What does a WiFi router cost to run?
A few watts, on all day and all night, all year. Individually nothing; a useful example of how always-on gadgets add up.
Typical model is rated 10W
Price cap is 26.11p
6p per day, 365 days a year, 88 kWh in total — about £2 a month. Costed over 365 days, not the whole year — this is a winter appliance.
A broadband router draws around ten watts and never switches off, because switching it off means losing your internet and, often, your landline. Over a year that steady trickle adds up to a small but real figure — and it is worth knowing precisely because it is invisible.
There is nothing to do about the router itself; it needs to stay on. Its value here is as the clearest example of the wider point — a handful of always-on devices, routers, smart speakers, set-top boxes, chargers left plugged in, together make up the mysterious 'base load' that shows on a smart meter at three in the morning.
The short answer: Tiny on its own. The real lesson is how quickly always-on standby gadgets add up together.
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.