What does it cost to heat a home with electricity?
Reviewed
EIA data · June 2026Electric heating is where the difference between appliances stops being pennies and starts being hundreds of dollars a season. It is also where the wattage on the label is least useful as a guide.
The reason is that not all electric heat is equal. Most of these appliances convert electricity to heat one-for-one. One of them does not, and that single distinction outweighs every other decision on this page.
Cost over a three-month season
At the U.S. average of 18.34¢ per kilowatt-hour, with duty cycles raised for in-season operation and each appliance at its own default usage. Electric furnace costs about 112× what electric blanket does — though these are not always like for like. Whole-house heating and a single warm bed are different jobs, and the table ranks cost, not suitability.
| Appliance | Typical W | In-season duty | Per season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electric furnace | 15,000 | 48% | $1,205 |
| Heat pump | 3,500 | 80% | $469 |
| Electric water heater | 4,500 | 21% | $376 |
| Electric baseboard heater | 1,500 | 100% | $251 |
| Space heater | 1,500 | 100% | $201 |
| Ductless mini-split | 900 | 96% | $145 |
| Electric fireplace | 1,500 | 96% | $120 |
| Heated floor | 1,200 | 64% | $103 |
| Humidifier | 200 | 80% | $26.78 |
| Electric blanket | 100 | 80% | $10.71 |
How the seasonal figures are built. Heating appliances run far harder in the coldest months than their annual average implies. The figures below apply a 1.6x multiplier to each appliance's baseline duty cycle to approximate mid-winter operation. It is an approximation, not a measurement — your climate, insulation and thermostat setting move it a long way in either direction.
Why one appliance breaks the pattern
Every resistance heater — baseboard, space heater, electric furnace, heated floor, electric fireplace — is essentially 100% efficient. One unit of electricity becomes one unit of heat. There is no room for one design to beat another.
A heat pump does something different. It does not create heat; it moves heat that already exists outside into the house. That lets it deliver two to four units of heat per unit of electricity, which is why it is the only genuine efficiency decision available in electric heating.
A mini-split is a heat pump in a different box, and gets the same multiplier.
Where the heat pump advantage narrows
Heat pumps get less effective as the outdoor temperature falls, because there is less ambient heat available to move. Below a threshold — which varies by model and is much lower on modern cold-climate units than on older ones — backup resistance strips engage.
Those strips are typically 10,000 to 20,000 watts. While they are running, the heat pump is an electric furnace and costs like one.
This is why a heat pump's seasonal cost depends more on your climate than on the unit's rating, and why the figures below should be read as a comparison rather than a forecast.
Heating a person instead of a room
The cheapest options on the table are not heaters in the usual sense. An electric blanket costs a fraction of any room heater because it warms a body directly, with almost nowhere for the heat to escape to.
Heating a room means continuously replacing heat that leaks through the walls and windows. The colder it is outside, the faster it leaks, and the more you pay.
For a single person in a single room in the evening, a blanket or a small heater aimed at the occupied space beats raising the whole-house thermostat by a wide margin.
The load people forget
Water heating rises in winter too, and it is not obvious why until you think about it: the water entering the house is colder, so more energy is needed to bring it to the same temperature.
For an electric tank heater this can be a noticeable seasonal increase that has nothing to do with the thermostat setting or with how long anyone showers.