Air purifiers are powered by electricity. As with any electric appliance, we need to take the power consumption of air purifiers into the account.
One of the most common questions about air purifiers is this:
Do air purifiers use a lot of electricity?
It’s recommended to run an air purifier 24 hours per day. That sounds quite a lot; especially if you look at it from an electrical bill viewpoint.
Luckily, air purifiers don’t use a whole lot of electricity. They have a maximum wattage of anywhere between 40W and 200W (even the biggest ones max out at 100W), and that’s for the highest speed settings. You can easily run an air purifier on a lower 10-30 watt setting.
How many watts does an air purifier actually use?
Most air purifiers use anywhere between 8 watts and 56 watts (on average).
For comparison, a fridge consumes about 3-5 times more energy. Running an air purifier draws about as much energy as an iPhone charger:
We have prepared a handy calculator for air purifier power consumption (based on wattage and kilowatt-hour cost). You will find it further on, just input the numbers, and it will calculate how much electricity any air purifier uses per day (24h running cost).
In short, most air purifiers that are running all the time spend anywhere from $0.05 and $1.00 per day. That’s about $0.35 to $7.00 per week.
We’ll look at the power consumption of small, medium, and big air purifiers in 3 examples below. Here are the quick calculations:
- How much electricity does a large room air purifier use? Between $0.24 and $0.40 per day at 100 W (Example 1).
- How much electricity does a mid-sized air purifier use? About $0.24 per day at 77W (Example 2).
- How much electricity does a small room air purifier use? Less than $0.10 per day at 28W (Example 3).
For bigger air purifiers, it makes sense to invest in Star Rated energy-efficient air purifiers like Alen BreatheSmart 75i (Top wattage: Only 45W, costs about $0.14 per day or 1$/week to run on high speed).
Air Purifier Energy Consumption Calculator
Just insert the max. the wattage of the air purifier, electricity cost per kWh, and you’ll get the maximum amount of electricity such an air purifier will spend per day (24h):
If you want to calculate the cost of running an air purifier by hand, you can use this air purifier energy consumption equation:
Power Consumption = (Wattage * kWh cost * Time (hours))/1000
How much electricity does a large room air purifier use? (Example 1)
Large room air purifiers spend the most electricity. They can cover 400+ sq ft rooms. Let’s have a look at the #2 best large room air purifier – the Blueair Classic 680i.
This is a large room air purifier with a 698 sq ft recommended coverage area and an extremely high 450 CADR rating. At low fan speed, it is powered by 15 watts. At high fan speed, it needs 100 watts to run.
Here how we can calculate the maximum electricity consumption (we’ll always use the US average kWh of $0.1319):
As we can see, a big 100W air purifier uses $0.32 per day, if you run it 24 hours on max. If you run it only 8h per day, that’s about $0.11 per day.
At a low fan speed setting, the wattage is 15W, and the 24h electricity cost is $0.05.
How much electricity does a mid-sized air purifier use? (Example 2)
Average air purifiers are designed for 200 to 400 sq ft rooms.
Let’s take one of the best performing and popular Coway AP-1512HH Mighty as an example. It’s a 361 sq ft air cleaner with a maximum wattage of 77W.
Let’s see how much energy it uses per day:
Such an air purifier uses $0.24 per day if you run it on max for 24h.
That’s $1.68 per week and $7.20 per month.
How much electricity does a small room air purifier use? (Example 3)
Small room air purifiers are the least expensive to run.
Example: Let’s take one of the most popular Levoit LVH132 HEPA air purifier. It has a recommended coverage area of 129 sq ft and it runs on 24W maximum wattage.
Here’s the calculation of electricity cost:
As we can see, a small room air purifier uses only $0.08 per day. Let’s calculate how much energy it uses per:
- Week: $0.56.
- Month: $2.40.
- Year: $29.2.
In short, air purifiers use a minimal amount of energy to run. You can check out a list of the best air purifiers in 2022 here.