How many watts does Starlink use?
Starlink publishes the answer itself: **75 to 100 watts** on average for the standard kit, and **20 watts** when idle. The more useful number is the yearly one, because this is the first device on this site with no off state. A dish that runs continuously draws roughly **650 to 875 kWh a year** — more than the refrigerator and the freezer on this site put together.
Work it out with your own tariff
Residential sector, US average, as published in Electric Power Monthly released 23 July 2026. This is a revenue-weighted average across all residential customers and utilities, not a tariff any single household pays. In the same month the state residential averages ran from 12.35 cents in Idaho to 52.00 in Hawaii, with California at 33.25 and New York at 29.93 — a spread of more than four times. Use the figure from your own bill; the default here is a placeholder, not an answer.
| Period | Cost | Hours counted |
|---|---|---|
| One hour running | $0.05 | 1 hour |
| A full 24 hours on | $1.10 | 24 hours |
| A day of typical use | $0.05 | 1 hour |
| A month | $1.37 | 1 h/day × 30 |
| A year | $17 | 1 h/day × 365 |
88 W × 1 h ÷ 1000 = 0.09 kWh × 52¢ = $0.05 for a day of typical use.
Calculated at 88 W, the middle of the 75–100 W range. Rate defaults to 18.44¢ (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026-05) — a national average, which is wrong for you specifically, so put your own in above.
The reason this page counts years, not hours
Every other page here asks how many hours you use something. That question does not apply to a satellite terminal. It is powered on when you install it and powered off when you cancel, and in between it draws electricity through every hour of every night whether or not anybody is awake.
Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours a year. At the published average that is 650 to 875 kWh, and even at the idle figure of 20 W it is 175 kWh — which is more electricity than several appliances on this site use in a year while doing their entire job.
The practical consequence: with a device like this, the wattage band matters far more than it does elsewhere. A 25-watt difference on a toaster is invisible. A 25-watt difference running continuously is 219 kWh a year.
Four models, and a sevenfold spread between them
Any article quoting "Starlink uses X watts" has not said which Starlink. The published figures are:
| Kit | Average | Idle |
|---|---|---|
| Mini | 20–40 W | 15 W |
| Standard Actuated | 50–75 W | 20 W |
| Standard 4 / 4 X / Enterprise | 75–100 W | 20 W |
| Performance (Gen 1 and Gen 2) | 110–150 W | 45 W |
Twenty watts against one hundred and fifty is a factor of seven and a half. The figures on this page are the Standard 4 X, which is the current consumer kit — stated plainly here because the choice matters and most pages hide it.
What the published band actually covers
Starlink is unusually specific about this, and it is worth repeating because most appliance figures are not. The numbers include the dish, the WiFi router, the power supply and the cables — the whole thing at the wall, not the dish alone. Anyone comparing Starlink against a home router is comparing a system against a component.
Starlink also states the figures are AC input averages and that consumption varies with temperature, location and use. That last one has a physical cause worth knowing: the dish heats itself to shed snow and ice, and in a cold climate the winter average sits above the published band rather than inside it.
Idle is not off
The 20-watt idle figure describes a terminal with nothing to do, not a terminal switched off. Unplugging it is the only off, and it costs a full reacquisition of the satellite link when you plug it back in.
Whether that trade is worth making is a question this page will not answer for you, because it depends on how long you are away and whether anything in the house needs the connection while you are gone. What the page can do is give you the arithmetic: 20 watts unplugged for a month saves about 14.6 kWh.
What this does not account for
These are the manufacturer's figures, not our measurement. That is stronger than most numbers on this site, because it is the company publishing the draw of its own hardware. It is also worth reading exactly: an average band with a stated dependence on temperature, location and use, not a fixed value.
Winter is above the band, not inside it. The dish uses power to melt snow and ice. Starlink names temperature as a factor without quantifying it, and neither will we — a number invented for this would look precise and be guesswork.
The kit you own decides the figure. Four models are published with averages from 20 W to 150 W. This page uses the Standard 4 X. If yours is a Mini or a Performance kit, take the row from the table above instead.
Hours below are hours of active use, and the rest of the day is not free. The calculator on this page works like the others, but the honest reading for a terminal is 24 hours a day. If you set eight, you have priced the evening and left sixteen hours of idle out of the total.
This is electricity only. It is not the service subscription, and it says nothing about whether the connection is worth its price.
Sources
- 01How much power does my Starlink need? — published power specificationsStarlink (SpaceX) ·
- 02Electric 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.