Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable at Home? The Real Math

For most people in the US, the answer is no. Is bitcoin mining profitable at home? With network numbers from early November 2026, one current generation miner earns about $6.70 a day in bitcoin, and it needs about 84 kilowatt hours of electricity to do it. Unless you pay roughly 8 cents per kWh or less, the power bill eats the reward before you ever pay off the machine. Here are the numbers behind that verdict, so you can plug in your own.

• Block subsidy: 3.125 BTC per block, plus about 0.0155 BTC in fees on average
• Network hashrate: about 1.05 ZH/s (1,050 EH/s), seven day estimate
• Daily network reward: about 452 BTC across 144 blocks
• Bitcoin price: about $77,900 at the time of writing
• Example miner: Antminer S21, 200 TH/s at about 3,500 watts (17.5 J/TH)
• Your power cost: 2024 average retail rates ranged from 7.93 cents per kWh in North Dakota to 38 cents in Hawaii
• Breakeven power price for that miner: about 8 cents per kWh, before pool fees and before the machine itself

The 3.125 BTC block subsidy and what fees add

Every time a miner finds a valid block, the network pays out a fixed subsidy plus the transaction fees inside that block. Since the April 2024 halving at block 840,000, the subsidy has been 3.125 BTC, according to the countdown tracker Bitcoin Block Half. The next halving is projected for around April 2028, when it drops to 1.5625 BTC.

Fees are the part people tend to overestimate. The mempool.space mining dashboard showed average fees of about 0.0155 BTC per block in its recent window. That is less than 1% of what a block pays. Right now, home miners live almost entirely on the subsidy, and that subsidy gets cut in half on a schedule.

If you want a refresher on what blocks and proof of work actually are, our guide to how bitcoin mining works covers it from the ground up.

Why 1.05 ZH/s of network hashrate matters more than your machine

Your share of the daily reward is your hashrate divided by everyone's hashrate. That is the whole formula. The network was running at an estimated 1.05 zettahashes per second, which is 1,050,000,000 terahashes per second. A single 200 TH/s miner is about 0.00002% of that.

Difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks (roughly two weeks) to keep blocks coming about every 10 minutes. The most recent adjustment, on October 29, 2026, raised difficulty by 5.54%, per mempool.space. When more machines switch on, each existing machine earns less bitcoin. You do not control this number, and over the long run it has tended to climb as newer, faster hardware ships.

The miner: 200 TH/s for about 3,500 watts

The Bitmain Antminer S21, released in February 2024, is a common reference point for home miners. Third party listing site ASIC Miner Value shows it at 200 TH/s, about 3,500 watts, and 17.5 joules per terahash, with a noise rating of 75 dB. Vendor prices listed there ranged from about $1,098 to $1,698 in November 2026.

Two practical points come straight out of those specs:

• It draws 84 kWh a day. 3.5 kW times 24 hours. Every one of those kWh lands on your normal bill.
• It will not run on a normal outlet. A standard 15 amp, 120 volt circuit tops out at 1,800 watts, so a machine like this needs a dedicated higher capacity circuit, which may mean paying an electrician.

Then there is the noise. 75 dB is loud enough that most people put these in a garage or basement, and the heat has to go somewhere.

Your electricity rate decides almost everything

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's state electricity profiles put the 2024 average retail price across all sectors at about 12.7 cents per kWh. North Dakota was lowest at 7.93 cents, Louisiana 8.80, and Idaho 9.51. On the expensive end, California averaged 27.04 cents and Hawaii 38.00. Those are averages across homes and businesses; residential rates are often higher, so pull the actual per kWh figure from your own bill, including delivery charges.

Worked example: one S21 at home

Here is the math with the figures above.

1. Your share of the network: 200 ÷ 1,050,000,000 = 0.000000190
2. Daily bitcoin earned: 0.000000190 × 452.24 BTC = about 0.0000861 BTC (about 8,600 satoshis)
3. Daily revenue: 0.0000861 × $77,928 = about $6.71
4. Daily electricity: 3.5 kW × 24 hours = 84 kWh
5. Breakeven rate: $6.71 ÷ 84 kWh = about 8.0 cents per kWh

Now apply real rates to step 4:

• At 7.93 cents (North Dakota average): $6.66 in power, about $0.05 a day left over
• At 12 cents: $10.08 in power, a loss of about $3.37 a day, or roughly $100 a month
• At 17 cents: $14.28 in power, a loss of about $7.57 a day
• At 27 cents (California average): $22.68 in power, a loss of about $16 a day

And none of that touches the hardware. At the North Dakota rate, a few cents a day would never repay a $1,099 machine. Mining pools also keep a cut, usually a small percentage, which pushes the breakeven rate a bit lower. Pools come and go, too; the Binance Pool shutdown is a recent reminder to keep a backup pool configured.

Is bitcoin mining profitable with free electricity or solar?

This is one of the most searched versions of the question, and it is the only case where the math gets interesting. With truly free power, the same machine would bring in about $6.71 a day and pay back $1,099 in roughly 164 days, if price and difficulty stayed flat. They rarely do. A 5% difficulty jump trims your daily bitcoin by about 5%, and a price drop hits revenue directly. Our explainer on why bitcoin goes up and down covers the price side.

Solar is not quite free, either. If your utility credits you for exported power, every kWh you feed a miner is a kWh you are not selling back. Use that credit rate as your electricity price in the breakeven math. Also, 84 kWh a day is a lot of panel capacity, and a miner running only during daylight earns proportionally less.

The 2028 halving cuts the reward in half

The subsidy is scheduled to fall to 1.5625 BTC around April 2028. If price and hashrate stayed where they are today, the S21 in our example would earn roughly half as much, and its breakeven rate would fall to around 4 cents per kWh. Historically, price and hashrate have both moved after halvings, but no one can promise which way or by how much. Any payback plan that runs past spring 2028 should assume a much smaller reward.

Taxes apply even when you lose money on power

The IRS treats mined coins as income. Its digital assets page lists mining among the ways you receive digital assets and says income from mining is reported on Schedule 1 of Form 1040, or on Schedule C if it is part of a business. Under the IRS virtual currency guidance in Notice 2014-21, the fair market value of mined coins on the day you receive them counts as gross income, and mining that rises to a trade or business can also trigger self employment tax. When you later sell, any change in value is a separate capital gain or loss. Our crypto taxes explainer walks through the basics, and a tax professional can tell you what you can deduct.

A quicker way to check before you buy

Before spending a dollar on hardware, do one calculation: divide the miner's daily revenue by its daily kWh and compare that to the rate on your bill. If your rate is higher, you are paying more for electricity than the bitcoin is worth. For many people, buying a small amount of bitcoin directly costs less than mining it; our guide on how to buy bitcoin shows how. You can find more plain English guides like this in our crypto section.