Should You Buy an Air Fryer? A Cost-per-Meal Test

Buy an air fryer if you'll use it at least three or four times a week to replace your electric oven for small meals. If you'll only use it now and then, or you usually cook for a crowd, the energy savings are too small to cover the price.

The reason is simple. An air fryer uses much less electricity than an oven, but the savings work out to cents per meal, not dollars. Whether those cents add up depends on how often you use it.

What the lab tests show

The UK consumer group Which? measured energy use, including preheating, for four foods cooked in an air fryer and in a built-in electric oven. The results were published in October 2026:

Food	Air fryer	Electric oven
Roast chicken (1.3–1.4 kg)	0.54 kWh, 53 min	1.157 kWh, 76 min
Frozen fries (320 g)	0.287 kWh, 23 min	0.863 kWh, 33 min
Baked potato (~200 g)	0.392 kWh, 48 min	1.084 kWh, 68 min
Sponge cake	0.223 kWh, 33 min	0.71 kWh, 56 min

The air fryer used roughly a third to half of the oven's energy every time, and it cooked faster. In Australia, a home test by CHOICE using a smart meter found the same pattern: the air fryer cooked three meals faster and for about a third of the electricity cost of an older oven.

The cost per meal in the US

The US Energy Information Administration expects the average US home to pay 18.2 cents per kWh in 2026. At that rate, the Which? energy figures give these costs:

Food	Air fryer	Oven	You save
Roast chicken	9.8¢	21.1¢	11.2¢
Fries	5.2¢	15.7¢	10.5¢
Baked potato	7.1¢	19.7¢	12.6¢
Cake	4.1¢	12.9¢	8.9¢

Across the four tests, the air fryer saves about 0.6 kWh per cook, or roughly 11 cents at the average US price. Think of it like switching to a cheaper coffee: the gap per cup is tiny, and it only matters if you drink coffee every day.

Your local price changes this a lot. US prices in April 2026 ranged from about 12¢/kWh in North Dakota to about 47¢/kWh in Hawaii. On the roast chicken alone, that means a saving of about 8 cents in North Dakota and about 29 cents in Hawaii.

These figures come from UK appliances. US ovens and air fryers differ in size and wattage, so treat the numbers as a solid estimate, not an exact result.

How long until it pays for itself?

Here is a hypothetical example: an $80 air fryer that saves 11 cents each time you use it instead of the oven.

1. Break-even point: $80 ÷ $0.11 ≈ 730 cooks.
2. At 7 uses a week: about 2 years.
3. At 4 uses a week: about 3.5 years.
4. At 1 use a week: about 14 years, which is likely longer than the appliance will last.

You can also spread the purchase price over the meals. Say the $80 air fryer lasts five years:

• 4 uses a week (about 1,040 cooks): 7.7¢ for the machine + about 6.6¢ for energy ≈ 14¢ per cook, compared with about 17¢ for the oven. That's a small win.
• 2 uses a week (about 520 cooks): 15.4¢ + 6.6¢ ≈ 22¢ per cook. Now it costs more than the oven.

Which? reached a similar conclusion for the UK. Cooking a roast chicken in an air fryer once a week saves only about £8 a year, and with a pricier model "it could be a while before it starts to pay for itself" (Which?).

When the oven still wins

An air fryer is like a sprinter: quick over a short distance, but not built for a marathon. The oven comes out ahead when:

• You cook for a crowd. Which? warns that the savings "soon drop off if you have to cook in batches." Its test air fryer could fit only one baked potato at a time, and the maker advised filling the basket only halfway.
• You cook a full dinner at once. If the meat, potatoes, and vegetables all share the oven, one oven run can cost less than several air fryer rounds.
• You'd use the microwave anyway. For reheating leftovers or a quick baked potato, a microwave is usually cheaper still.
• Your oven runs on gas. The savings above compare against an electric oven. With gas, the gap depends on your local gas and electricity prices, so the math may not favor the air fryer.

The bigger lever: what you cook

Energy is only a small part of what a meal costs. The food matters far more. If an air fryer makes it easy enough to cook frozen fries or chicken at home that you skip even one takeout order a month, that likely beats a year of electricity savings. If it mostly cooks pricey frozen convenience foods you wouldn't otherwise buy, it can raise your grocery bill instead.

To judge this, compare what you actually pay per plate with a cost-per-meal target. The same test works for other countertop gadgets, like a slow cooker or a bread maker.

Quick decision checklist

An air fryer is probably worth it if most of these apply to you:

1. You'd use it at least three or four times a week.
2. You cook for one to three people.
3. You'd mostly use it instead of an electric oven, not instead of the microwave.
4. Your electricity costs about the US average or more.
5. You have counter space, and a mid-priced model fits your budget.

If only one or two apply, keep your money. You'd save a few dollars a year at most, and your oven already does the job.