How much power does an air fryer use?
By Sithum Imarsha Last reviewed
About 0.54 kWh for a whole roast chicken in a lab test (Which? 2026), and 0.22 to 0.54 kWh across the dishes we list. At 33.1c/kWh that chicken costs $0.18 a cook, or $28 a year at 3 meals a week.
Your result
Saved a year with the air fryer
$32
Roast chicken, 1.3 to 1.4 kg: 1 bird a basket (5.5 L basket or bigger). Air fryer is cheaper a cook at 33.1c/kWh (import rate). The air fryer uses 47% of the oven's energy for this dish and batch count. Gas oven figures are an —, from old efficiency data.
- Air fryer, a cook
- $0.18
- Oven, a cook
- $0.38
- Air fryer, a year
- $28
- Oven, a year
- $60
- Air fryer energy
- 0.54kWh
- Oven energy
- 1.16kWh
- Gas oven energy
- —MJ
- Air fryer pays back in
- 6.6 years
Batches eat the saving. Each basket costs as much as the first. At about 2.1 batches the oven costs the same, and more batches make the oven cheaper.
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How we calculated this
- Each cook uses the energy measured in tests for the same dish, not the rating times the minutes.
- The oven figure is adjusted for its size, type and fuel.
- One cook is priced at the electricity or gas rate, then multiplied out over a year of meals.
Take the measured energy for the dish
0.54 kWh in the air fryer
Adjust the oven for its size, type and fuel
1.16 kWh in the oven— MJ of gas (Estimate)
Price one cook
$0.18 air fryer · $0.38 oven
Add up a year
156 cooks: $32 saved
The rating on an air fryer is what it draws flat out. Its thermostat switches the element on and off, so a whole dish uses far less than watts × minutes. This version starts with a whole roast chicken on New South Wales rates.
What we found
Dated third-party source
- Which? measured 0.54 kWh in 53 minutes for a 1.3 to 1.4 kg chicken in the air fryer, and 1.157 kWh in 76 minutes in a built-in electric oven (3 Sep 2026).
- Air fryers warm up too. In one smart-plug test the warm-up used 96 Wh of the 193 Wh it took to cook chips (InfluxData, 5 Nov 2025).
- Measured averages while cooking were 0.41 to 0.84 kW, because the thermostat switches the element off (Which?, CHOICE).
Not yet checked
- Ratings of 1.4 to 2 kW are what an air fryer draws flat out (retailer buying guides).
How does it compare with an oven? See the air fryer vs oven cost calculator.
Questions
How much does an air fryer cost to run per hour?
About 19c an hour at 32c/kWh, the Australian average in our table. That uses an average draw of 0.6 kW while cooking (an Estimate from the measured 0.41 to 0.84 kW), not the rating.
Does a bigger air fryer use more power?
Probably a little, but we found no test that cooked the same dish in a small and a large air fryer. The dish and the cook time matter more than the rating.
Does an air fryer use power when it is switched off?
A model with a mechanical dial draws nothing when off. A digital model may draw a little on standby. We found no measured figure.