where the heated airer rows above come from. The methods differ in which fuel pays that floor, how much they waste on top, and whether they can win any of it back.
Why the heat pump dryer wins
A heat pump dryer is the only machine here that uses less electricity than the water needs. It warms the air, pulls the moisture out on a cold coil, then reuses the heat it collected there. Hisense’s EU product fiche for the DH3S802BW3 gives 1.41 kWh for a full 8kg load of cotton and 0.78 kWh for a 4kg half load. Scale the half load down to 3kg and you get 0.585 kWh, less than half the 1.22 kWh floor.
Both caveats push the bill up, so read 15p as the low end. Small loads cost more per kilogram than a label suggests, because the drum and the air in it have to warm up whatever is inside. If a 3kg load took the whole half-load cycle, it would cost 21p. The label is also a lab figure, measured on a cotton programme to a set dryness, and a sensor programme that overdries will use more. Even at 21p the heat pump dryer undercuts the dehumidifier by about a third.
It is slow, though. The same fiche gives 188 minutes for a full load and 112 minutes for a half load.
A vented dryer has no way to reuse its heat. It blows hot, wet air out through a hose. Candy’s Amazon listing for the CSEV9DF 9kg vented dryer states 5.34 kWh for a full load and 2.9 kWh for a partial one. On that basis a 3kg load uses 1.93 kWh, 3.3 times the heat pump figure. Hoover’s listing for the HLEC10DE 10kg condenser dryer gives 5.7 kWh and 3 kWh, which makes 1.80 kWh for the same load. A condenser dryer keeps the water in a tank, but it cannot reuse its heat either.
Why radiators look so cheap
Draping washing over a radiator adds no separate line to your bill. The heat that dries it comes from your boiler, which fires a little more to hold the room at its thermostat setting. The Energy Saving Trust says an A-rated boiler turns 90% of its fuel into usable heat, so at the October gas rate heat costs 8.86p per kWh delivered. The 1.22 kWh floor then costs about 11p. An unheated airer in the same heated room costs the same, because the heat comes from the same boiler.
In a home heated by electric panel heaters on the standard capped rate, that 1.22 kWh costs about 32p, and the radiator route loses its edge over the dehumidifier.
The price of the cheap route is the water. A radiator puts all 1.74 litres into the air of your room. The government’s guidance on damp and mould names drying laundry as one of the everyday activities that builds up moisture in a home, and suggests drying it outdoors where possible. Once you run a dehumidifier to deal with that water, you are no longer on the 11p row. You are on the 32p one. Our condensation guide covers the ventilation side.
The dehumidifier route
Meaco publishes the Arete One 12L’s power and extraction at several room conditions. At 20°C and 60% humidity it draws 151W and removes 5.23 litres a day. That is 0.69 kWh per litre, or 18.2p at the October rate, so taking the load’s 1.74 litres back out of the air costs about 32p.
Two things work in its favour. Air right next to a wet airer is more humid than the room average, and Meaco’s own table shows the machine getting cheaper per litre as humidity rises: 11.9p a litre at 20°C and 80%. The electricity it uses also ends up as heat in the room, together with the heat released when the water condenses inside it. The cold works against it. At 10°C and 60% the same litre costs 42.1p, which is why a dehumidifier belongs in a warm room with the door shut. There is more on this in our dehumidifier rankings.
So a dehumidifier lands between the two kinds of dryer: about twice the heat pump’s cost per load, cheaper than a condenser or vented machine, and with no dryer to buy or find space for.
What the tumble dryer listings tell you
On 28 September 2026 we read every tumble dryer in the first three pages of an Amazon UK search for “tumble dryer”. There were 53 unique listings. We took out six that were not tumble dryers: a washer dryer, a washing machine, a spin dryer, a pack of dryer balls, a condenser kit and a heated drying bag. That left 47. We counted only what each seller wrote in the title, bullet points, description and specification table. Amazon’s separate energy label badge was not counted.
| What the listing does | Listings, of 47 |
|---|---|
| Calls itself a vented dryer in its title | 17 |
| Calls itself a condenser dryer in its title | 23 |
| Calls itself a heat pump dryer in its title | 7 |
| Gives any energy figure in kWh | 7 |
| of which a yearly figure | 4 |
| of which kWh per cycle, full and part load | 2 |
| of which kWh per 100 cycles, the unit on the new A to G label | 1 |
| States a running cost in pounds or pence | 0 |
| Claims a percentage saving without saying what it is measured against | 3 |
| States two different energy classes for the same machine | 2 |
Nobody prices a load. It is the one number a buyer comparing methods needs, and none of the 47 sellers gives it. Twelve of the 49 heated airer listings we read on 20 September quoted a cost per hour, however misleading. Tumble dryer sellers quote no cost at all, and only seven give the kWh you would need to work it out yourself.
