How Much Does It Cost to Run a Laptop?
Short answer: about $0.069 a day and $2.08 a month, or $0.009 for each hour it runs at full power, at the 2025 US average electricity rate. That is for a 50 W laptop running 8 hours a day with a 100% duty cycle. Change the state and hours below for your own number.
Updated Nov 8, 2026
Quick answer
Quick answer, US average (17.3 c/kWh)
About $2.08 a month
The same use costs $1.42 a month in North Dakota and $4.87 in Hawaii.
- Per hour
- $0.009
- at 50 W
- Per day
- $0.069
- 8 h, 0.40 kWh
- Per month
- $2.08
- 30 days
- Per year
- $25.26
- 365 days at the same use
Your state, your hours
Per hour
$0.009
Per day
$0.069
Per month
$2.08
Per year
$25.26
Laptop at 50 W, 8 h a day, 30 days a month, 100% duty cycle: 12.0 kWh a month. Using the 2025 US average of 17.3 cents/kWh.
Want to change the watts or duty cycle too? Open the full calculator.
What decides the cost of running a laptop
A laptop is built to run on a battery, so almost everything inside it is tuned to sip power. A thin ultrabook doing email, documents and video calls usually draws 15 to 30 W at the wall, and a mainstream laptop with a 65 W charger sits somewhere around 30 to 50 W when it is busy and charging at the same time. The 50 W default on this page is deliberately on the high side of normal office use, about what a larger 15 or 16 inch machine pulls while it works and tops up its battery. Over an 8 hour workday that is 0.4 kWh, about 7 cents.
The charger rating is not the draw. A 65 W or 100 W USB-C adapter only delivers what the laptop asks for, and once the battery is full the laptop runs straight from the adapter at its working load. Gaming laptops are the exception. With a discrete graphics chip under load they can pull 150 W or more for hours, and their bulky 230 W or larger power bricks exist for that reason. If you game on a laptop, set the watts in the calculator to 150 and the result is closer to what you will see.
Screen brightness, background apps and what the processor is doing move the number more than anything else. A laptop rendering video or compiling code runs its fans and draws several times what it does idling on a spreadsheet. Sleep mode is cheap, typically 0.5 to 2 W, so closing the lid at lunch costs almost nothing and saves the battery wear of a full discharge.
Against a desktop, a laptop is the efficient choice by a wide margin. The office desktop on this site draws 120 W, so the same 8 hours costs more than twice as much before you add a monitor. Even so, a laptop is one of the cheapest things you can plug in all day.
How to cut it
- Turn screen brightness down a few steps. The display is often the largest single draw on a thin laptop.
- Use the balanced or battery saver power mode for office work instead of maximum performance.
- Let it sleep when you step away. Sleep draws about 0.5 to 2 W.
- For a gaming laptop, cap the frame rate in games so the graphics chip is not working flat out for frames you cannot see.
Laptop cost by state
Monthly cost for 50 W, 8 h a day, 100% duty cycle, 30 days, sorted cheapest to most expensive. Pick your state above to highlight it.
| Rank | State | Cents/kWh | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | 11.81 | $1.42 |
| 2 | Idaho | 11.82 | $1.42 |
| 3 | Nebraska | 12.34 | $1.48 |
| 4 | Louisiana | 12.57 | $1.51 |
| 5 | Arkansas | 12.84 | $1.54 |
| 6 | Montana | 12.98 | $1.56 |
| 7 | Utah | 13.07 | $1.57 |
| 8 | Washington | 13.11 | $1.57 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 13.12 | $1.57 |
| 10 | Nevada | 13.15 | $1.58 |
| 11 | Tennessee | 13.18 | $1.58 |
| 12 | Kentucky | 13.24 | $1.59 |
| 13 | South Dakota | 13.38 | $1.61 |
| 14 | Wyoming | 13.38 | $1.61 |
| 15 | Missouri | 13.49 | $1.62 |
| 16 | Iowa | 13.72 | $1.65 |
| 17 | North Carolina | 14.02 | $1.68 |
| 18 | Mississippi | 14.03 | $1.68 |
| 19 | Kansas | 14.56 | $1.75 |
| 20 | Georgia | 14.73 | $1.77 |
| 21 | South Carolina | 14.96 | $1.80 |
| 22 | New Mexico | 15.08 | $1.81 |
| 23 | Florida | 15.24 | $1.83 |
| 24 | Virginia | 15.28 | $1.83 |
| 25 | Arizona | 15.32 | $1.84 |
| 26 | Oregon | 15.37 | $1.84 |
| 27 | West Virginia | 15.41 | $1.85 |
| 28 | Texas | 15.47 | $1.86 |
| 29 | Minnesota | 15.82 | $1.90 |
| 30 | Colorado | 15.85 | $1.90 |
| 31 | Alabama | 16.10 | $1.93 |
| 32 | Indiana | 16.23 | $1.95 |
| 33 | Ohio | 16.96 | $2.04 |
| 34 | Delaware | 17.13 | $2.06 |
| 35 | Illinois | 17.69 | $2.12 |
| 36 | Wisconsin | 18.16 | $2.18 |
| 37 | Pennsylvania | 19.30 | $2.32 |
| 38 | Maryland | 19.48 | $2.34 |
| 39 | Michigan | 20.01 | $2.40 |
| 40 | District of Columbia | 21.94 | $2.63 |
| 41 | New Jersey | 22.63 | $2.72 |
| 42 | Vermont | 22.92 | $2.75 |
| 43 | New Hampshire | 24.56 | $2.95 |
| 44 | Alaska | 26.09 | $3.13 |
| 45 | New York | 26.39 | $3.17 |
| 46 | Maine | 27.78 | $3.33 |
| 47 | Connecticut | 29.38 | $3.53 |
| 48 | Rhode Island | 29.46 | $3.54 |
| 49 | Massachusetts | 30.48 | $3.66 |
| 50 | California | 32.54 | $3.90 |
| 51 | Hawaii | 40.59 | $4.87 |
Rates: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861, annual average residential price, 2025 (eia.gov). Full list on the electricity rates by state page.
