How many watts does a WiFi router use?
A WiFi router draws between **3 and 27 watts** continuously. That range is sevenfold, and it is the whole answer. “A WiFi router uses X watts” without saying which class of router is a statement about nothing.
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 | $0.00 | 1 hour |
| A full 24 hours on | $0.07 | 24 hours |
| A day of typical use | $0.02 | 6 hours |
| A month | $0.50 | 6 h/day × 30 |
| A year | $6.06 | 6 h/day × 365 |
15 W × 6 h ÷ 1000 = 0.09 kWh × 18.44¢ = $0.02 for a day of typical use.
Calculated at 15 W, the middle of the 3–27 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.
Where the range comes from
TP-Link publishes idle-power figures for its 2023 line-up as part of a US voluntary agreement on small network equipment. The numbers are measured, not estimated, and they span the market from the cheapest home router to the most demanding Wi-Fi 7 flagship:
| Model | Category | Idle power |
|---|---|---|
| Archer A54 | Basic router | 2.86 W |
| Archer C50 | AC1200 dual-band | 3.25 W |
| Deco X55 (1-pack) | Wi-Fi 6 mesh unit | 5.96 W |
| Archer AX3000 | Wi-Fi 6 router | 6.81 W |
| Deco XE75 (3-pack) | Wi-Fi 6E mesh set | 8.17 W |
| Deco BE95 (1-pack) | Wi-Fi 7 mesh unit | 22.32 W |
| Archer BE900 | Wi-Fi 7 flagship | 26.95 W |
The 2.86 W entry-level and the 26.95 W Wi-Fi 7 flagship differ by a factor of 9.4. Same category, same manufacturer, published in the same document. Any generic answer collapses these into one.
What a year of it costs
The router does not stop for anything: no sleep, no timer, no away mode. So the honest unit for a router is not the hour but the year, and it is a small number multiplied by 8,760.
- 3 W held continuously: about 26 kWh a year, or roughly $4 at the US average.
- 8 W (a Wi-Fi 6 mesh node): about 70 kWh, $11.
- 27 W (a Wi-Fi 7 flagship): about 236 kWh, $37.
The gap between the ends of the range is over thirty dollars a year, quietly, for as long as the device lives. That is worth naming: a Wi-Fi 7 router is not a comparable choice to a Wi-Fi 6 one, and the electricity difference is one of the categories the marketing does not tell you about.
Idle is not standby
This is the confusion that makes most explanations of router power wrong. A router does not have a standby state in the sense a TV does. The measurement above is idle — the router is on, connected, ready, doing nothing. That is the low end of its actual life.
Under load it draws more, and the manufacturer’s figure does not cover that. But a domestic router spends the majority of its hours idle by any honest reckoning, so the idle figure is closer to the yearly average than the peak is.
And how it compares against Starlink
The Starlink page on this site puts the Standard 4 X kit at 75–100 W. That is between three and thirty-three times more than a WiFi router, depending on which router you are comparing against.
Which is worth stating plainly: satellite internet costs an order of magnitude more electricity than fibre or cable delivered through a domestic router. That does not make the choice wrong — in many places there is no choice — but the electricity bill is one of the axes on which the two options are actually different, and it is the one most comparisons skip.
What this does not account for
The figures are one manufacturer's, and one year. They are also the largest published set of measurements the domestic router market has, which is why they anchor this page. If you own a different brand, the ranges are similar; individual models may sit slightly outside them.
Idle is not maximum. Under sustained heavy load a router draws more — how much more depends on the model, and no consumer-grade router publishes that number. For the yearly total the difference is small because heavy sustained load in a home is rare.
Mesh sets multiply. A three-pack Wi-Fi 6E mesh at about 8 W per unit is around 24 W total. Buy a mesh, take that number, and multiply.
The number below is for continuous operation. There are no hours to set for this device: it is on. If your model is switched off overnight, subtract the off hours from the year and use the multiplication yourself.
This is electricity only. It is not the internet service bill, and it says nothing about whether the connection is worth it.
Sources
- 01TP-Link SNE Voluntary Agreement — idle power consumption by model (2023)TP-Link ·
- 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.