How much does an electric shower cost to run?

The reason is simple: an electric shower heats cold water instantly, drawing a very large amount of electricity for as long as the water is running. A typical 9kW model costs about £2.34 an hour to run at 2026 prices, which is far more than almost any other household appliance.² Unlike a gas boiler, everything the shower consumes shows up on your electricity bill, at electricity's per-kWh price.

The main numbers on electric shower running costs

The headline numbers come from several independent sources, and they tell a consistent story. A 9kW electric shower costs 39p per ten minutes of use, or £2.34 an hour, according to Centre for Sustainable Energy guidance updated in July 2026.² A smaller 7.5kW shower was costed at 31p for a ten-minute shower on April to June 2026 prices.³ Citizens Advice guidance from 2023 put the same job at 38p for ten minutes, so the figure has hovered around the high-30s pence mark for several years.⁴

Uswitch analysis from April 2026 shows how much the tariff matters: a 7.5kW electric shower cost 21p per use on a fixed tariff against 26p on a standard tariff, and the extra cost of showering added £16 a year to the household bill.⁷ For context on how much energy is involved, fifteen minutes in an electric shower uses around 2.4kWh, more than many homes' kettles draw in a full day of tea-making.⁸

Price of a 10 minute shower: roughly 38p to 50p

Across the independent figures, a ten-minute electric shower costs between 31p and 39p in most cases. The lower end comes from a 7.5kW shower on April to June 2026 prices, at 31p for ten minutes.³ The upper end comes from a 9kW model at 39p per ten minutes.² Citizens Advice's 2023 figure of 38p for ten minutes sits comfortably within that range.⁴

For Northern Ireland, where electricity prices and the market differ from Great Britain, Consumer Council guidance puts electric showers at £2.16 to £3.25 an hour to run, which works out at roughly 36p to 54p per ten minutes depending on the shower's rating.⁹ The variation between figures comes down to three things: the shower's power rating (7.5kW models cost less per minute than 9kW ones), the electricity unit rate on your tariff, and the region you live in.

Annual running costs: from £68 to £193.91 depending on use

How long you shower matters more than anything else. Citizens Advice guidance costs a five-minute daily electric shower at around £68 a year on average, and a ten-minute daily shower at around £137 a year.⁴ Uswitch's hot water guide, using January 2025 price cap rates, put the average electric shower at £3.73 per week, or £193.91 a year.⁵

To put those numbers in household context, a year of daily electric showering can cost more than running a washing machine or dishwasher: average annual running costs from 1 October 2026 are £64 for a washing machine used four times a week and £68 for a dishwasher used five times a week.¹⁰ A single habit also adds up: Uswitch research found that letting the hot shower keep running while you are not in it, something 38% of households admit to, costs £22 a year.¹¹

Effect of the 0% electricity VAT rate on what you pay

From 1 October 2026, VAT on electricity was reduced from 5% to 0%, and typical cost figures published after that date already reflect the change. That means every unit an electric shower draws is now free of VAT, a small but permanent reduction in the per-shower cost compared with figures calculated under the old rate.

The VAT position on related work is worth knowing if you are having a new shower or other energy-saving measures installed. In Great Britain, HMRC guidance states you pay 0% VAT on both certain products supplied by your installer and the cost of all work to install those products in your home.¹² GOV.UK guidance sets out the same position.¹³ In Northern Ireland the rules differ: 5% VAT applies to everything if the cost of the products, excluding VAT, is 60% or less of the total installation cost, and where products cost more than 60% of the total, 5% applies to labour only with standard 20% VAT on the products.¹²

Electric showers versus kettles: which uses more power?

Yes, and by a wide margin. A 9kW electric shower draws several times the power of a domestic kettle, which is why fifteen minutes of showering consumes around 2.4kWh.⁸ At £2.34 an hour for a 9kW model, the shower outstrips almost everything else in the home.²

The closest comparisons are other appliances that heat water or air with electricity. An immersion heater costs around 78p to run for an hour at current electricity prices, less than a third of an electric shower's hourly cost.¹⁴ A typical electric heater uses around 2.5kWh an hour, costing about 64p an hour, roughly the same energy as a quarter of an hour in the shower but at a lower hourly rate because the heater's power rating is lower.¹⁵ The shower's cost per minute is high because its power rating is high: it must heat flowing water to a comfortable temperature instantly, and that takes a lot of electricity.

Electric showers compared with gas boiler mixer showers on cost

On running cost alone, no. Electricity costs around four times as much as gas per kWh, according to Which? guidance on electric central heating.¹⁶ Uswitch's hot water guide reaches the same conclusion: because gas costs far less than electricity under the current energy price cap, a mixer or power shower should be more cost-effective to run than an electric one.⁵ Which? also notes that heating water using electricity is more expensive than using gas.¹⁴

The electric shower's case is different, though. It needs no boiler, no hot water cylinder and no gas supply, so for homes without a gas connection, a bathroom far from the cylinder, or a broken boiler, it is often the practical choice rather than the cheapest one. It also heats only the water it uses, unlike a power shower drawing from a cylinder of water heated in advance. The trade-off for that independence from gas is permanent dependence on electricity at electricity's unit rate, which is the expensive fuel.

Ways to cut your electric shower's running costs

The evidence points to time as the biggest lever. The Consumer Council for Northern Ireland reports that keeping shower time to just four minutes could save a typical household £70 a year on energy bills.⁶ Not letting the shower run while you are out of it saves a further £22 a year, according to Uswitch research.¹¹

One popular measure does not work here. Smart Energy GB guidance is clear that water-efficient shower heads are not recommended for electric showers, and the cost-saving benefits they bring to other shower types cannot be achieved with an electric shower, because the shower's flow is already restricted by its heating capacity.¹⁷ What does work:

• Keep showers to four minutes, worth around £70 a year to a typical household⁶
• Switch the shower off rather than letting it run while you are not in it, worth £22 a year¹¹
• Check your tariff: a fixed deal cost 21p per shower against 26p on a standard tariff in April 2026 analysis⁷

Will a power cut stop your electric shower working?

No. An electric shower depends entirely on the electricity supply to heat water, so when the power goes off, the shower goes off with it. This is a genuine resilience consideration: a household whose hot water comes only from an electric shower has no hot water during an outage.

Gas-heated homes are not automatically better off, though. SGN guidance notes that gas supplies and meters will usually continue to work normally during a power cut, but most boilers may not work because they use electricity for pumps, fans and electronic controls.¹⁸ Power cuts can happen during storms, according to Energy Networks UK guidance.¹⁹ In a severe emergency where a rota of planned cuts is needed, customers would lose power for around three hours a day on an area-by-area basis, according to SSEN's emergency planning guidance.²⁰

For most households the running cost question comes down to minutes: every minute under an electric shower costs real money on the electricity bill, and the four-minute habit is the one change the evidence says pays.