Bitcoin mining calculator: power cost and solo chance
Pick a miner from our range or enter your own figures. You see what the device costs in power each month, how likely a block of your own is and what the statistical expected value comes to. Hashrate and power draw come from our product data; electricity price, BTC price and network hashrate are yours to set. The second tab puts a device plus its power next to a rental of the same hashrate.
Your setup
BTC price and network hashrate were taken from mempool.space when the page loaded (as of 1 Nov 2026, 06:56). You can overwrite every value.
Results
- Power cost
- calculating
- Solo chance per day
- calculating
- Chance ≥1 block
- calculating
- Expected value / month
- calculating
For context: solo mining does not produce a regular income. The expected value is an average over a very long time. In practice nothing happens for years, and if something does, the whole block reward arrives at once.
Buy a device or rent the same hashrate
Same hashrate, same period: what a device from our shop costs including power, and what the same hashrate costs as a rental, at the prices on the rental page. Where a device has a fixed plan, we use that plan. Otherwise we use custom hashrate, which you rent for 30 days at a time at most; a fixed plan with a similar hashrate can work out cheaper over a year.
Only applies to the device; a rental includes the power.
Buy
€485.52
- Device price in our shop
- €249.00
- Power (90 W, 788 kWh)
- €236.52
Rent
€618.10
Custom hashrate of 4.2 TH/s, booked 12 × 30 days, 1 × 3 days and 2 × 1 day, 365 days in total.
Over 1 year, renting costs €132.58 more than the device plus power.
- Only hashrate decides your odds of a block. Device and rental both have 4.2 TH/s here, so the chance is the same.
- After the period the device is still yours and can keep running, while the rental has ended. What the used device is worth then is not part of this comparison.
- Device price as listed in our shop, without shipping. Power assumes the device runs around the clock at the draw from our product data.
- Fixed plans can be booked for up to a year, custom hashrate for up to 30 days. Longer periods are counted as several rentals in a row; each one ends by itself and can be renewed with one click.
How the calculator works out the solo chance
For every block, all that counts is your share of the total hashrate. A Bitaxe Gamma with 1.3 TH/s holds about 1.3 billionths of a network running at around 1,000 EH/s, so on average it hits one block in roughly 770 million. With 144 blocks a day that adds up to odds of about 1 in 15,000 over a year. The calculator shows day, month and year separately, because small probabilities stack up over many blocks.
Electricity is the part you pay for sure
Nobody knows when a block will come; the power bill arrives every month. The Bitaxe Gamma is set to 17 watts here, which at 30 cents per kWh is just under €3.70 a month. A NerdQaxe ++ at around 80 watts comes to a little over €17, a NerdOctaxe at around 200 watts to about €43. Chance grows with hashrate and cost grows with watts; the column next to the calculator shows both for three example devices.
Solar surplus and dynamic tariffs
A small miner is easy to tie to surplus solar or to cheap hours; which electricity price to enter in that case is answered in the questions below. Setting up the control with a balcony plant, a rooftop system or Home Assistant is covered in our guides on mining with solar power, dynamic electricity tariffs and Home Assistant.
Buy a device or rent hashrate
A rental mines for your address on pool.opensourceminers.de, and the electricity is not on your bill. A device costs more up front, then only power, and it stays yours. Which comes out cheaper depends on your electricity price and on how long you want to mine. The Buy or rent? tab works it out for every device in our range over one, two or three years, with the same hashrate on both sides and the rental terms you can actually book. Details are on the rental page; devices to run yourself are listed under solo mining hardware.
Frequently asked questions
Which electricity price should I enter? +
The energy rate on your bill: the price per kilowatt hour, without the standing charge. If the miner only runs on surplus solar power, enter the feed-in tariff you give up by using that power yourself. On a dynamic tariff, take the average price of the hours in which the device actually runs.
Where do the hashrate and power figures come from? +
From the product data in our shop. Where a spec sheet gives a range, the calculator uses a typical value, 17 watts for the Bitaxe Gamma 601 rather than 15 to 18. If you have overclocked your miner or tuned it for efficiency, read the real numbers off its dashboard and type them in.
How long does a home miner take to find a block on average? +
Divide the network hashrate by your device's hashrate and multiply by ten minutes. At around 1,000 EH/s a Bitaxe Gamma with 1.3 TH/s averages about 15,000 years, a NerdQaxe ++ with 4.8 TH/s around 4,000 years. These are means, not schedules. The search starts over with every block, and earlier attempts do not add up. Your device may hit in its first week, or run for all the years you own it without finding a block.
What does the expected value tell me? +
How much bitcoin you would get per month if block rewards were spread out evenly: your chance per block, times 144 blocks a day, times 3.125 BTC, converted at the price you entered. Solo mining never pays it out like that; you receive either nothing or an entire block. A pool pays roughly the expected value minus its fee, in small amounts.
Does a miner cover its power cost? +
Not at 30 cents per kWh. With the BTC price and network hashrate of 28 October 2026 (around €72,700 and 1,080 EH/s according to mempool.space), the "minus power" line is negative for every device in our range; even the most efficient one would need more than twice that price. Only very cheap power, such as your own solar surplus, can lift an efficient device above zero. People run home miners mostly for the solo chance and because every extra device spreads the network's hashrate a little wider.
Can I use it to check a rental as well? +
Yes, in two ways. The "Buy or rent?" tab sets a device from our shop plus its power against a rental with the same hashrate, over one, two or three years, using the prices and terms you can actually book on the rental page. For the solo chance of a rental, choose "Custom values …" in the first tab, enter the rented hashrate and set the electricity price to zero, since a rental includes the power.
Why does the comparison use several rentals in a row? +
Because custom hashrate can be rented for 30 days at a time at most. Where a device has a fixed plan, the comparison uses that plan, which runs for up to a year. For every other device it takes the device's hashrate as custom hashrate: twelve 30-day rentals for a year, with the remaining days covered by the cheapest mix of shorter terms. A fixed plan with a similar hashrate can be cheaper over a year; you will find the plans on the rental page. The bookings the comparison assumes are listed below the rental price.