Air fryer vs oven: which is cheaper to run?

For most everyday cooking, an air fryer is cheaper to run than an oven, and the gap is wide enough to notice on a bill. Independent testing puts the average air fryer at £33 a year to run, based on cooking a meal twice a week, with the most expensive model tested at £53¹. A built-in single electric oven used three times a week averages £63 a year, and a freestanding electric cooker £59¹. Per hour of use, an air fryer costs between 36p and 44p, while preheating an oven for 15 minutes and cooking for an hour costs between 64p and £1.61².

The saving comes from two directions at once: an air fryer draws less power than an oven, and it finishes the job faster. Both halves matter, and both have limits. A large twin basket air fryer can use as much electricity as an oven, and an oven still does things an air fryer cannot, such as batch cooking across several shelves³. This page sets out the numbers from UK independent testing, shows where the savings actually appear, and explains how to run the same calculation on your own appliances.

Why an air fryer draws less power than a full oven

The core reason is the size of the space being heated. An air fryer heats a basket holding one or two portions, while an oven heats a full cavity whether it contains one jacket potato or a Sunday roast for six. The average air fryer uses between 1.4 and 1.7 kWh of electricity an hour, against about 2 to 5 kWh for the average oven². A modern electric oven draws around 2,100 watts, and most electric ovens have a power rating of 2.0 to 2.2 kWh on medium to high heat⁴.

Within air fryers themselves, size drives the difference. Single drawer versions tend to be around 1500 watts, while twin drawer versions are closer to 2600 watts⁶. That means the biggest double basket models draw as much power as an oven, and their running cost per hour reflects it. A compact single basket model uses as little as 0.8 kWh an hour, costing about 21p, while a large twin basket model at 2.8 kWh costs about 74p an hour³.

For a household thinking about energy use, the practical point is that the air fryer's advantage is not magic: it is arithmetic. Less space to heat means less electricity drawn, and a smaller element means less power wasted reaching temperature. The trade-off is capacity. If you regularly fill an oven, the air fryer's efficiency per portion disappears, because you may need to run it in batches or for longer.

Cooking duration: the second half of the price calculation

Running cost is power multiplied by time, so wattage alone never settles the comparison. An appliance that draws more but finishes sooner can still be the cheaper one, and this is where air fryers gain their second advantage.

Air fryers typically cook food about 20% quicker than ovens, and guidance on following oven recipes in an air fryer is to reduce cooking times by 20%³. A chicken breast can be cooked in as little as 15 to 20 minutes in an air fryer instead of 30 or more minutes in the oven³. Preheating widens the gap further: some air fryers take 10 to 15 minutes to reach temperature, but many need little or none, while an oven almost always needs a full preheat before food goes in³.

A worked example from Citizens Advice shows the combined effect: an air fryer used for 5 minutes of preheating and 32 minutes of cooking at 180 degrees Celsius cost 12p⁷. Compare that with the oven figure of 64p to £1.61 for 15 minutes of preheating plus an hour of cooking, and the difference is not just the wattage but the clock².

Microwave or air fryer: the cheaper alternatives to an oven

When energy advice organisations talk about cutting cooking costs, they group microwaves and air fryers together. National Energy Action's guidance is that cooking in a microwave or air fryer is cheaper than an oven, because it uses less power and takes less time to cook⁸. The same wording appears in the charity's winter preparation advice⁹. Energy Saving Trust adds that you might be able to save more energy by using an air fryer or microwave instead of your oven¹⁰.

Between the two, the choice is less about cost and more about what each does. A microwave heats food faster than anything else in the kitchen, which usually makes it the cheapest option per meal for reheating, porridge, steamed vegetables and similar jobs. It cannot crisp or brown food. An air fryer costs a little more to run than a microwave but produces the roasted, browned results a microwave cannot, which is why it substitutes for an oven far more often.

