Air fryer against oven, what each one really costs per meal in the UK

Kitchen By Ellen HartwellPublished 28 September 2026

The figures, worked properly

Two appliances, two very different shapes of energy use, and the comparison only works if you use the right unit for each.

An air fryer is a small chamber with a fan and an element. The Ninja AF160UK is rated at 1750 watts, the AF100UK at 1550 and the AF140UK Pro at 2000, and Tefal's EasyFry sits at 1400. Take the middle of that range and a 25 minute cook gives you 1750 divided by a thousand, multiplied by 0.42 of an hour, which is 0.73 kilowatt hours. At the Ofgem cap rate for the period we are in, that is about 19p.

An electric oven is not rated the same way, because the element cycles on and off once the cavity reaches temperature and a flat wattage figure would mislead you. Manufacturers publish energy per cycle on the label instead. Bosch lists 0.79 kilowatt hours a cycle for the Series 2 in fan forced mode and 0.98 in conventional mode, and Neff's B6ACH7HH0B lists 0.81 and 1.04. Call it 0.87 for a mid range oven in everyday use, which comes to about 23p.

So the real gap for a single cook is four pence.

Why the headlines say seventy per cent

You will have seen claims that an air fryer costs a fraction of an oven. Those numbers usually come from comparing an air fryer at full power for 15 minutes against an oven left on for a full hour, which is a comparison between two different meals rather than two different appliances.

Where the saving is genuinely large is the preheat. An oven has to bring a cavity of around 70 litres up to temperature, and it will draw close to its full connection rating for the first ten to fifteen minutes doing it. An air fryer drawer is three to five litres and reaches temperature in under three minutes. If you are cooking something that takes twelve minutes, the oven spends more energy getting ready than cooking, and the air fryer avoids that entirely.

Cook something for an hour and a half, a joint or a casserole, and the preheat stops mattering. The oven is then just a well insulated box holding temperature, and it does that more efficiently per litre than a small drawer with a fan running flat out.

Rates: Ofgem cap 1 July to 30 September 2026 at 26.11p per kWh (source), EIA residential average June 2026 at 18.34 cents per kWh (source). Checked 2026-09-22.

Cost per portion, which is the number that counts

This is where most comparisons quietly cheat. One air fryer basket holds enough chips for one or two people. A standard oven shelf holds four portions, and there are usually two shelves.

Take a family of four eating oven chips and fish. In the air fryer that is two batches, maybe three if you want them crisp rather than steamed, so 38p to 57p and twenty minutes of standing at the counter swapping trays. In the oven it is one cycle, about 23p, everything in at once. The oven is cheaper and the cook is easier.

Now take one person reheating a portion of leftovers with a crisp finish. Air fryer, ten minutes, about 8p. Oven, a full cycle, about 23p. The air fryer is a third of the cost and it is ready in a third of the time.

Neither appliance is cheaper in general. The air fryer is cheaper for small portions and short cooks, the oven is cheaper for volume, and the household that owns both and picks correctly saves more than the household that replaced one with the other.

What actually moves the bill

• Stop preheating the air fryer for anything that cooks longer than fifteen minutes, because the food will reach temperature in the ramp anyway.
• Use the fan forced setting on your oven rather than conventional. Bosch and Neff both publish around a 20 per cent saving per cycle for the same oven, which is the easiest 5p a meal you will ever find.
• Batch cook when the oven is already hot. The second tray costs almost nothing because the cavity is already at temperature.
• Do not open the air fryer drawer to check every few minutes. Each look drops the chamber temperature and the element has to make it back.
• Keep the air fryer basket clean. Baked on fat on the mesh restricts the air path, the fan works harder and cooks take longer.
• Check the plate on the back of your own machine before trusting any figure on any website, including this one. A 2400 watt dual drawer model is a different appliance from a 1400 watt single.

What about a microwave

If the question is purely cost, the microwave beats both by a wide margin, because it puts energy into the water in the food rather than heating a chamber of air around it. A 900 watt microwave reheating for five minutes uses about 0.08 kilowatt hours, around 2p.

It does not brown anything and it does not crisp anything, so the comparison only holds for reheating. The sensible kitchen uses the microwave for reheating, the air fryer for small crisp cooks, and the oven when there is a crowd. That is not a compromise, it is just three tools doing three jobs.

The purchase price question

An air fryer costs between fifty and a hundred and fifty pounds. If you are running it instead of an oven for one meal a day, the saving is roughly four pence a meal, which is about fifteen pounds a year. On that basis alone the machine takes five years to pay for itself and there is no case for buying one.

The case for buying one is speed, a cooler kitchen in summer, and the fact that food you would not have bothered cooking becomes a five minute job. Those are good reasons. Saving money on electricity, taken by itself, is not one of them, and any retailer telling you otherwise is selling you a number rather than an appliance.