Keep Above
Slow cooker or oven
A slow cooker draws little for many hours; an oven draws a lot for fewer. Which of those adds up to more depends entirely on the numbers, which is what this page does: each side's rated watts and minutes per cook, at your own price per kWh, landing on a cost per use, per week and per year. No winner is declared.
On the rating plate or label
On the rating plate or label
Put in your price per kWh from your power bill, then each side's rated power and how long one use runs. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Option A | Option B | |
|---|---|---|
| Rated power | — | — |
| Energy one use takes | — | — |
| Cost of one use | — | — |
| Cost a week | — | — |
| Energy a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
How do I enter an eight-hour cook?
The minutes field runs to 600 — ten hours — so an all-day cook is entered as its real length, 480 minutes for eight hours. The comparison stays honest exactly because the long low-watt session and the short high-watt one are both entered as what they actually are.
Why is the rated power a ceiling, not an average?
A rating plate states the most an appliance draws, not what it averages. Anything with a thermostat — an oven, a heater, an iron — cycles on and off, so its real draw over a session can sit well under the rating. The figures here are what each side would cost at full rated power for the whole time: the honest upper end, not a meter reading.
Where do I find the wattage and the kWh price?
The wattage is on the appliance's rating plate or sticker — usually near the plug, the door frame or the base — as watts (W) or kilowatts (kW; 1 kW is 1 000 W). Manuals and product pages list it too. The price per kWh is on your own electricity bill, and this page never assumes one for you.
Why do both sides share one uses-a-week figure?
Because the two sides are two ways of doing the same job, so the job happens the same number of times either way. What can differ is how long one session runs — that is why each side has its own minutes.