One of those seven gets the unit wrong. The specification table on Hoover’s H-DRY 350 10kg listing gives its annual energy consumption as “570 Kilowatts”. A kilowatt measures how fast power is used. The label figure is 570 kWh a year.
Three Candy listings promise “savings of up to 70% on energy, time and money” from a load-sensing feature. None says 70% of what.
One 7kg vented dryer lists “30 Minute Dry” among its highlights. After a normal spin a full 7kg drum holds about 4.06 kg of water. Evaporating that takes at least 2.84 kWh, and doing it in half an hour would mean drawing 5.7kW. A 13A plug tops out at about 3kW. The 30-minute programme can only be for a part load, and the listing does not say how small.
The label letter swap
Tumble dryer energy labels are changing, and the listings show both systems at once. Great Britain still uses the A+++ to D scale. The government confirmed on 24 March 2026 that it will move to an A to G scale. Northern Ireland switched on 1 July 2025. The letters on the two scales do not line up.
The Hisense DH3S802BW3 priced above is the clearest case. Its EU product fiche under the old rules rates it A+++. Its fiche under the new rules rates it C. The Amazon UK listing calls it A+++ Rated. It is the same machine, drying the same load with the same electricity, and it carries two different letters.
Two listings in our audit print both letters for one machine. Comfee’s 8kg heat pump dryer says “A+ Class” and, in the same line, “New Energy Grade E”. Candy’s Quick Pro 8kg heat pump dryer says A+ in its title and “NEL Class E” in its description. An E reads like a machine to avoid, yet here it belongs to a heat pump dryer.
That is the label letter swap. The same dryer carries a different letter depending on which label you are reading, and a poor-sounding letter on the new scale can belong to a better machine than a good-sounding letter on the old one. Compare the kWh figures, not the letters. If a listing gives no kWh figure, the product fiche will: search the model number on the EU’s EPREL database.
Is a heat pump dryer worth the extra money?
The Hisense costs £429 on Amazon UK (checked 28 September 2026). The Candy CSEV9DF vented dryer we priced is £255. At five loads a week the heat pump saves about £92 a year in electricity at the October rate, so the £174 difference pays back in about two years. At three loads a week it takes a little over three.
Against a dehumidifier the case is weaker. The Arete One 12L is £179.99, and the heat pump dryer saves about 17p a load on it. At five loads a week that is about £43 a year, so the extra £249 takes nearly six years to earn back. If you already run a dehumidifier for damp, dry the washing next to it.
All of these savings move with the cap. Electricity carries no VAT from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, and every pence figure on this page goes up when that relief ends.
How we worked this out
| Item | What we did |
|---|---|
| The load | 3 kg of dry washing. Water left after the spin is 58% of dry weight, 1.74 kg, the midpoint of spin class C in Regulation 2019/2014 Annex II (A is under 45%, B 45 to 54%, C 54 to 63%). |
| The floor | 0.70 kWh per kg of water, so 1.22 kWh a load, as on our heated airer guide. |
| Tumble dryers | Each maker’s full-load and part-load figures, scaled per kilogram from the part-load cycle to 3 kg. Hisense from its EU product fiche; Candy and Hoover from their own Amazon listings. The label weights three full loads to four part loads over 160 cycles a year (Regulation 392/2012 Annex VII). |
| Dehumidifier | Meaco’s published 151W and 5.23 litres a day at 20°C and 60% humidity, from its product page. |
| Radiators | The 1.22 kWh floor supplied by a 90% efficient gas boiler, the Energy Saving Trust figure for an A-rated boiler. |
| Heated airers | The covered and open-rack figures from our heated airer guide, 1.5 and 2.5 times the floor. |
| What we did not do | We have not run any of these machines on a meter or timed a load. Every figure is arithmetic on published specifications, and each assumption is stated next to the number it produces. |
You can check your own. Plug the machine into a plug-in energy monitor, dry one normal load, and multiply the kWh reading by 26.32p. For radiators there is nothing to plug in, so read your gas meter before and after a drying day with the heating schedule unchanged, and compare it with a day without washing. Our appliance running cost calculator does the same sum for other appliances in the home.
Our picks
Prices are what Amazon UK showed on 28 September 2026. If you buy through these links we may earn a commission, which does not change what you pay.
