How many watts does an air fryer use?
Domestic air fryers draw **1200 to 1875 watts** while heating. Small single-basket models sit at the lower end, large dual-basket ones at the upper. Twenty minutes a day at 1500 W comes to about **$34 a year** — more than running a washing machine, and that is not what most people expect from a countertop appliance.
Work it out with your own tariff
Minutes a day
Watts, from the label on yours
Your rate, cents per kWh
| Period | Cost | Time counted |
|---|---|---|
| One minute | $0.0023 | 1 minute |
| Your daily use | $0.0115 | 5 minutes a day |
| A month | $0.35 | × 30 days |
| A year | $4.21 | × 365 days |
750 W × 5 min ÷ 60 ÷ 1000 = 0.0625 kWh × 18.44¢ = $0.0115 a day.
Minutes are counted per day in total, not per use. If you use it three times a day for two minutes, that is six. The distinction matters because multiplying one use by 365 assumes you use it once a day, and most pages that quote a yearly figure never say which they did. 1200-1875 W is what is printed on domestic air fryers; small single-basket models sit at the lower end and large dual-basket ones at the upper. It is a heating element with a fan, so the rating on the appliance is what it draws while heating. Rate defaults to 18.44¢ (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026-05).
It costs more than the appliances people worry about
| Appliance | Cost a year | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Air fryer, 20 min a day | about $34 | 1500 W on the plate |
| Dishwasher | about $44 | certified, 239 kWh |
| Washing machine | about $20 | certified, 110 kWh |
| Toaster, 4 min a day | about $5 | 1200 W on the plate |
The air fryer sits between the dishwasher and the washing machine, and well above the toaster it superficially resembles. The reason is duration: twenty minutes at high power, most days, adds up in a way four minutes does not.
Compared with the oven it replaces, though
This is the comparison that actually matters, and this site cannot make it honestly.
An electric oven draws two to three times what an air fryer does, but it also heats a much larger cavity and takes longer to get there. Whether the swap saves money depends on what you were cooking, in what, and for how long — and we have no certified figure for domestic ovens to put next to this one.
What can be said without guessing: the air fryer's advantage is that it reaches temperature in a fraction of the time, and time is what this page shows drives the cost. The direction is favourable. The size of the effect is not something we will invent a number for.
Set your own numbers
Take the watts from the plate on the back or underside. Count minutes per day in total — two batches of fifteen minutes is thirty, not fifteen.
Preheating counts and most estimates skip it
If you preheat, that is part of the time. A five-minute preheat before a fifteen-minute cook is twenty minutes at full power, not fifteen, and the difference is a third of the annual figure.
What this does not account for
No source, and none is needed. The rating is printed on the appliance. A heating element with a fan turns essentially all its electricity into heat, so the plate is the draw. Nobody certifies air fryers for energy use.
The element cycles once up to temperature. Like an oven, an air fryer heats to the set temperature and then modulates. The figure here assumes full power for the whole time, which makes it a ceiling rather than an average — the error runs one way only.
Preheating is time. Estimates that count only the cooking time understate by whatever the preheat was.
The comparison against an oven is not on this page. It is the question people actually have, and answering it would need a certified figure for domestic ovens, which we do not have. We would rather leave the gap visible than fill it with a guess.
Worth reading next
Sources
- 01Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3 — average price of electricity to ultimate customersU.S. Energy Information Administration ·
How these figures are produced: see our methodology.
Figures are calculated from published wattages and a published tariff, both dated above. They are good for comparing devices, not for predicting your bill: your rate, settings and usage all differ.