Dal that simmers for 45 minutes. Rice. Roti on the tawa. Back home nobody counted. Here, electricity is one of the biggest bills in the house — and the kitchen is where a lot of it goes.
Put in what you cook and how you cook it. The calculator shows the cost per month and per year, and what changes if you cook the same food a different way.
Check your last Stromrechnung for the real number — it is usually printed as ct/kWh. In 2026 most German households pay somewhere around 30 to 40 cents.
The big numbers are what each method costs you every month, and the small line underneath shows the same thing over a year. The yellow line at the bottom is the part that matters: the difference between the two, per year.
A saving of two or three euros a month sounds like nothing. Over a year it is thirty euros, which is often more than the appliance cost in the first place. That is the real question this tool answers — not "is electricity expensive", but "will this thing pay for itself, and how fast".
Watts: look at the sticker on the back or bottom of the appliance, or in its manual. It says something like 1800 W or 2000 W. A full-size electric hob ring is usually 1500–2300 W. An oven is 2000–3000 W. An air fryer is 1400–1700 W. A rice cooker is 400–900 W.
A pressure cooker is not low-watt. It uses the same hob at the same power. It saves money purely because it is finished in a third of the time. That is why the calculator asks for minutes separately.
Before you buy anything: run your own numbers first. If a change saves you €1.50 a month, a €90 appliance takes five years to pay for itself — and that is not a saving, it is a purchase. Only buy when the calculator shows the thing paying for itself inside a year or two, or when it genuinely makes your life easier.
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The cooker itself uses no less power — it sits on the same hob. The saving comes from time. Dal that takes 45 minutes in an open pot is often done in 12 to 15 minutes under pressure, so you use roughly a third of the energy for the same dish. Put both times into the calculator above to see it in euros.
For small amounts, usually yes, because it heats a much smaller space and needs little or no preheating. For a large tray of food it is often the other way round, since you would have to run the air fryer in several batches. Compare the two in the calculator using realistic minutes for each.
On your annual Stromrechnung or in your provider's online account, written as ct/kWh. There is usually also a fixed monthly fee (Grundpreis) that you pay whatever you use — that part does not change with cooking, so leave it out here.
If the hob belongs to the flat, you usually cannot change it, and a single plug-in induction plate is the cheap way to test the idea. If you are buying a kitchen anyway, induction is faster and wastes less heat. Replacing a working hob purely to save electricity rarely pays for itself.
Usually yes. Doubling the quantity in the same pot adds only a little cooking time, while cooking twice doubles it. Reheating a portion in a microwave costs very little. The saving is real, though it is smaller than most people expect — the bigger benefit is your time.