Measure it instead of estimating
P3 Kill A Watt P4400 Electricity Usage Monitor
Plugs in between the wall and any 120 V appliance and shows watts and accumulated kWh. The cheapest way to replace the estimate on this page with your own number.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to run a laptop per hour?+
Under 1 cent. A 50 W laptop uses 0.05 kWh an hour, and 0.05 x $0.173 is about 0.9 cents at the national average rate. A thin laptop drawing 20 W costs about a third of a cent an hour.
How much does it cost to run a laptop per month?+
About $2.08 a month. At 50 W for 8 hours a day a laptop uses 0.4 kWh a day, or 12 kWh over 30 days, and 12 x $0.173 is about $2.08.
How much does it cost to run a laptop per year?+
About $25 a year. 0.4 kWh a day for 365 days is 146 kWh, and 146 x $0.173 is about $25.26 at the national average rate. Even in Hawaii, at over three times the average rate, it stays under $90.
How many watts does a laptop use?+
Usually 15 to 50 W. Thin ultrabooks draw 15 to 30 W doing office work, mainstream laptops 30 to 50 W while working and charging, and gaming laptops 150 W or more under load. The wattage printed on the charger is its maximum, not what the laptop draws.
How much does it cost to leave a laptop on 24 hours a day?+
About 21 cents a day if it works the whole time at 50 W: 0.05 kW x 24 hours = 1.2 kWh, and 1.2 x $0.173 is $0.21. Left idle with the screen off it draws far less, often under 10 W, so a laptop left on overnight costs a cent or two.
Does a laptop use a lot of electricity?+
No. At 50 W a laptop uses about a third as much as a 150 W refrigerator compressor while it runs, and its 0.4 kWh workday is less than one load in an electric dryer, which uses about 3 kWh.
Is a laptop cheaper to run than a desktop?+
Yes, by more than half. On this site's defaults, an office desktop at 120 W for 8 hours uses 0.96 kWh a day, about $4.98 a month, against 0.4 kWh and about $2.08 for a 50 W laptop. A desktop also needs a separate monitor, which adds about 30 W.
Is it bad to leave a laptop plugged in all the time?+
Not for the bill. Once the battery is full, the laptop runs from the charger at its normal working load and the charger itself wastes well under 1 W. For battery health, many laptops now offer a setting that stops charging at 80 percent, which is worth turning on if it stays docked.
How long will a power station run a laptop?+
About 17 hours from a 1,000 Wh station at 50 W, after allowing about 15 percent for inverter losses (1,000 x 0.85 / 50 = 17). Charging through the station's USB-C port instead of the AC outlet skips the inverter and stretches that further.
How can I lower the cost of running a laptop?+
Lower the screen brightness, use a balanced power mode, and let it sleep when you step away. The savings are small in dollars because the laptop already costs about $2 a month, so the real gain is battery life.
Marcus Reed
Founder and Editor, CrunchYourDollars
Marcus Reed builds the sizing tools on CrunchYourDollars. He is a software engineer with a long-running PC hardware and power supply habit, which is where the watts, watt-hours and surge math on this site comes from. Product specs are pulled from manufacturer data sheets, electricity rates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and water chemistry rules from the Water Quality Association. He is not a licensed electrician or plumber: the tools show the math and the matching models so you can make the call, and anything involving your electrical panel should be checked by a licensed pro.
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