How much electricity does an air fryer use?
Almost every answer to this question is arrived at by multiplying the wattage on the back of the appliance by the cooking time. That gives you a real number and it is not the answer: it is the ceiling. Understanding why is the difference between guessing at your electricity bill and being able to check it.
Questions this answers
- How much electricity does an air fryer use?
- How many kWh does an air fryer use per hour?
- Does a 2000W air fryer use 2kWh an hour?
- How do I find out what mine actually uses?
- Do bigger air fryers use more electricity?
Watts and kilowatt-hours are different things
A watt is a RATE — how fast the appliance can draw power. A kilowatt-hour is a QUANTITY — how much it actually used. Your bill charges you for the second and the label on the appliance tells you the first.
Converting between them needs to know how long the appliance drew that power for, and that is exactly what nobody can tell you from the label, because an air fryer does not draw its rated power for the whole cook.
Why the label overstates it, every time
A heating element is either on or off. There is no dial that makes it draw 60% of its power. What a thermostat does is switch it on and off: full power while the chamber comes up to temperature, then a repeating cycle of on and off to hold it there.
So a cook is a short burst at close to the rated power followed by a period of intermittent draw. Multiply the rating by the total time and you have calculated the area of a rectangle that includes all the off periods as though the element were running through them.
How much of the time it is actually on is called the duty cycle, and AirfryerHQ does not know it for any appliance. No manufacturer in this catalogue publishes one and nobody here has metered one. That is why this site's calculator gives you an upper bound and says so, rather than an estimate that would look more precise and be less honest.
What has actually been measured
Which?, a consumer testing organisation, metered a Morphy Richards Health Fryer 480003 against a Bosch Serie 2 built-in electric oven across four jobs, with preheating included in every figure.
A 1.3–1.4kg roast chicken took 0.54 kWh in the air fryer and 1.157 kWh in the oven. 320g of frozen chips took 0.287 against 0.863. One jacket potato of about 200g took 0.392 against 1.084. A sponge cake took 0.223 against 0.71 — and in that last case the publication records that the cake had to be made smaller to fit the air fryer basket, which makes it a comparison of two different cakes.
Those numbers belong to those two machines. They are the best evidence available and they are not a figure for air fryers in general, which is a distinction worth holding on to when you see one of them quoted without an appliance attached.
The full set, with the appliances, quantities and caveats attached to each figure, is on the electricity-use page.
Does a higher wattage mean more electricity?
Not straightforwardly, and often the opposite. A higher-rated element brings the chamber up to temperature faster, which means it spends less time at full draw before the thermostat starts cycling. Two machines can use similar energy for the same job while having quite different ratings.
The same test house reports that across the air fryers it tested, cooking four portions of chips three times a week for a year cost £14.33 in the most efficient machine and £18.43 in the least. A four-pound spread across a year is the useful shape of that finding: the difference between air fryer models is real and small — much smaller than the difference between using an air fryer and using an oven.
Which means wattage is a poor thing to shop on for energy reasons. What it does affect is recovery after cold food goes in, and that is a cooking property rather than a billing one.
The honest way to find out
Put a plug-in energy monitor between the appliance and the socket and cook something you actually cook. The monitor reports kilowatt-hours directly, which removes every assumption on this page at once.
One caution that matters: an air fryer is a high-current appliance and the monitor must be rated for the load. There is a separate guide on doing this properly, including what to check before plugging anything in.
Once you have a real figure, this site's calculator will take it — enter it in the measured field and it replaces the estimate entirely rather than adjusting it.
What AirfryerHQ has not established
The duty cycle of any appliance, and therefore any per-hour consumption figure. There is no honest way to answer 'how many kWh per hour' without one.
Standby consumption. No manufacturer in this catalogue publishes it and nobody here has measured it. It is likely small and 'likely small' is not a number.
Whether the four measured figures generalise. They are two machines on four jobs from one test house, and the register holds no second measurement to check them against.
The measurements themselves, in full
Somebody ran the appliance and metered it. This is an observation of one machine doing one task, not a property of air fryers.
These 7 figures are the whole of the measured evidence AirfryerHQ could find from a source that names its appliances, states its quantities, publishes its method and dates its electricity rate. They are not a survey of air fryers, and AirfryerHQ has metered nothing itself.
Measured with an instrument
Roasting a whole chicken
Whole roast chicken — 1.3–1.4kg bird
- Air fryer
- 0.54 kWhMorphy Richards Health Fryer 480003 air fryer
- Oven
- 1.157 kWhBosch Serie 2 HHF113BR0B built-in electric oven
The oven used 2.14 times as much for the same amount of food.
Preheating included in the figure. Costed at 26.11p per kWh — the average capped rate for direct debit customers, July to September 2026.
The largest single job in the set, and the one where the air fryer's advantage is smallest in ratio terms — a whole chicken is close to the limit of what the basket holds, which is exactly where the size advantage starts to run out.
Air fryer vs oven: energy usage, costs and cooking results compared
Measured with an instrument
Cooking frozen chips
Frozen chips — 320g
- Air fryer
- 0.287 kWhMorphy Richards Health Fryer 480003 air fryer
- Oven
- 0.863 kWhBosch Serie 2 HHF113BR0B built-in electric oven
The oven used 3.01 times as much for the same amount of food.
