A chest freezer sits in the garage or utility room and quietly does its job year after year, which is exactly why people forget it is even drawing power. It never switches off, so the question is not whether it costs you money but how much, and whether the bulk-buying and batch-cooking it allows actually pays for the electricity it burns. The good news is that a chest freezer is one of the cheapest cold appliances to run, often cheaper than the upright freezer it might replace. This guide gives you the real numbers for the UK and shows you how to work out the cost for your own model.
The short answer. A typical modern chest freezer uses around 150 to 300 kWh a year, which at the October to December 2026 price cap of 26.32p per kWh works out at about £39 to £78 a year, or roughly 75p to £1.50 a week. Smaller energy-efficient models cost less, while a large or older freezer can easily top £100 a year. The single biggest cost driver is the energy rating and size, not how often you open the lid.
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The short version: what a chest freezer costs per year
Chest freezers do not run their compressor constantly. The motor cycles on and off to hold the internal temperature at around minus 18C, so the figure that matters is not the rated wattage but the energy used over a full year, measured in kWh. Manufacturers print this annual figure on the energy label, and it already accounts for the on-off cycling.
Most domestic chest freezers fall between 150 and 300 kWh a year. A small, recent A or B rated model might use 150 kWh, while a large or older unit can use 300 kWh or more. Multiply the annual kWh by your electricity unit rate to get the yearly cost.
| Annual use | Cost per year | Cost per week |
|---|---|---|
| 150 kWh (small, efficient) | £39.17 | 75p |
| 200 kWh (mid-size) | £52.22 | £1.00 |
| 250 kWh (larger) | £65.28 | £1.26 |
| 300 kWh (large or older) | £78.33 | £1.51 |
| 400 kWh (old chest freezer) | £104.44 | £2.01 |
At 26.32p per kWh, Ofgem cap October to December 2026.
These figures are pure unit cost. The freezer adds nothing to your daily standing charge, which you pay regardless of what is plugged in. If you want to see how this slots in alongside your other devices, our guide to appliance running costs puts the whole house in one place.
Work out the cost for your own freezer
The most accurate number comes off your own appliance. There are two easy ways to find it.
Use the energy label
Every freezer sold in the UK carries an energy label showing annual energy consumption in kWh per year. Find that number and multiply by your unit rate. At 26.32p per kWh, a freezer rated at 210 kWh a year costs 210 multiplied by 0.2611, which is £54.83 a year. If you have lost the label, search the model number plus the words energy consumption and the figure is usually on the manufacturer or retailer page. Our guide to energy labels explained walks through how the rating scale changed and why a B rated freezer today is genuinely efficient.
Measure it directly
A plug-in energy monitor costs under a tenner and is the only way to capture how your freezer behaves in your actual room. Plug the freezer through the monitor, leave it for a week, then read off the kWh used and multiply by 52 to get the annual figure. This catches the things the label cannot, such as a warm garage in summer forcing the compressor to run harder, or a worn door seal letting cold escape.
If you only have the wattage on the rating plate, do not just multiply it by 24 hours. A 100W compressor does not run all day. It typically runs between a third and a half of the time, so a 100W freezer cycling for 8 hours a day uses about 0.8 kWh daily, or roughly 290 kWh a year.
Why chest freezers are cheaper to run than uprights
For the same storage volume, a chest freezer almost always uses less electricity than an upright. The reason is simple physics. Cold air is heavier than warm air, so when you lift the lid of a chest freezer the cold air stays in the box. When you open an upright freezer door, the cold air pours out of the bottom and warm room air rushes in, and the compressor then has to work to re-chill the contents.
Chest models also tend to have thicker insulation in the walls and lid, and a single large compartment loses less heat than several drawers behind a tall door. In practice a chest freezer can use 30 to 45 per cent less energy than an upright of similar capacity. The trade-off is floor space and the awkwardness of digging to the bottom, which is a storage and convenience question rather than a cost one. If you are weighing up a combined unit instead, see our notes on fridge freezer efficiency.
What pushes the cost up, and how to cut it
A few things make a real difference to the annual figure, and most of them are free to fix.
- Room temperature. A freezer in a hot conservatory or sun-facing garage works far harder than one in a cool utility room. Every extra degree of room warmth means more compressor running time. Keep it somewhere cool and out of direct sun.
- How full it is. A full freezer holds its cold better than an empty one, because frozen food acts as a thermal mass. If yours is half empty, fill the gaps with bottles of water. Do not overpack it so tightly that air cannot circulate.
- Frost build-up. A thick layer of ice acts as insulation in the wrong place and makes the compressor work harder. Defrost a manual chest freezer once or twice a year, or whenever the ice is more than about 5mm thick.
- Door seal. A perished or dirty lid seal lets cold leak out. Test it by closing the lid on a sheet of paper. If you can pull the paper out easily, the seal needs cleaning or replacing.
- Temperature setting. Minus 18C is the recommended setting and is plenty cold for safe storage. Setting it colder than that wastes electricity for no benefit.
- Age and rating. An old freezer from the 2000s can use two to three times the electricity of a modern one. If yours is using 400 kWh a year, a new efficient model paying for itself on the energy saving alone is worth a sum.
The single most overlooked saving is simply running one freezer instead of two. A second, half-empty freezer in the garage can cost £50 or more a year for almost nothing in return.
Does it count as standby, and does running cost change in winter?
A freezer is not a standby load in the usual sense. It is doing useful work the whole time it is switched on, unlike a TV or charger sitting idle. If you want to understand which of your always-on devices are genuinely wasting power versus working, our guide to standby power draws the line clearly.
Running cost does shift with the seasons, but maybe not the way you expect. A freezer in a cold garage actually costs less to run in winter, because the surrounding air is closer to the temperature inside the box and the compressor cycles less. In a heated room indoors the cost stays fairly flat year round. The bigger seasonal swing happens to freezers kept in hot summer spaces, where the cost can climb noticeably. If your freezer lives somewhere that bakes in summer, a cooler spot is worth finding.
One winter warning: some older chest freezers are not rated to run in unheated outbuildings below a certain temperature, because the compressor oil and thermostat can misbehave in the cold. Check the manual for the minimum ambient temperature before assuming a freezing garage is fine.
The bottom line
A chest freezer is a cheap appliance to run by modern standards. Budget around £40 to £80 a year for a typical model, or about a pound a week, and treat anything over £100 as a sign you have either a large freezer or an old inefficient one. The cost barely moves with how often you open it, so the levers that matter are the energy rating, the size, where you keep it, and whether you are heating an empty box for no reason.
To get your own exact number, read the kWh figure off the energy label or measure it with a plug-in monitor, then multiply by your unit rate. At the October to December 2026 cap that rate is 26.32p per kWh, but check your own bill, since a fixed tariff or a time-of-use tariff can change the maths. If you are deciding whether to keep a second freezer running at all, the question is really whether the food it stores is worth £50 a year to you.