🚿What does an electric shower cost to run?

✓ Tested & verified Updated: Aug 9, 2026 How we calculate this

Electric shower running cost

Shower rating

Power it draws (watts)

Minutes per shower

Showers a week

Country

Your price per kWh

$0.22 a shower ≈ $78.38 a year

Each one uses 1.27 kWh. At 7 a week that is $1.51 a week and $6.53 a month.

Cost per minute while it runs: $0.03
Electricity a year: 461 kWh
Cost a year: $78.38

An electric shower is usually the largest single load in the house — a 9.5 kW unit draws more than an oven, a kettle and a tumble dryer running together.

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How much does an electric shower cost to run?

About $0.22 for an eight-minute shower on a 9.5 kW unit at $0.17 per kWh — £0.32 at £0.25, £0.44 at €0.35 in euros. One shower a day for a year is roughly $79, and a family of four is over $300.

The rating on the front is the whole story. A 9.5 kW shower draws 9.5 kilowatts the entire time it runs — there is no cycling, no thermostat easing off. That is about four kettles at once, and it is why an electric shower needs its own heavy circuit. Per minute it costs $0.027, which makes it the most expensive minute in the house.

Two minutes less is the whole saving. Cutting an eight-minute shower to six saves a quarter — around $20 a year per person, more for a family. Dropping from a 10.5 kW unit to 8.5 kW saves the same proportion, but the shower is weaker and takes longer, which usually gives it back.

Shower length against rating, at $0.17 per kWh. Read down your unit’s column.

Shower length	8.5 kW	9.5 kW	10.5 kW
4 minutes	$0.10	$0.11	$0.12
6 minutes	$0.14	$0.16	$0.18
8 minutes	$0.19	$0.22	$0.24
10 minutes	$0.24	$0.27	$0.30
15 minutes	$0.36	$0.40	$0.45
A year, one 8-min shower a day	$70	$79	$87
A year, family of four	$282	$315	$348

The bottom row is the reason this calculator exists. Nothing else in a house turns two minutes of habit into three hundred dollars a year quite so directly.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a 10 minute shower cost?

About $0.27 on a 9.5 kW electric shower at $0.17 per kWh — £0.40 in the UK at £0.25. A 10.5 kW unit is $0.30 and an 8.5 kW one $0.24. Ten minutes a day for a year is roughly $98 per person.

Is an electric shower cheaper than a bath?

Usually yes, if the shower is short. A bath is 80 to 100 litres of hot water and needs roughly 4 to 5 kWh to heat, against 1.3 kWh for an eight-minute electric shower. The crossover is around 25 minutes of showering — so a bath is cheaper than a very long shower, and much more expensive than a normal one.

Is an electric shower cheaper than a mixer shower off the boiler?

It depends on your fuel prices, not on the shower. An electric shower heats only the water you use, which is efficient, but electricity typically costs three to four times as much per kWh as gas. Where gas is cheap, a combi-boiler mixer shower is usually cheaper to run; where heating is electric anyway, the electric shower wins.

Does a higher kW shower cost more?

Per minute, yes, in exact proportion — 10.5 kW costs 24% more per minute than 8.5 kW. Per shower it is closer than that, because a more powerful shower delivers hot water faster and people tend to spend less time under it. The total is roughly a wash; what changes is how the shower feels.

Why does my electric shower cost more in winter?

Because it is heating colder water. An electric shower raises the incoming mains temperature by a fixed amount of energy per second, so when the mains drops from 20 °C in summer to 5 °C in winter, the same shower delivers a weaker flow at the same temperature — and you stand under it longer. The kW rating has not changed; the job has got bigger.

Does an eco or low-flow shower head save money on an electric shower?

Less than you would expect. An electric shower already limits flow to whatever it can heat, so a restrictor mostly changes the spray pattern rather than the energy. On a mixer shower fed by a boiler or cylinder, a low-flow head genuinely does save, because there the flow rate is what you control.

How we calculate this

Cost is kilowatts × minutes ÷ 60 × price per kWh. An electric shower draws its full rated power continuously while running — it has no cycling thermostat — so the rating on the unit is the actual draw, which makes this one of the few appliances where the label figure is exactly right. Ratings shown are the sizes electric showers are commonly sold at: 8.5, 9.5 and 10.5 kW. The bath comparison assumes 80–100 litres raised by about 40 °C, which needs roughly 4 to 5 kWh at 1.16 Wh per litre per degree. The winter effect comes from incoming mains water temperature, which typically falls from around 20 °C in late summer to 5 °C in late winter in a temperate climate.

Worked example

With Shower rating Electric shower, 9.5 kW, Power it draws (watts) 9500, Minutes per shower 8, Showers a week 7, Country United States (USD), Your price per kWh 0.17, this page works out $0.22 a shower ≈ $78.38 a year. Each one uses 1.27 kWh. At 7 a week that is $1.51 a week and $6.53 a month.

Cost per minute while it runs$0.03
Electricity a year461 kWh
Cost a year$78.38

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