What does a halogen heater cost to run?
The cheapest plug-in heater to run per hour — not because it is more efficient, but because it is lower-powered and heats you directly.
Typical model is rated 1,200W
Price cap is 26.11p
26p per hour, 400 hours a year, 400 kWh in total — about £9 a month. Costed over 100 days, not the whole year — this is a winter appliance.
A halogen heater glows and throws radiant heat straight at whatever is in front of it, like standing in a patch of sun. Because a typical unit is 1.2kW rather than the 2–3kW of a fan or oil-filled heater, it costs less per hour to run — and because the warmth is felt instantly and directly, you can sit right in front of one rather than heating the whole room.
That directional warmth is the point: it heats a person, not a space, so it suits sitting still at a desk or on the sofa. It does not warm a room evenly and it cools the instant it is switched off, but for cheap, targeted heat for one person it is hard to beat. Like all electric heat it costs about three times what gas does per unit, so it is a top-up, not a substitute for the central heating.
The short answer: The cheapest plug-in heater per hour for warming one person directly — but useless for heating a whole room.
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.
Work out your heating costOther appliances
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.