Hisense 3S DH3S802BW3 8kg heat pump tumble dryer
£429. About 15p to dry a 3kg load at the October cap, on Hisense’s own EU fiche figures of 0.78 kWh for a 4kg half load. It is rated A+++ on the label used in Great Britain and publishes the numbers behind that letter, which most of the listings we read do not.
The catch: it is slow and it is dear to buy. Hisense’s fiche gives 188 minutes for a full load. It costs £174 more than the vented dryer we priced, which takes about two years at five loads a week to earn back.
See it on AmazonMeacoDry Arete One 12L dehumidifier
£179.99. About 32p to take a 3kg load’s water back out of the air in a 20°C room, from Meaco’s own figures of 151W and 5.23 litres a day. It also does the job most people buy one for, which is keeping condensation off the windows the rest of the week.
The catch: about twice the heat pump dryer’s cost per load, and it only works if the washing is within its reach, in a small room with the door shut. In a 10°C room a litre costs 42.1p, more than double the warm-room figure.
See it on AmazonTower Heated Winged Clothes Airer with Thermal Cover, 230W
£42.99. The cover matters more than the wattage. Covered, in a warm room, a heated airer comes in at about 48p a load in our heated airer guide, which is condenser-dryer money for a fraction of the price.
The catch: every drop of water goes into the room. Leave the cover off in a cold room and the same airer costs about 81p a load, more than any tumble dryer on this page.
See it on Amazon
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The table above pulls live prices from Amazon’s product feed, which can sit a few pence away from the price on the product page. The prices in our text are the ones we saw on the product pages.
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Who should not buy a heat pump dryer
If your washing goes on a line for most of the year, £429 is a lot to spend on the wet months. The saving over a vented dryer is about 36p a load, so at one or two loads a week in winter it may never pay back.
If you rent and have no space for a dryer, a dehumidifier is the better buy. If you already run one for damp, put the airer next to it and close the door. That costs about 32p a load and needs nothing new.
Cheapest way to dry clothes: your questions
What is the cheapest way to dry clothes in the UK?
Outdoors on a line, which costs nothing. Indoors, a heat pump tumble dryer is the cheapest method that also removes the water, at about 15p for a 3kg load at the October 2026 price cap of 26.32p per kWh. Drying on radiators costs about 11p of gas while the heating is on, but it leaves all 1.74 litres of water in the room.
Is a dehumidifier cheaper than a tumble dryer?
It depends on the dryer. A dehumidifier beside an unheated airer costs about 32p a load, using Meaco’s figures for the Arete One 12L at 20°C. That beats a vented dryer (about 51p) and a condenser dryer (about 47p), but a heat pump dryer does the same load for about 15p.
How much does a tumble dryer cost per load from October 2026?
For a 3kg load at 26.32p per kWh, a heat pump dryer costs about 15p. A condenser dryer costs about 47p and a vented dryer about 51p. These use each maker’s own part-load energy figures. A bigger load costs more in total but less per kilogram.
Is it cheaper to dry clothes on radiators?
On the bill, yes: about 11p of gas for a 3kg load while your heating is on, because the boiler supplies the 1.22 kWh the water needs. In a home with electric panel heaters it is about 32p. Either way the water ends up in your room, and running a dehumidifier to remove it puts you back at about 32p.
Why is my heat pump dryer rated A+++ in one place and C in another?
Tumble dryer labels are moving from the A+++ to D scale to a new A to G scale. Northern Ireland switched on 1 July 2025 and Great Britain will follow. The Hisense DH3S802BW3 is A+++ on the old label and C on the new one. Compare kWh figures, not letters.
Sources
- Ofgem, energy price cap unit rates and standing charges (1 October to 31 December 2026)
- EPREL product fiche, Hisense DH3S802BW3, Regulation 392/2012 label (A+++, 1.41 and 0.78 kWh)
- EPREL product information sheet, Hisense DH3S802BW3, Regulation 2023/2534 label (class C)
- Regulation (EU) No 392/2012, Annex VII, weighted energy consumption of tumble driers
- Regulation (EU) 2019/2014, Annex II, spin-drying efficiency classes
- GOV.UK, raising standards for household tumble dryers: government response (24 March 2026)
- Energy Saving Trust, new tumble dryer energy labels in Northern Ireland
- Energy Saving Trust, in-depth guide to heat pumps (90% A-rated boiler)
- Meaco, MeacoDry Arete One 12L product page
- GOV.UK, understanding and addressing the health risks of damp and mould in the home
- Amazon UK listings for the Candy CSEV9DF (B098FH2RQL) and Hoover HLEC10DE (B098F8QP37), read 28 September 2026