Home Bitcoin mining used to feel like a dark art — loud, technical, and full of trial-and-error. Today, it’s far more accessible.
One key thing to understand about the cost of bitcoin mining is simple: a miner is effectively 100% heat-efficient. If a Bitcoin miner draws 25W (like a Bitaxe, for example), it produces roughly 25W of heat. Wattage is wattage — and wattage costs.
Electricity is billed in kWh (kilowatt-hours). That’s the amount of energy used when you run 1,000 watts for one hour. So a 25W miner uses 0.025 kWh per hour — and your cost depends on your £/kWh rate.
Modern home mining is less “technical headache” and more hands-on Bitcoin: learning the stack, supporting decentralisation, and sometimes turning electricity into genuinely useful heat — with stacking sats as a bonus. Below, we’ll break down the cost to run common home miners, and explain how to choose between solo mining vs pool mining (and what that actually means).
Note: a “sat” (satoshi) is a tiny fraction of a bitcoin.
Always-on desk mining. Quiet, affordable to run, brilliant for learning.
Typical: 1.2 TH/s • ~20.8 W/TH
Tinkerer sweet spot. More hashrate, still home-friendly.
Typical: ~5 TH/s • ~18.0 W/TH
Heater-mode. If you’re heating a room anyway, this power can be genuinely useful. Ranges from 60W–140W.
Typical: ~6 TH/s • ~23.3 W/TH
Electricity cost is just watts, time, and your price per kWh:
Daily cost = (Watts ÷ 1000) × Hours per day × Price per kWh
Monthly cost ≈ Daily cost × 30
UK tip: Enter your unit rate as pounds, e.g. 0.28 for 28p/kWh.
Electricity-only examples at three common power levels.
| Power | kWh/day | £0.15/kWh | £0.25/kWh | £0.35/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25W | 0.60 | £2.70/mo | £4.50/mo | £6.30/mo |
| 90W | 2.16 | £9.72/mo | £16.20/mo | £22.68/mo |
| 140W | 3.36 | £15.12/mo | £25.20/mo | £35.28/mo |
Enter your tariff, then add power and hashrate to see running cost and efficiency (W/TH, same numeric value as J/TH).
Solo mining is the tiny-chance, big-story path — a daily lottery ticket that keeps you engaged and makes mining feel alive. It’s an “all or nothing” approach. (solohash.co.uk is a UK hosted solo mining server that comes highly recommended). The more hashrate you have, the higher your chances of solo mining that elusive Bitcoin block.
Pool mining is steady bitcoin return, (aka “stacking sats”) and steady feedback — great if you like measurable progress and a simple stacking routine (and for some, a practical route to sats without relying on an exchange). Check out www.ocean.xyz for example.
The more hashrate you have, the higher your daily earnings.
Home mining should be a blend of quiet utility, learning, heat reuse, and beauty. Choose the kind of Bitcoin experience you want — the solo-mining dream, steady sat stacking rewards from a pool, or simply supporting the network with hardware that belongs in your home.
The cost of bitcoin mining matters most when you understand your kWh rate.
