About WattCost

Why it exists

There are a lot of appliance running-cost calculators. Most of them share two flaws. They multiply wattage by the hours an appliance is switched on, ignoring that compressor appliances draw power for only a fraction of that time. And they use a single national electricity price in a country where the cheapest and most expensive states differ by roughly fourfold.

Both flaws push the answer a long way from reality. Correcting them is the entire point of this site.

What it covers

88 household appliances, and average residential electricity prices for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, currently for June 2026. Prices are refreshed when the U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes a new month.

What it will not do

• Present an estimate as a measurement. Wattages are shown as ranges with a stated basis, and you can override them.
• Publish a figure we cannot source. Where the data does not exist, the page says so rather than filling the gap with a guess.
• Recommend a product in exchange for payment. There are no affiliate links on this site.

How it is funded

WattCost is free to use and is funded by advertising served through Google AdSense. Advertising has no influence over the figures, the rankings or the editorial content — the arithmetic is fixed by the formula on the methodology page and produces the same answer regardless of what is advertised beside it.

See the privacy policy for how advertising and analytics use cookies.

Corrections

Errors get fixed. If a figure looks wrong, get in touch with the source you are comparing against and we will check it.