What does an electric fireplace cost to run?

Run the numbers on your own use

Change any of these and the figures update. The defaults are the typical case described above; your rate is the input that moves the answer most.

Why this is lower than the number you will see elsewhere

Almost every published answer to this question multiplies the rating on the label by the hours the appliance is switched on. For an electric fireplace that gives 1,050 kWh a year, or $193.

Thermostatic on the heat setting. The flame effect alone draws only a few watts.

The arithmetic, step by step

Nothing here is hidden, so you can check it or change it. Working in the order the formula runs:

1. 1,500 W — what it draws while it is actually drawing. This is the rating on the plate.
2. × 50% — the share of its in-service time it is really pulling that. Thermostatic on the heat setting. The flame effect alone draws only a few watts.
   That gives 750 W averaged across the hours it is on.
3. × 5 hours a day × 140 days — Evenings through winter with the heater on.
   750 × 5 × 140 ÷ 1,000 = 525 kWh a year.
4. + standby — 2 W for the other 19.0 hours a day, which is 5.3 kWh a year. People leave this out and it is not always small.
5. × 18.34¢ — the US average residential rate for June 2026.
   530 kWh × 18.34¢ = $97 a year.

Change any assumption in the calculator above and every figure on this page moves with it. The two that matter most are your rate, which varies 4× across the country, and the hours — the duty cycle is a property of the appliance, but the hours are a property of you.

How sensitive is that number?

A single figure invites more confidence than it deserves. Here is the same appliance under assumptions either side of the default, so you can see how much of the answer is the appliance and how much is the guess about how you use it.

Everything else held at the default. The spread here is the honest error bar on the headline figure.

What it costs per hour, day and month

At 18.34¢ per kWh, the US residential average for June 2026.

The thing worth knowing

It is a 1,500 W space heater with a video of a fire in front of it. The flame effect on its own costs almost nothing; every cent of the running cost is the heating element, and it is exactly as efficient as any other resistance heater.

Against heat pump (heating)

Run the flame effect without the heat when you want the look rather than the warmth. That alone drops it from 1,500 W to under 20 W. In numbers: an electric fireplace costs $97 a year on these assumptions, and heat pump (heating) doing a comparable job costs $423 — a difference of $326 a year, or $3,258 over ten years at today’s rate.

Both at 18.34¢/kWh, each on its own standard usage assumption. Ten years is roughly the service life of either.

What it costs in your state

The appliance is the same everywhere; the rate is not. Running this electric fireplace costs $280 a year in Hawaii and $70 in Nevada — a difference of 4×.

Cost of running one electric fireplace for a year, by state. Residential average price, EIA June 2026.

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Questions

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, June 2026. U.S. Government work, public domain.

How every figure on this page is computed · Where the data comes from