What does a tumble dryer cost to run?
The most expensive appliance in most homes that is not the heating. A vented or condenser dryer turns electricity straight into heat and then throws most of it away.
Typical model is rated 2,800W
Price cap is 26.11p
£1.17 per load, 156 loads a year, 702 kWh in total — about £15 a month.
Heat pump tumble dryer
It recycles the heat instead of venting it, so it uses roughly a third of the electricity. It also runs cooler and slower, which is gentler on clothes but takes longer.
£122 a year cheaper — £61 instead of £183. At around £450 to buy, that is 3.7 years to pay for itself.
A vented or condenser dryer heats air with an element, blows it through the drum and dumps it. Nothing is recovered. That is why the figures are so much worse than any other appliance in the kitchen — you are paying peak electricity rates to make heat and then get rid of it.
A heat pump dryer works the way a fridge does in reverse: it moves heat around a closed loop instead of generating it fresh each time. Same laundry, roughly a third of the electricity. It is the one appliance upgrade in this list where the sums genuinely work for a household that dries several loads a week.
The free option still beats both. An airer in a warm room with the window cracked costs nothing but time — though in a damp, poorly ventilated flat it can push moisture into the walls, which is its own expensive problem. That is what a dehumidifier is for.
The short answer: The single most expensive plug-in appliance most homes own. If you dry more than three loads a week, a heat pump model pays for itself.
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.