How Much Does It Cost To Run An Electric Fireplace? (Per Hour, Month)

Do electric fireplaces use a lot of electricity?

It’s very easy to figure out how much it costs to run an electric fireplace. You can nail down the running cost of an electric fireplace down to a cent. You can even use our Electric Fireplace Running Cost Calculator (check below) to adequately estimate the electricity expenditure.

How much it costs to run an electric fireplace per hour depends on only two factors:

1. Electric fireplace wattage (power input). You will find the information on how many watts the electric fireplace draws in the specification sheets. The majority of fireplaces that run on electricity are powered by 1,500 watts (750 watts in lower heating settings).
2. Price of electricity. Electricity prices (expressed as price per kilowatt-hour or kWh) vary state by state quite a bit. You will find states with an electricity price of $0.08 per kWh (Nevada, Idaho) and states with $0.18+ per kWh electricity price (Alaska, Hawaii, Connecticut). In all our calculations, we’ll use the US national average price of $0.1319 per kWh.

You can find the most up-to-date electricity prices state by state on the US Energy Information Administration website here.

You can use the Electric Fireplace Running Cost Calculator below to calculate the electric fireplace runnings cost per hour quite easily. Here are the ballpark figures of how much it costs to run an electric fireplace (1,500-watt units):

• $0.20 to run per hour.
• $4.80 to run per 24 hours (day).
• $11.20 to run per week (8h/day).
• $48.00 to run per month (8h/day). More monthly calculations are in the table below.

Electric fireplace running costs vary primarily because of different prices of electricity (since all electric fireplaces have a 1,500-watt power input). Here are two examples that illustrate:

• Running an electric fireplace costs $0.26 per hour in California because the average price of electricity in California is about $0.17.
• Running an electric fireplace costs $0.14 per hour in Texas because the average price of electricity in California is about $0.09.

You can calculate how much it costs to run an electric fireplace in your area using the calculator below.

We will also explain how the 750W/1500W electric fireplaces work and how much does it cost to run an electric fireplace per month (since most people are interested to see if running an electric fireplace will raise the monthly electricity bill and by how much).

Electric Fireplace Running Cost Calculator

As you can see, you can just input or slide the button on the running cost calculator above.

The calculator will dynamically calculate how much you will pay for electricity to run an electric fireplace per hour.

Let’s calculate how much does it cost to run an electric fireplace for 24 hours and per month. This will give you an idea of how much running an electric fireplace will raise your monthly electricity bills.

How Much Does It Cost To Run An Electric Fireplace Per Month?

Here’s the big number.

It costs $142.45 to run an electric fireplace per month. That’s only if you run a 1,500W electric fireplace every hour of every day for a month.

Usually, however, we don’t use the electric fireplace 24/7. We actually use it a lot less – maybe a few hours per day.

On top of that, most electric fireplaces also include the energy-saving program which uses only 750W of power. If you check the best wall-mounted electric fireplaces here, you can see that most have a 750W and 1,500W mode. Running the unit on 750W will obviously cut your electricity expenditure in half.

Now, some people use the electric fireplace for 1 h every day, others use it for 8h per day, and so.

Based on how many hours per day the electric fireplace is running, we can calculate how much electricity will the electric-powered fireplace cost per month.

Monthly Cost Based On Daily Usage

Here is a table with calculated monthly costs of running an electric fireplace for a certain number of hours. This is to give you an idea of by how much your monthly electric bill will actually be raised (we used a 1,500W electric fireplace and $0.1319 per kWh in the calculations):

As you can see, the realistic cost of running an electric fireplace is well below $142.45/month.

Let’s say that you run it for 4 hours every day. A 1,500W fireplace will spend 1.5 kWh every hour. In 4 hours, that’s 6 kWh.

If you run it for a month (30 days), you will spend 6 kWh * 30 = 180 kWh of electricity.

How do we translate 180 kWh into dollars? Well, we check how much does 1 kWh in your area costs. If we take the US national average price of $0.1319 per kWh, we can calculate the monthly electricity cost like this:

Monthly Electric Fireplace Cost = 180 kWh * $0.1319 per kWh = $23.74

That means that the running cost of the electric fireplace will be less than $1 per day.

Do You Need Help Calculating Running Costs?

Now, some electric fireplaces are not powered by 1,500 watts. To calculate the electricity expenditure for those, you can use the calculator above.

Here is an example of how much does a 2,000W electric fireplace costs to run:

We do know that finding out the price of electricity in your area is not a piece of cake.

If you need some help estimating how much it will cost you to run an electric fireplace (electric fireplace inserts included), you can use the comment section, describe your fireplace (wattage, state), and we’ll try to help you out with the calculation as best we can.