Washer and Dryer Running Cost Calculator

Estimate what your washing machine and tumble dryer cost per cycle, per week and per year from their energy per cycle and your electricity price.

Washing and especially drying clothes can quietly cost more than you think. Enter the energy each cycle uses and how often you run them each week to see the cost per wash, per dry, per week and per year.

How the math works

Weekly energy is (wash kWh × washes) + (dry kWh × dries). Multiply by your price for the weekly cost, and by 52 for the year. Per-cycle cost is simply the cycle's kWh times your price.

Worked example: 4 washes at 0.9 kWh and 2 dries at 2.5 kWh is 3.6 + 5 = 8.6 kWh a week. At $0.17/kWh that is about $1.46 a week and roughly $76 a year — and the dryer is more than half of it.

Assumptions and limits

Energy per cycle depends heavily on temperature, load size and machine efficiency. Washing at 30 °C uses far less than 60 °C because heating water dominates. Vented and condenser dryers use the most; heat-pump dryers use far less. Air-drying costs nothing. Check your machine's energy label or measure a cycle with a plug meter for exact figures.

When this calculator helps most

Use this to decide whether it's worth changing habits — washing at a lower temperature, running fuller loads, or air-drying instead of tumble-drying — by comparing the "before" and "after" totals directly. It's also the quickest way to see how much of your laundry cost is really the dryer, which for most households is the bigger number by far.

Mistakes that throw off the estimate

Energy-per-cycle figures vary a lot with temperature and load size, so the most common mistake is guessing rather than checking your machine's energy label, which states a kWh-per-cycle figure for a standard programme. The second is ignoring how load size changes efficiency: running a half-empty washing machine or dryer uses nearly as much energy as a full one, so the same weekly laundry split across more, smaller loads costs more than fewer, fuller ones.

Line-drying and heat-pump dryers

The two biggest levers on this number both target the dryer specifically, since it's almost always the larger share of laundry cost. Line-drying or using an airer whenever weather and space allow removes the dry-cycle cost entirely — set "dries per week" to zero for those loads to see the difference directly in the calculator above. A heat-pump dryer is the other lever: instead of resistive heating, it moves heat the way a fridge does in reverse, typically using roughly half the energy of a standard vented or condenser dryer for the same load. It costs more upfront, but for a household running several dries a week, the running-cost saving alone can be substantial over the machine's lifetime — enter half your current per-dry kWh figure above to see roughly what switching would be worth.

What it costs in practice

Yearly laundry cost by loads per week, with and without a tumble dryer (0.7 kWh per wash, 2.5 kWh per dry), at $0.17/kWh.

Your own price and habits change these — the calculator above uses your numbers.

Frequently asked questions