Is a gas dryer actually cheaper to run than an electric one?

Gas and electricity are not sold in the same unit

By RealCostTools. Sources checked September 20, 2026. For households in the United States. All amounts are U.S. dollars, electricity rates are in cents per kilowatt-hour, and natural gas prices are in dollars per thousand cubic feet unless stated otherwise.

Your electricity bill prices energy per kilowatt-hour. Your gas bill prices it per therm or per hundred cubic feet, and the national series per thousand cubic feet. None of those can be set against another until it is converted, and neither machine converts them for you.

Put on one scale — dollars per million British thermal units — the gap is large: electricity costs about 3.63 times as much per unit of energy as natural gas. The ratio cannot finish the calculation, though, because the figure it multiplies — the energy each dryer consumes for a load — is published for neither machine.

So this guide ends in a threshold rather than a winner: on the fictional figures below, the 0.2663 therms per load a gas dryer must stay under to beat a specific electric dryer at a specific rate. It moves further when the electric machine changes than when the fuel price does.

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What to collect before you can answer this

Five come off documents you already have. The sixth is an installation quote, which can be the largest single number in the comparison.

• Your electricity rate in cents per kilowatt-hour, from your own bill rather than a national average.
• Your gas rate from your own bill, in the unit it is printed in: therms, hundred cubic feet (ccf) or thousand cubic feet (Mcf).
• Whether a gas line already reaches the laundry space, and whether it is capped or would have to be run.
• Whether a vent already reaches an exterior wall. A gas dryer needs one; a heat pump dryer does not.
• A written quote for the work your preferred machine would need: gas line, vent, circuit or drain.
• How many loads a week you actually dry, counted across a normal month.

The comparison is not printed on either machine

The yellow EnergyGuide label is the obvious place to look. On a refrigerator or a dishwasher it answers the question outright, printing an estimated yearly operating cost — an estimate, FTC says, based on typical use and a national average energy price rather than on what you will actually pay. Clothes dryers do not carry one at all.

The Federal Trade Commission publishes the list of products its Energy Labeling Rule covers: boilers, ceiling fans, central air conditioners, clothes washers, dishwashers, freezers, furnaces, heat pumps, pool heaters, refrigerators, televisions, water heaters, and room and portable air conditioners. Clothes washers are on it; the dryer sold beside them is not. FTC's separate guidance for manufacturers shows the same omission, setting an annual reporting deadline for clothes washers and none for dryers.

What does exist is the Combined Energy Factor, an efficiency ratio ENERGY STAR publishes for certified dryers. It is not a cost, and the table says why it cannot become one.

Both ratios are measured against a 8.45-pound test load on a cycle of at most 80 minutes, which is not your laundry: a heavier or wetter load uses more.

ENERGY STAR states the ratio as the test load divided by machine energy use across operating and standby cycles. How the Department of Energy test procedure folds a gas dryer's gas consumption into that denominator could not be checked here: the eCFR copy is behind a bot check this site does not complete. No therm figure below derives from the gas ratio.

Reference: FTC: How To Use the EnergyGuide Label To Shop for Home Appliances · FTC: EnergyGuide Labeling FAQs for Appliance Manufacturers · ENERGY STAR: Clothes Dryers Key Product Criteria · ENERGY STAR: Clothes Dryers

Put both fuels on one scale: dollars per million Btu

A kilowatt-hour and a cubic foot of gas are both quantities of energy, and EIA publishes the conversion for each. One kilowatt-hour is 3,412 British thermal units, a standard factor. One cubic foot of natural gas carried 1,036 Btu on the U.S. average for gas delivered to consumers, which EIA marks as a 2026 estimate rather than a measurement of your supply. A therm is 100,000 Btu by definition. Those three facts turn two incomparable bills into one number each.

Per therm the gas figure is $15.34 ÷ 10.36 = $1.4807. Per million Btu, electricity costs $53.75 ÷ $14.81 = 3.63 times as much as gas.

The two rows cover different periods, deliberately. EIA's monthly residential gas price ran from $13.96 per thousand cubic feet in January 2026 to $24.09 in June 2026, because the same fixed charges are divided by a much smaller summer volume. A dryer runs all year, so the annual figure is the honest one; the electricity figure is EIA's most recent month.

Both average every residential customer in the country, fixed charges included. Neither is the marginal price of one more unit, which is what a dryer actually moves.

Reference: EIA: Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A · EIA: Natural Gas Prices, annual · EIA: Natural Gas Prices, monthly · EIA: Energy conversion calculators

Worked example: $0.3943 of electricity a load, and a 0.2663-therm ceiling for gas

Every input is fictional except the two fuel prices and the certification figures, which are cited below. This is not a typical household's laundry, not a measurement of any dryer, and not a national average of anything.

Assume an electric dryer sitting exactly on ENERGY STAR's standard-size line: 8.45 pounds ÷ 3.93 pounds per kilowatt-hour = 2.1501 kWh for one test load. Assume 4 loads a week — a fictional habit, not a measured one — which is 208 loads a year, priced at the U.S. residential average of 18.34¢ per kilowatt-hour.

Excluded: the purchase price of either machine, installation, the washer, water, detergent, maintenance, repairs, any difference in how long the machines last, and the standby draw of a gas dryer's electronics. These are one year's dollars repeated and undiscounted: future amounts are added at their stated value without adjusting for the time value of money.

The last row is the entire gas side of this guide, and it is a division rather than a claim: $0.3943 ÷ $1.4807 = 0.2663 therms. Below it gas costs less per load; above it, more.

