Cost to run a freezer (chest or upright)

A freezer cycles like a refrigerator but holds a much larger temperature difference against the room, so its compressor typically runs a slightly larger share of the time. Chest freezers hold cold air when opened and generally cycle less than upright models. A full freezer also cycles less than an empty one, because the frozen mass itself stores cold.

Use the duty cycle field to reflect your freezer's location: a garage freezer in a hot summer cycles far more than one in a cool basement. Chest models sit at the lower end of the range, frost-free uprights at the higher end because the defrost heater adds periodic load.

There is no single freezer wattage. While the compressor runs, a household freezer typically draws somewhere around 60–250 W, but it only runs part of the time. Chest freezers keep cold air in when the lid opens and are usually manual-defrost, so they tend to use less energy than upright models of similar size. Frost-free uprights add a defrost heater that runs periodically. The yellow EnergyGuide label gives the model's estimated yearly kWh, which already includes cycling.

A freezer's duty cycle tracks the temperature of the room it stands in. Moving the same unit from a garage that hits 30°C in summer to a basement at 15°C can drop the compressor's running share from around 40% to around 28%.

Ranked by annual running cost at each appliance's default usage pattern, this freezer is number 9 of 16 in the SnapEnergyLab catalogue — $75.74 per year at $0.180/kWh. The appliances either side of it: