Does an air fryer actually cost less than the oven?
Yes — but not for the reason most people give, and not by as much as the headlines suggest once you are cooking for four.
Typical model is rated 1,500W
Price cap is 26.11p
13p per meal, 208 meals a year, 104 kWh in total — about £2 a month.
Electric oven
A fan oven draws around 2kW but cycles its element on and off once hot, so an hour of cooking is closer to 1.6kWh than 2. The saving comes from heating a small space and not preheating for ten minutes.
No saving at the figures you have entered.
An air fryer is a small fan oven. It is cheaper to run because it heats about a fifth of the volume and gets there in a couple of minutes, not because the technology is more efficient. Watt for watt, the element is doing exactly the same job.
That means the saving shrinks as the meal grows. One tray of chips for two people is a clear win. A Sunday roast for six is not — you would run the air fryer three times and still need the oven for everything else.
The honest summary: worth having, worth using for weeknight meals, and worth about the price of a takeaway a year to a typical household. Anyone telling you it saves hundreds is comparing a full oven running all evening against a single tray.
The short answer: Real saving, modest size. Best for small, frequent meals — not a replacement for the oven.
What actually helps
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This is the small stuff
Every appliance on this site put together is usually less than a third of a typical energy bill. Heating the house is the rest of it. If the numbers here bothered you, the number that actually matters is what your heating costs — and whether a heat pump would make it better or worse in your particular house.
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Energy figures checked 2026-08-26. Electricity priced at the Ofgem cap for 1 July – 30 September 2026. Your own machine and tariff will differ — put your figures in above.