Electricity rates by region for print cost calculations

These are the rates the print cost calculator offers as starting points. They are published national-average residential prices compiled in August 2026, given in local currency and converted to US dollars so regions can be compared.

They are all editable inputs. Nothing on this site silently assumes one country's electricity price, because a calculator that does is wrong for most of the world while looking completely authoritative.

The figures

The spread is more than four to one between the cheapest and dearest entries. The same twelve-hour print that costs eleven cents of electricity in one place costs forty-nine in another, which is why this table exists as an input rather than as a footnote.

What moves a household off its national average

Time-of-use tariffs. Several markets price overnight electricity far below the daytime rate. If you print overnight on such a tariff, the off-peak figure is the correct one, and it can be half the headline number.

Regional variation within a country. State and provincial differences inside the United States, Canada and Australia are large — in some cases larger than the differences between the countries in this table. A national average is a poor proxy for a specific bill.

Household solar. If you print during daylight and export surplus, the relevant cost is what the electricity would have earned as an export, not what it would have cost to import. Those can differ by a factor of three, usually in your favour.

Standing charges. Excluded here deliberately. A daily standing charge is paid whether or not the printer runs, so it is not a cost of the print.

Vintage and provenance

Compiled August 2026 from published national-average residential price surveys. Electricity prices move, sometimes sharply, so a figure that looks precise and is two years old is more misleading than one that is obviously rough — precision suppresses the instinct to check.

If the date above is stale by the time you read this, the number on your own bill was always the better input.

How these are used elsewhere on the site

Every published cost example on this site states which rate it used. Where an example needs a single figure, it uses the United States average, because that is the largest single audience — not because it is representative of the world, and the page always says so.

If you land on a page whose cost figure looks wrong for you by a factor of two, the rate is the first thing to check and the second is the printer's wattage. Between them they account for nearly every disagreement about what electricity costs a print.

Converting between the columns

The US-dollar column exists for comparison, not for accuracy. Exchange rates move faster than electricity tariffs do, so treat those conversions as approximate and use the local-currency figure if you are billing in that currency. Doing the arithmetic in your own currency and converting at the end, if at all, is always the safer order.