Electricity Cost Calculator for Europe

Every other appliance calculator online asks for your price per kWh — a number almost nobody knows off the top of their head — and most of them quote US cents anyway.

This one already has it, for 36 European countries, straight from Eurostat. Pick your country and it fills itself in.

Pre-filled with the Eurostat national average. Replace it with the rate on your bill for a precise answer.

Tumble dryer (condenser) costs you about

€151 a year

€12.57 a month · 390 kWh a year

Cheapest in Europe · Türkiye

€25

at €0.06/kWh

Dearest in Europe · Ireland

€158

at €0.40/kWh

At the EU average of €0.29/kWh the same usage would cost €113 a year. Identical electricity costs nearly four times more in Ireland than in Hungary — and over six times more than in Türkiye — which is why a running-cost figure copied from a US or UK site tells you very little.

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Cite or embed this: Electricity Cost Calculator, Portofelo. Source: Eurostat household electricity prices, 36 countries. Last updated 30 August 2026.

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The four-fold gap nobody mentions

The same kilowatt-hour costs €0.40 in Ireland and €0.11 in Hungary. Germany is €0.39, France €0.26, Spain €0.27, Poland €0.27, Romania €0.29. So an article telling you a tumble dryer "costs about €150 a year" is quietly assuming a country, and it's usually not yours.

That gap also changes which advice is worth following. In Hungary, obsessing over standby power is close to pointless. In Ireland or Germany, switching a condenser dryer for a heat-pump model pays for itself far faster than the same swap would in Bulgaria.

Heat is what costs money

Run the numbers on a few appliances and one pattern appears immediately: anything that produces heat dwarfs everything that produces light or computation. Tumble dryers, ovens, immersion heaters, electric showers and space heaters are where household electricity actually goes.

A tumble dryer run three times a week gets through about 390 kWh a year — three times what a 55-inch TV uses running four hours every single day. Unplugging phone chargers, meanwhile, achieves almost nothing measurable: it feels virtuous and it is arithmetically irrelevant.

The one exception worth knowing is gaming PCs. At around 0.45 kWh an hour, three hours a day works out to roughly 490 kWh a year — more than the tumble dryer. Heat still dominates most homes, but a gaming habit is a genuine rival to it.

If you want to lower a bill, the honest order is: heating, hot water, drying, cooking, then everything else. There's more on that in how to save money on energy bills.

About the numbers

Prices are Eurostat's household electricity series for the second half of 2025, all taxes and levies included, for the 2,500–4,999 kWh consumption band that most households fall into. Those are official figures.

The appliance consumption values are typical figures, not official ones, and real usage varies a lot with model, age and settings — a heat-pump dryer uses roughly half what a condenser model does. Every field is editable for exactly that reason. The rating plate on your appliance and the tariff on your bill will always beat an average.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate what an appliance costs to run?

Multiply the appliance's energy use in kilowatt-hours by how often you use it, then multiply by your price per kWh. A tumble dryer using 2.5 kWh per cycle, run three times a week, uses 390 kWh a year — which costs about €151 in Germany but €42 in Hungary. The calculator above does this for you and fills in the electricity price for your country.

How much does electricity cost per kWh in Europe?

The EU average is about €0.29 per kWh including all taxes and levies, but the range is enormous. Ireland is the most expensive at roughly €0.40, followed by Germany at €0.39, while Hungary is around €0.11. That is a difference of nearly four times within the EU, and more than six times once Türkiye's €0.06 is included — so the same appliance can cost wildly different amounts depending only on where it is plugged in.

Which household appliances use the most electricity?

Anything that heats. Tumble dryers, electric ovens, immersion heaters, electric showers and space heaters dominate most bills, because turning electricity into heat takes far more energy than running electronics. A gaming PC used three hours a day costs less annually than a tumble dryer run three times a week.

Why is my electricity bill higher than this calculator says?

This works out the cost of one appliance, not your whole bill. A typical European household uses 2,500 to 5,000 kWh a year across everything, and most bills also include a fixed standing charge that you pay regardless of usage. Add the appliances that matter individually and you'll usually account for most of the variable part.

Where do these electricity prices come from?

Eurostat's household electricity price series (nrg_pc_204), for the second half of 2025, covering the 2,500–4,999 kWh consumption band with all taxes and levies included. That's the band most households fall into. Your own tariff may differ, so the price field is editable — the figure on your bill always beats a national average.

Sources

Also useful: grocery budget calculator for Europe.