What does a welder 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 a welder that gives 400 kWh a year, or $73.

Welders are rated by duty cycle explicitly — a 20% duty cycle at a given amperage means two minutes of arc in every ten. That published rating is a thermal limit on the machine, and it is also, conveniently, close to how the electricity is actually used.

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. 5,000 W — what it draws while it is actually drawing. This is the rating on the plate.
2. × 20% — the share of its in-service time it is really pulling that. Welders are rated by duty cycle explicitly — a 20% duty cycle at a given amperage means two minutes of arc in every ten. That published rating is a thermal limit on the machine, and it is also, conveniently, close to how the electricity is actually used.
   That gives 1000 W averaged across the hours it is on.
3. × 2 hours a day × 40 days — A couple of hours in the shop, roughly forty days a year.
   1000 × 2 × 40 ÷ 1,000 = 80 kWh a year.
4. + standby — 15 W for the other 22.0 hours a day, which is 13 kWh a year. People leave this out and it is not always small.
5. × 18.34¢ — the US average residential rate for June 2026.
   93 kWh × 18.34¢ = $17 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

This is the one appliance where the manufacturer prints the duty cycle on the machine, because exceeding it overheats the transformer. Everything else on this site required the figure to be modelled; here it is a specification. It is also a good illustration of why the concept matters: a 5 kW welder at 20% duty averages 1 kW, and treating the nameplate as the running figure overstates it fivefold.

What it costs in your state

The appliance is the same everywhere; the rate is not. Running this welder costs $49 a year in Hawaii and $12 in Nevada — a difference of 4×.

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

Other tools, hobbies and outdoors costs

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• Pottery kiln

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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