- US average rate
- 18.34¢
- Typical bill
- $1,938
- Appliances costed
- 53
- States priced
- 51
per kWh · +5.0% on last year
a year · 10,566 kWh
each with its own duty cycle
EIA, June 2026
The correction this site exists to make
A refrigerator’s label says 150 W. Multiply that by 24 hours and 365 days and you get 1,314 kWh a year — the figure most sites publish. But the compressor only runs about a third of the time, so the real answer is 420 kWh, and the real cost is $77 rather than $241.
Why the gap exists, and how to measure your own →
Start here
- Where your bill actually goes
Enter your kilowatt-hours, tick what your home has, and see what is left unexplained. The number that matters is the remainder.
- Running cost by appliance
All 53 of them, ranked, each with a live calculator and a per-state table.
- Electricity rates by state
All 51, June 2026, with the change on last year. 46 rose.
- What your always-on devices cost
A watt left drawing costs $1.61 a year. Add up your own house.
The most expensive things in a house
At the US average rate. These are where a bill is won or lost — everything below the top ten is rounding error by comparison.
Recent guides
- Why is my electric bill so high?
Four causes account for nearly every large electricity bill. Here is how to tell which one is yours in about ten minutes, using the bill you already have.
- Duty cycle: the number that makes every appliance estimate wrong
Why nameplate watts times hours overstates a refrigerator threefold, what a duty cycle actually is, and how to measure your own.
- Standby power is real, and it is not a quarter of your bill
The arithmetic on vampire power, done properly. What always-on devices actually cost, which ones are worth unplugging, and why the famous statistic does not survive contact with a calculator.
- Home energy monitors: what they measure and what they cannot
Whole-home energy monitors put every circuit on a graph. Here is what the three types actually measure, which questions each one can answer, and when a $30 plug meter is the better buy.
- How to measure what one appliance actually costs
A fortnight with a plug-in meter settles any argument about a single appliance. The method, the mistakes that ruin the reading, and how to turn kilowatt-hours into an annual figure.
- Thermostat settings that actually change the bill
Setback, the 3–5% per degree rule, why “leave it steady” is wrong for furnaces and right for heat pumps, and the one setting that silently triples a winter bill.