Is home Bitcoin mining profitable in 2026?
For most homes, no. A miner earns a fixed amount per terahash that depends on the network, and pays for electricity at your household rate. At the difficulty and price on 2026-10-05, one terahash per second earns about 48 sats a day, roughly $0.041. That income only beats the power bill when electricity is cheap and the miner is efficient.
The average US home paid 18.31 cents per kWh in July 2026, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The EU household average was €0.2896 per kWh in the second half of 2025, according to Eurostat. At those prices, almost every miner below runs at a loss.
What electricity price does each miner need to break even?
| Miner | Income per year | Power per year at $0.15/kWh | Break-even electricity price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lucky Miner LV06 | $7 | $18 | $0.061 per kWh |
| Bitaxe Gamma | $18 | $24 | $0.113 per kWh |
| NerdQAxe++ | $71 | $100 | $0.107 per kWh |
| Avalon Nano 3S | $89 | $184 | $0.073 per kWh |
| Avalon Mini 3 | $559 | $1,052 | $0.080 per kWh |
| Antminer S9 (used) | $201 | $1,775 | $0.017 per kWh |
| Antminer S19 series (used) | $1,415 | $4,273 | $0.050 per kWh |
| Antminer S21 | $2,979 | $4,602 | $0.097 per kWh |
Income is the average a fair pool would pay after a 1% fee, at $86,431 per bitcoin. It does not include the price of the miner. Below the break-even price the miner covers its electricity; above it, every day costs money. The odds calculator shows the same income with live numbers.
How long does a miner take to pay for itself?
Even below the break-even price, the miner has to earn back what you paid for it. Take a Bitaxe Gamma bought for $150 and run on cheap $0.08 per kWh power. It earns about $17.87 a year and uses about $12.62 of electricity, leaving about $5.25 a year. At that rate, paying back $150 takes about 29 years, far longer than the device will stay competitive. A higher bitcoin price shortens that; rising difficulty lengthens it.
How do you work out your own numbers?
- Find your electricity price per kWh on your bill, including taxes and fixed fees spread over usage.
- Look up your miner's hashrate and power on its miner page.
- Multiply power in kW by 8,766 hours to get kWh per year, then by your price.
- Compare with the income in the odds calculator, which uses live difficulty and price.
Why do home miners struggle to make money?
- Electricity price. Large mining sites buy power on industrial contracts. The EIA's US industrial average for July 2026 was 9.77 cents per kWh, about half the residential price, and big miners often negotiate lower.
- Efficiency. Small miners are getting better: a Bitaxe Gamma runs at about 15 J/TH. Older machines like the Antminer S9 use about 100 J/TH and cannot compete.
- Difficulty keeps rising. When more hashrate joins the network, everyone's share of each block shrinks. Income per terahash falls unless the bitcoin price rises.
- The block subsidy halves. The reward dropped to 3.125 BTC in April 2024 and will halve again, to 1.5625 BTC, around 2028.
Does using the heat change the math?
Yes, in winter. A miner turns all its electricity into heat, exactly like an electric heater of the same wattage. If you already heat a room with electric resistance heaters, a miner replaces some of that heating, and its mining income is a discount on heat you were buying anyway. An Avalon Nano 3S at 140 W or an Avalon Mini 3 at 800 W are built for this.
The argument is weaker if you heat with a heat pump or gas, which deliver more heat per unit of cost than resistance heating. In summer, the heat is waste and may add to cooling costs.
What about solar power?
Solar electricity is not free: if you could sell it to the grid or use it in the house, that value is what a miner costs you. Mining makes the most sense with surplus solar that would otherwise be curtailed or exported for very little. A small miner like a Bitaxe Gamma at 15 to 20 W is easy to run from surplus during the day, but it earns very little in absolute terms.
Why do people mine at home anyway?
- Learning. Running a miner teaches how Bitcoin mining really works.
- Supporting decentralisation. Hashrate spread across many homes and smaller pools makes it harder for a few large pools to control which transactions get mined.
- Non-KYC sats. Mined bitcoin arrives at your address without an exchange account.
- The lottery. A small chance at a full block. See Can a Bitaxe find a block? for the real odds.
- Heat. Useful in winter, as above.
What does this mean on DirectPool?
DirectPool does not change the math: no pool can pay more than the work is worth on average. What it changes is how you are paid. Rewards go straight to your address inside each block the pool finds, with a 1% fee and a 7-day PPLNS window. DirectPool is small, so blocks are irregular, and balances under 10,000 sats wait for a later block. Read how PPLNS works and check the live payout list on the verify page.
Careful: do not run large miners on a household circuit without checking it. A circuit should carry no more than 80% of its rating for continuous loads: 12 A on a 15 A, 120 V circuit, about 1,440 W. Full-size ASICs need a dedicated circuit installed by an electrician.