Methodology

Energy use

The EPA's ENERGY STAR certified product database — the manufacturer's own tested figure, not our estimate.

Electricity prices

U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential sector (12-month average through July 2026).

Independence

We sell nothing and take no manufacturer money. Not affiliated with the EPA, DOE or ENERGY STAR.

Annual running cost = annual energy use (kWh a year) × your state's average residential electricity price. Monthly cost is that figure divided by twelve. There is one multiplication and nothing else.

What the figure includes: the energy the appliance itself uses over a year, as measured under the federal test procedure, priced at the average residential rate in the state you choose.

What it does not include: your utility's actual rate plan, time-of-use or tiered pricing, seasonal rate changes, taxes and fixed charges on your bill, how full you keep the appliance, the temperature of the room it stands in, how often you open it, or how much you use it compared with the test assumption.

Every figure on this site is therefore an estimate of a typical year, not a prediction of your bill. Two households with the same appliance in the same state can pay meaningfully different amounts, and the difference is usually usage and rate plan rather than the machine.

Appliance catalogue: September 30, 2026. Electricity rates: October 19, 2026, covering 12-month average through July 2026.

Both dates are read from the ingest log rather than written into this page, so they cannot drift from the data behind them. A refresh that fails its verification pass is recorded but never published, and the previous good data keeps serving — so a date here always describes data that passed its checks.

Two public databases, and which one a model comes from is stated on its own page.

The EPA's ENERGY STAR certified product database, refreshed weekly. ENERGY STAR is voluntary and only lists models above an efficiency threshold, so being in it is a claim about how good the appliance is.

The U.S. Department of Energy's compliance certification database, refreshed fortnightly. This one is mandatory: a manufacturer must file a model here before it may legally be sold, whatever its efficiency. It is where the ordinary refrigerator in a rental comes from, and being in it is a claim about nothing except that the appliance is on sale.

We publish 13,333 models. The kWh figure on each page is the number its database lists for that model — we never recalculate it. We take DOE figures only for refrigerators, freezers and dishwashers, because those are the products DOE states in kWh a year. For washers, dryers, room air conditioners and water heaters it publishes an efficiency ratio instead, and turning a ratio into kWh would need an assumed number of cycles that would be ours rather than the manufacturer's. Those four come from ENERGY STAR alone.

The annual kWh figure already assumes a usage pattern, set by the U.S. Department of Energy test procedures at 10 CFR 430 Subpart B:

• washers: 295 cycles a year — 10 CFR 430 Subpart B, Appendix J2 (per §430.23)
• dryers: 283 cycles a year — 10 CFR 430 Subpart B, Appendix D1/D2
• dishwashers: 215 cycles a year under Appendix C1, or 184 under the newer Appendix C2 — 10 CFR 430 Subpart B, §430.23(bb)
• room-air-conditioners: 750 hours of cooling a year — 10 CFR 430 Subpart B, Appendix F, §5.2.1
• water-heaters: a hot water draw of 10, 38, 55 or 84 gallons a day, set by the heater's first-hour rating — 10 CFR 430 Subpart B, Appendix E

Refrigerators, freezers and wine coolers run continuously, so no cycle count applies. Washer figures include the energy used to heat the wash water with an electric water heater, which is why a washer looks more expensive than its motor alone would suggest.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's average residential price per kilowatt-hour, by state. The current figures are a 12-month average through July 2026, residential sector, average revenue per kWh; the U.S. average is 18.0¢ per kWh. We use a multi-month average rather than the latest month so a hot summer does not distort the number.

A state average is not your rate. Utilities inside one state differ, and time-of-use plans differ again. Treat the state figure as a much better starting point than the national one on the yellow label — not as your bill.

An EnergyGuide label estimates annual cost using one national electricity price for the whole country. That price is not DOE's annually published energy cost — it is the figure in the FTC's own table. 16 CFR 305.8(b) says the cost "to be used on labels" is the one listed in Appendix K1, and that the Commission will publish revised figures in 2027. 16 CFR Part 305, Appendix K1 currently reads 14¢ per kWh, set by the FTC's 2022 final rule effective January 2023 from DOE's 2022 figures. That is the rate we compare against. Labels printed before January 2023 used 12¢ per kWh, so an older label on a shelf will read lower still.

Real state prices run from 12.5¢ per kWh to 43.7¢ per kWh. The label is not wrong so much as national: above 14¢ per kWh it understates the running cost, and below it, it overstates.

Not every appliance carries a label. The Energy Labeling Rule sets label content for refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, freezers, clothes washers, dishwashers, water heaters, room air conditioners and pool heaters, among other products. Clothes dryers and wine coolers are not among the products required to carry an EnergyGuide label, so their pages show no label comparison at all — there is no printed estimate to compare against.

Against similar models. Comparisons use models of the same type — a bottom-freezer refrigerator is compared with other bottom freezers, not with compact units — whenever at least ten such models exist. Below that we fall back to the whole category and say so.

Against the federal maximum. Where ENERGY STAR publishes the federal standard for a model's size and configuration, we show it: the most energy a new appliance of that class may legally use. Savings shown are against that published limit.

We do not publish "versus your old fridge" savings. Neither DOE nor ENERGY STAR publishes an energy figure by appliance age that we could cite, and a dollar claim resting on an invented constant is exactly what this site exists to correct.

• Gas dryers. Their energy figure is gas converted into kWh-equivalents. Multiplying it by an electricity price would produce a fabricated number, so gas dryers are stored but get no pages until natural gas prices are added.
• Derived figures in headlines. Where we calculate something the source does not state — the "% better than standard" for washers, worked out from IMEF — it is labelled as ours and kept out of headings, titles and search descriptions.
• Appliances no longer sold. Both databases list only what is currently on the market, so a model discontinued a few years ago is in neither, and no average here describes the older machine in your kitchen.
• Washers, dryers, room air conditioners and water heaters that are not ENERGY STAR certified. For those four we hold the certified models only, so their category averages describe the efficient end of the market rather than a typical machine. Refrigerators, freezers and dishwashers do not have this limit.
• Prices. We do not publish purchase prices or claim to know what a model sells for.

If a number here disagrees with the ENERGY STAR listing or your own reading of the EIA data, the source wins and we want to know. Model pages carry the ENERGY STAR ID for the exact row we used.