What a router actually draws
A home router or modem draws between 5 and 20 W. The low end is a bare wireless router; the high end is a combined modem-router gateway from an internet provider, or a multi-node mesh system where every node is its own small load. Eight watts is a fair typical figure for a single modern unit.
What makes this appliance interesting is not the wattage. It is the runtime. A router has no duty cycle at all — no thermostat, no compressor, no idle state anyone uses. It runs all 8,760 hours of the year at essentially constant draw, whether the house is asleep, at work, or on holiday. Its standby power and its running power are the same number.
That combination produces the result worth memorising: a 10 W router consumes more electricity in a year than a 1,500 W toaster used every single day. The toaster's wattage is 150 times higher; its runtime is a couple of minutes. Work it through and you would need to run that toaster nearly ten minutes every morning to match the router, which no one does.
This is also the category most appliance tables leave out. It belongs to the "always-on" plug load that EIA folds into other uses rather than listing separately, which is part of why household electricity totals often come in higher than a sum of the obvious appliances predicts.
What that costs, worked through
Watts × hours ÷ 1,000 = kWh per day. For a router: 8 W × 24 hours = 192 watt-hours, or 0.192 kWh a day. Across a 30.4-day month that is 5.8 kWh, and at the US average rate of 18.44 cents per kWh, 5.8 × $0.1844 comes to about $1.07 a month. Annually: 8 W × 8,760 hours = 70.1 kWh, roughly $12.92 a year.
The range matters here because the spread is nearly fourfold. A frugal 5 W unit uses 43.8 kWh a year, about $8.08. A 20 W gateway or a three-node mesh system uses 175.2 kWh a year, about $32.31. That difference — roughly $24 a year — is larger than the entire annual running cost of many appliances on this site, and it is decided entirely by how many boxes are plugged in behind your television.
There is no seasonal variation and no usage variation. Whether you stream ten hours a day or none, the number is the same, because the radio and processor stay powered regardless of traffic. That makes the router one of the few loads on a bill you can predict exactly.
To see what this costs at your own rate rather than the national average, use the kWh cost calculator — state rates vary by more than a factor of three, so a router that costs $8 a year in one state costs closer to $30 in another.
What makes the number move
Since runtime is fixed at 24 hours, everything here comes down to hardware count and hardware type.
- How many boxes you have. A separate modem, router and network switch is three always-on loads. A single gateway doing all three jobs is one. This is by far the largest factor.
- Mesh nodes. Each satellite in a mesh system draws its own 5 to 10 W continuously. A three-node system is effectively three routers.
- Range extenders. The same story in miniature, and usually the least justified box in the house.
- Generation and features. A newer high-throughput router with multiple radios and more antennas tends to sit toward the upper end of the range; a simple single-band unit toward the lower.
- Provider equipment. Rented gateways are often combined units with a phone port, a coax tuner and a battery backup, all of which add draw.
What does not move the number: how much data you use, whether the WiFi is busy, how many devices are connected, or whether you turn the WiFi radio off at night — the processor and ports keep running either way, and you save perhaps a watt.
Do not extrapolate from a plug-in meter reading taken in the first minute after a reboot, either. Routers draw a little more while booting and negotiating a connection than they do in steady state.
Whether it is worth doing anything about
The instinct with always-on devices is to switch them off. Do not do that here. Powering down a router at night breaks smart-home devices, security cameras, backups, software updates and anything else that expects a connection, and it saves at most a few dollars a year.
The better move is to consolidate boxes rather than switch anything off. Collapsing a separate modem, router and switch into a single gateway typically halves this always-on load. Retiring a range extender in favour of one better-placed access point removes another 5 to 10 W permanently. Unlike unplugging, consolidation costs you nothing in connectivity — you keep the same internet with fewer things drawing power.
Put a number on it. Going from three boxes at 8 W each to one at 10 W takes you from 210 kWh a year to 87.6 kWh: a saving of about $22.60 a year, every year, with no behaviour change and no lost function. That is a better return than most of the advice given about small electronics, and it is permanent.
Be honest about the ceiling, though. Even a maximally wasteful home network is a $30-a-year problem. If you are chasing a bill that has doubled, this is not where the answer lives — but it is worth knowing that the network quietly costs about the same each year as running the vacuum cleaner, and rather more than a laptop.
How it compares with everything else you plug in
At 5.8 kWh a month, a router lands close to a vacuum cleaner at 5.0 kWh and a single 60 W incandescent bulb at 5.5 kWh, just under a clothes washer at 6.1 kWh, and well under a laptop at 9.1 kWh or a microwave at 8.4 kWh.
The instructive comparisons are with things that seem far bigger. A router uses about a sixth of what a refrigerator uses at 36.5 kWh — and the refrigerator has a 150 W compressor. It uses roughly a tenth of an electric dryer's 54.7 kWh, despite the dryer drawing 3,000 W. Against a central air conditioner at 638.4 kWh in cooling season, it is one part in 110.
But run the comparison the other way and the point sharpens. The router beats the vacuum cleaner, a 1,100 W appliance, because the vacuum runs about an hour a week. It beats a phone charger by more than tenfold. It beats a single LED bulb by a factor of seven. Among small always-on devices, it is usually the largest thing in the house that nobody has ever thought about.
That is the whole argument for paying it any attention at all: not that it is big, but that it is invisible and permanent. Compare it directly against the loads you do think about in the appliance energy cost calculator, or read why your electric bill is so high for the loads that actually move a statement.
Frequently asked questions
How many watts does a WiFi router use?
Between 5 and 20 watts, with about 8 watts typical for a single modern unit. The high end is a combined modem-router gateway supplied by an internet provider, or a multi-node mesh system where each node draws its own 5 to 10 watts. The draw is essentially constant: a router has no duty cycle, so its idle power and its busy power are the same. Traffic volume, connected device count and whether anyone is streaming make almost no difference to the reading.
How much does it cost to run a router for a year?
About $12.92 a year at 8 watts and the US average rate of 18.44 cents per kWh. The arithmetic: 8 watts × 8,760 hours in a year = 70.1 kWh, times $0.1844. A 5 watt unit costs about $8.08; a 20 watt gateway or three-node mesh costs about $32.31. Monthly, the typical figure works out to 5.8 kWh and roughly $1.07. The number does not change with the season or with how much internet you use, which makes it one of the most predictable loads on any bill.
Should I turn my router off at night?
No. You would save at most a few dollars a year, and you would break smart-home devices, cameras, cloud backups and overnight software updates in the process. Turning off just the WiFi radio saves even less, perhaps a watt, because the processor and ports stay powered. The productive version of this idea is consolidation: replace a separate modem, router and switch with one gateway, and retire any range extenders. That halves the load permanently and costs you nothing in connectivity.
Does a mesh WiFi system use more electricity?
Yes, roughly in proportion to the number of nodes. Each satellite is an always-on device drawing its own 5 to 10 watts, so a three-node system behaves like three routers — plausibly 20 to 30 watts total, or 175 to 260 kWh a year, which is $32 to $48 at the US average rate. That is not a reason to avoid mesh if you need the coverage, but it is a reason to size the system to the house rather than adding nodes speculatively, and to remove old extenders once the mesh is in.