Slow cookers sit in the same family of cheaper alternatives. They take several hours but use very little electricity, and are more energy efficient than hob or oven cooking⁹. For a household building cheap-cooking habits, the pattern that emerges from the independent advice is simple: match the appliance to the job. Microwave for speed, air fryer for crispness at lower cost than an oven, slow cooker for long unattended cooking, oven for volume.

What the running cost comparison leaves out

The headline figures compare like with like only loosely, and several things sit outside them.

First, the annual figures assume different usage. The £33 air fryer figure is based on cooking a meal twice a week, while the £63 oven figure assumes three uses a week¹. A household that cooks every evening will spend more on either appliance than the averages suggest.

Second, the comparison says nothing about the purchase price, and cheap appliances can be the expensive ones to run. Which? has warned against buying cheap appliances that rack up large energy bills, and found that among built-in ovens the average running cost is £64 a year while the cheapest models to run cost around £53¹¹. A poorly made air fryer can cost more to run than a good oven.

Third, the figures are electricity only. A household with a gas oven faces a different calculation, since gas is cheaper per kWh than electricity, though gas ovens also waste more heat into the kitchen.

Fourth, behaviour changes the numbers. Energy Saving Trust advises not opening the oven door repeatedly to check on food, since you let out hot air and waste energy; peek through the glass door instead¹². After cooking, leaving the oven door open a little, if it is safe to do so, lets the residual heat warm the kitchen rather than being wasted¹⁰.

Where the savings show up: which foods suit an air fryer

The savings are not spread evenly across everything you cook. They are largest where the oven would run mostly empty: small portions, single items and quick roasts.

The clearest measured example is a roast chicken. Which? calculated that it costs 18p to roast a chicken in an air fryer, compared with 38p in a built-in electric oven¹⁴. That is close to half the cost for the same meal, and it comes from the combination of a smaller cavity and a shorter cook.

Energy Saving Trust's guidance captures the general rule: ovens are good for batch cooking, but if you are only cooking for one or two people, an air fryer can be cheaper to use¹². Chicken breasts, chips, roasted vegetables, fish and reheated leftovers are the foods where the air fryer's speed and small cavity pay off most.

One estimate of the total effect, from ivie's energy saving advice, is that a household could save £263.80 a year by swapping from an electric oven to an air fryer, and over 75% by swapping from an electric oven to a microwave and air fryer combined¹⁵. Treat those as modelled upper-end figures rather than a promise: they assume a substantial shift of cooking away from the oven, and the annual averages from independent testing suggest more modest savings for typical use¹.

Working out the cost yourself: wattage, time and your unit price

You do not need to trust anyone's averages, because the calculation is short. Cost equals the appliance's power in kilowatts, multiplied by the time it runs in hours, multiplied by your electricity unit price.

Smart Energy GB's worked example uses a 1.4 to 1.7 kWh air fryer run for one hour at the £0.2635 per kWh energy price cap rate². At that rate, an hour of air frying costs roughly 37p to 45p. Uswitch's July 2026 figures, built the same way, give a useful table of air fryer and oven costs per hour and per year, assuming 200 hours of cooking a year³:

The Centre for Sustainable Energy lists an oven at 2,100 watts costing 55p an hour to run¹⁶, and a Uswitch press example from spring 2026 puts a 1.4 kW air fryer at 35p for one hour¹⁷. The small differences between these figures come from the unit price each calculation assumes. Uswitch's cooking guide, for instance, uses 34p per kWh in its oven and stove formula⁵. Your own bill, or your smart meter if you have one, gives the number that actually applies to your home, and it is the one to use.

Three practical steps:

1. Find the power rating on the appliance's label or manual, in watts or kilowatts.
2. Multiply by the cooking time in hours, including preheating for an oven.
3. Multiply by your unit price per kWh from your latest bill.

For context on the wider picture of appliance costs, see which household appliances use the most electricity, and for the no-cost habits that cut bills first, see no-cost and low-cost ways to cut energy use. The air fryer versus oven question is a small piece of household energy use, but it is one of the easiest to answer with your own numbers, and every meal cooked in the cheaper appliance is a small reduction in how much of your money leaves the house through the meter.