Preheating included in the figure. Costed at 26.11p per kWh — the average capped rate for direct debit customers, July to September 2026.
320g is one to two portions. The oven used three times as much to cook the same small amount, which is the case the air fryer is genuinely built for — and the case that says least about cooking for four.
Air fryer vs oven: energy usage, costs and cooking results compared
Measured with an instrument
Baking a jacket potato
Jacket potato — one potato, about 200g
- Air fryer
- 0.392 kWhMorphy Richards Health Fryer 480003 air fryer
- Oven
- 1.084 kWhBosch Serie 2 HHF113BR0B built-in electric oven
The oven used 2.77 times as much for the same amount of food.
Preheating included in the figure. Costed at 26.11p per kWh — the average capped rate for direct debit customers, July to September 2026.
One potato in a 60-litre cavity is the least efficient thing an oven is ever asked to do, and this row is where the gap is widest. It is also the row least likely to describe a family meal.
Air fryer vs oven: energy usage, costs and cooking results compared
Measured with an instrument
Baking a sponge cake
Sponge cake — a reduced quantity, made smaller to fit the air fryer basket
- Air fryer
- 0.223 kWhMorphy Richards Health Fryer 480003 air fryer
- Oven
- 0.71 kWhBosch Serie 2 HHF113BR0B built-in electric oven
These are not the same amount of food.
Which? states that the cake quantity had to be reduced for it to fit into the air fryer basket. The two appliances therefore baked different amounts of cake, so this row measures two different jobs rather than one job done two ways.
Preheating included in the figure. Costed at 26.11p per kWh — the average capped rate for direct debit customers, July to September 2026.
The most instructive number in the set and the one nobody quotes. It is not evidence that an air fryer bakes a cake for a third of the energy; it is evidence that it bakes a SMALLER cake for a third of the energy, which is the whole argument about capacity in one line.
Air fryer vs oven: energy usage, costs and cooking results compared
Measured with an instrument
Cooking a single serving of sausages with roast vegetables
Sausages and roast vegetables — A single serving
- Air fryer
- 0.281 kWhBreville Air Fryer Chef LAF500BLK2IAN1
- Oven
- 0.969 kWhThe author's own refurbished freestanding electric oven
The oven used 3.45 times as much for the same amount of food.
The source does not say whether preheating is included. Costed at 32p per kWh — the rate CHOICE costed this article at, below the 40 cents it normally uses.
The air fryer also finished in a little over half the time, which is a large part of why it used less: the same task, for fewer minutes, in a much smaller chamber.
Air fryer vs oven: which cooks cheapest and fastest?
Measured with an instrument
Cooking assorted frozen snacks
Frozen chicken tenders, arancini and potato gems — Not stated by the source
- Air fryer
- 0.25 kWhBreville Air Fryer Chef LAF500BLK2IAN1
- Oven
- 1.063 kWhThe author's own refurbished freestanding electric oven
The oven used 4.25 times as much for the same amount of food.
The source does not say whether preheating is included. Costed at 32p per kWh — the rate CHOICE costed this article at, below the 40 cents it normally uses.
The widest gap of the three, and the task most like the frozen-chips row in the Which? set — which is the closest thing this register has to the same finding twice.
Air fryer vs oven: which cooks cheapest and fastest?
Measured with an instrument
Baking a family-sized frozen apple pie
Family-sized frozen apple pie — One family-sized pie
- Air fryer
- 0.469 kWhBreville Air Fryer Chef LAF500BLK2IAN1
- Oven
- 1.344 kWhThe author's own refurbished freestanding electric oven
The oven used 2.87 times as much for the same amount of food.
No preheat in this test. Costed at 32p per kWh — the rate CHOICE costed this article at, below the 40 cents it normally uses.
The one row in the register that isolates preheating: 15 of the oven's 50 minutes were spent heating an empty cavity, and the air fryer had none. It is also the row where the air fryer's advantage is smallest, because a family-sized pie is a large item for a basket.
Air fryer vs oven: which cooks cheapest and fastest?
Evidence and confidence
- Applies to
- Applies generally
- Why this rating
- The page's central claim — that rated power multiplied by time is a ceiling rather than a consumption figure — follows from how a thermostat works and is corroborated by a manufacturer describing element cycling as normal behaviour. The measured figures are attributed to the two named appliances throughout and the page repeatedly declines to generalise them.
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-31
What this does not cover
- The measurements are of ONE air fryer and ONE oven on four tasks. They are not a sample of either appliance class, and nothing here should be read as a figure for air fryers in general.
- AirfryerHQ has metered nothing itself and holds no duty-cycle figure for any appliance.
- No duty cycle, no per-hour figure and no standby figure is published here, because none is held.
Sources (2)
Air fryer vs oven: energy usage, costs and cooking results compared
Which? (Consumers' Association) — Independent controlled testing (United Kingdom)
Relied on for: Measured energy for four cooking tasks in a named air fryer and a named oven, preheating included, costed at a dated unit rate.
States this directly
Passage read and verified
Retrieved 2026-08-31 from which.co.uk
AirfryerHQ assessment of airflow, element proximity and material behaviour
AirfryerHQ — Calculated or inferred by AirfryerHQ (Not jurisdictional)
Relied on for: The mechanism the measurements are read against: a small chamber heated quickly.
AirfryerHQ's interpretation of what it says
Citation checked — the document exists and is described correctly