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Running a 100 W home server 24/7 costs about $158 a year

A 100 W home server or NAS running 24/7 at 80% load costs about $157.68 a year to power at $0.18/kWh — $13.14 a month. That works out to 876 kWh annually for a machine that's doing something useful every hour of the year: file serving, Plex, backups, Home Assistant, or a dev box.

Annual cost
$126
At $0.18/kWh
Monthly cost
$10
24 h/day at 80% load
Annual consumption
701 kWh
100 W rated

Calculator

Power Cost Estimator

Device Configuration

W

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Effective Power: 80W

Hours
$/kWh

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Daily Cost
$0.35
Monthly Cost
$10.37
Yearly Cost
$126.14
701 kWh / year

How this is calculated

The big difference from a gaming PC isn't peak power — it's the "24/7" multiplier. A 100 W always-on device uses as much annual electricity as an 850 W gaming PC running 4 hours a day, because 24/7 × 100 W still beats 4 × 850 W × 80%. That's why hobbyists obsess over efficient Mini PCs, Synology units, and Raspberry Pi-class servers: the watts matter in a way that doesn't apply to desktops that shut down at night.

Verdict

$158 a year is the mental benchmark for "is self-hosting worth it?" It's below the cost of most paid cloud equivalents but it's not free — if your server idles at 30 W instead of drawing 80% of 100 W, you can halve the bill.

More Server scenarios

60 W low-power server, 24/7
Low-power Mini PC / Raspberry Pi server (60 W)
View details ➜
1200 W professional server, 24/7
Professional server / rack unit (1200 W)
View details ➜

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to run a gaming PC 24/7?
At 300 W continuous draw and €0.30/kWh, a gaming PC left on 24/7 costs about €788 per year. Cut that to 8 hours per day of active gaming plus idle the rest and it drops to roughly €260/year. Sleep mode and turning the PC off when not in use are the biggest levers.
How do I calculate kWh from watts?
Multiply wattage by hours, then divide by 1,000. A 500 W device running for 4 hours uses 500 × 4 ÷ 1,000 = 2 kWh. Multiply by your electricity rate (e.g. €0.30/kWh) to get the cost.
What uses more electricity: an RTX 4090 or a typical fridge?
Peak power, the RTX 4090 wins (450 W vs roughly 100-150 W compressor draw). Annual consumption is the opposite: a fridge runs 24/7 at an average of 40-50 W, adding up to around 400 kWh/year — more than many gaming PCs used only a few hours daily.
Does a 1000 W PSU use 1000 W all the time?
No. A PSU is rated for its maximum output capacity; actual draw depends on what the components need. A system with a 1000 W PSU at idle might pull 80 W from the wall, jumping to 400-600 W under gaming load.
How much does an always-on TV or server cost per year?
At 100 W continuous draw and €0.30/kWh, any device running 24/7 costs €263/year. A home NAS at 50 W costs €131/year; a 65-inch OLED TV watched 4 hours/day at 150 W costs about €66/year.
Why is my electricity bill higher than the estimator predicts?
The estimator assumes the wattage you enter is the average over runtime. Real devices spike, idle, and have standby draw. Measure with a cheap wall-socket power meter for the most accurate baseline, then use the estimator to project costs for different usage scenarios.

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