Buying & marketPublished by Cipheron
Calculate mining profitability yourself
Four variables decide whether a miner makes money – hashrate, efficiency, electricity price and hashprice. This is how you work out revenue, electricity costs and break-even electricity price yourself in a few minutes.
Whether a miner makes money depends on four variables. Two are in the datasheet, one is on your electricity bill, one changes daily.
The four variables
- Hashrate in TH/s: how much the unit computes.
- Efficiency in J/TH: how much power it needs per terahash. Hashrate × efficiency gives the power draw in watts.
- Electricity price per kWh, including all levies you actually pay.
- Hashprice: what the market currently pays for computing power, stated in dollars per PH/s and day. It combines the block subsidy, transaction fees, difficulty and the Bitcoin price in one number.
The calculation
- Revenue per day = hashrate in PH/s × hashprice. A unit with 200 TH/s has 0.2 PH/s.
- Electricity costs per day = power in kW × 24 × electricity price.
- Profit per day = revenue − electricity costs − pool fee.
A worked example with an assumed hashprice of $50 (not a current value; at the end of September 2026 it was around $40 according to Hashrate Index): a unit with 200 TH/s and 17.5 J/TH draws 3.5 kW. Revenue is 0.2 × 50 = $10 a day. At $0.08 per kWh the electricity costs 3.5 × 24 × 0.08 = $6.72. That leaves $3.28 before the pool fee.
The break-even electricity price
More useful than the daily profit is the question of up to which electricity price a unit still runs at a profit at all. The hashrate cancels out here:
Break-even electricity price = hashprice ÷ (24 × efficiency)
Hashprice in $ per PH/s and day, efficiency in J/TH, result in $ per kWh. In the example: 50 ÷ (24 × 17.5) = $0.119 per kWh. An older unit with 30 J/TH only reaches $0.069 at the same hashprice.
This shows you why efficiency matters more than hashrate: it sets how far the hashprice may fall before you have to switch off.
Payback
Purchase price plus shipping and import charges, divided by the daily profit, gives the days until payback. This number only holds for today's hashprice. So run it again with a much lower value.
What changes all the time
- Difficulty rises when more computing power joins the network. Your share of the revenue then falls at the same price.
- Halving cuts the block subsidy in half about every four years.
- Price works in both directions and cannot be planned.
A calculation that only works out at today's hashprice is no basis for a purchase. It is sound when your electricity price is well below the break-even.
Sources
- Luxor: hashprice, definition and influencing factors
- Hashrate Index: weekly report of 28 September 2026, hashprice
- Bitcoin Developer Reference: halving of the block subsidy every 210,000 blocks
As of October 2026. The worked examples are not a promise of revenue and not investment advice.