Read another way, the electric dryer used 2.1501 kWh, or 7,336 Btu; the gas machine may burn 3.63 times as much energy and still break even. Whether a real one stays under that ceiling is not calculated here — measure it from your own gas meter across a counted number of loads.

Reference: EIA: Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A · EIA: Natural Gas Prices, annual · EIA: Energy conversion calculators · ENERGY STAR: Clothes Dryers Key Product Criteria

Changing the electric machine moves the threshold further than the fuel price does

Everything above set a gas dryer against a conventional electric one. There is a third machine in the shop, and it is also electric.

ENERGY STAR says heat pump dryers use around 70 percent less energy than a conventional clothes dryer: they move heat rather than generating it, recovering it from the air in a closed loop instead of pushing it out through a vent. Applying that reduction to the worked example's dryer gives the comparison below. ENERGY STAR defines no particular efficiency figure as conventional, so that application is this guide's arithmetic, not theirs.

The calculator puts the distance between the two electric machines at $57.41 a year, $4.78 a month, or 70% of the electricity cost.

The threshold falls from 0.2663 therms a load to 0.0799 — choosing the heat pump makes the gas dryer's job 3.33 times harder, with no gas line, no permit and no burner.

It does need a drain or a tank to empty, and it costs more to buy, which appears in no figure here.

Reference: ENERGY STAR: Clothes Dryers

What your own electricity rate does to the threshold

The prices above are national averages, and residential electricity rates are nowhere near uniform. The table holds the gas price at the national annual figure and changes only the rate, so one variable does all the work.

These rows are not a comparison of states. The rate values are real — EIA's June 2026 residential averages for Washington, the United States, Massachusetts, California and Hawaii — but state gas prices differ too. Washington's was $17.62 per thousand cubic feet in 2025 against $15.34 nationally, so a Washington comparison needs both columns changed.

Across that span the threshold moves from 0.2165 therms a load to 0.7656, a factor of 3.54. Swapping in a heat pump at the national rate moved it by 3.33. The machine is worth nearly as much as the whole range of American residential electricity prices.

What the rate never changes is which fuel is cheaper per unit of energy: that ratio is fixed by the two prices. What it changes is how much room a gas dryer has to waste energy and still come out ahead.

Reference: EIA: Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A · EIA: Natural Gas Prices, annual

Gas dryer installation and the other one-time costs this does not calculate

Running cost is the computable part. Installation decides most of these choices and appears in no figure above. A gas dryer needs a gas line and a vent; a conventional electric dryer a dedicated circuit and a vent; a heat pump dryer a circuit and a drain. Which of those your building already has is the largest term in the comparison, and it belongs to your address rather than to the fuel.

Get the work quoted in writing, then divide. On the figures above the heat pump saves $57.41 a year, so every $100 of extra upfront cost takes about 1.7 years to return. Do that division with your own quote. Simple payback omits financing, repairs, a moving fuel price and the timing of the money, and it is the wrong instrument entirely if the machine you have still works.

Three things sit outside it. The calculator prices no gas: it takes watts or annual kilowatt-hours and a rate in cents per kilowatt-hour, with no therm or ccf input. No real dryer's consumption is stated, because the electric figure here is a certification threshold rather than a measurement — what a certified dryer is actually listed as using, and what that becomes at your own load count, is the companion guide below. And nothing here settles venting rules, gas fitting, permits or carbon monoxide safety, which belong to a licensed installer and your local code.

How much electricity a clothes dryer actually uses, and at how many loads ↗

How to compare complete prices and use payback carefully ↗

Turn an appliance's annual kWh into your own electricity cost ↗

How far residential electricity rates move between states ↗

Run your own dryer through it

Enter your own rate from your bill, then your dryer's annual kilowatt-hours if you have them, or watts and hours if you do not. The alternative-consumption field sets a second machine against the first, which is how the two electric rows were produced.

Then divide the per-load cost it gives you by your own gas rate per therm, and you have your own threshold instead of this guide's 0.2663. If a gas dryer would have to run cleaner than that to win, the fuel is not the thing to change.

Price my dryer's electricity ↗

Sources and calculation notes

• EIA: Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A

  Used for the U.S. residential average of 18.34¢ per kilowatt-hour in June 2026 and the five rate values in the sensitivity table, which EIA marks as preliminary estimates from a cutoff model sample. The commercial, industrial, transportation and all-sector columns are not used. Checked September 20, 2026.

• EIA: Natural Gas Prices, annual

  Used for the U.S. residential price of $15.34 per thousand cubic feet in 2025 and Washington's $17.62. It averages residential customers including the fixed charges on their bills, so it is not a marginal rate. No other state's figure and no other series are used. Checked September 20, 2026.

• EIA: Natural Gas Prices, monthly

  Used only for the seasonal swing in the residential series, $13.96 per thousand cubic feet in January 2026 against $24.09 in June 2026, which is why the annual figure prices the comparison. No monthly value enters any calculation. Checked September 20, 2026.

• EIA: Energy conversion calculators

  Used for three conversions: a kilowatt-hour is 3,412 Btu as a standard factor, a cubic foot of natural gas is 1,036 Btu on EIA's 2026 estimate for gas delivered to U.S. consumers, and a therm is 100,000 Btu. The cubic-foot figure is a national average, not the heat content of any particular supply. Checked September 20, 2026.

• FTC: How To Use the EnergyGuide Label To Shop for Home Appliances

  Used for the list of products that carry EnergyGuide labels, on which clothes dryers do not appear, and for FTC's statement that the label's operating cost is an estimate based on typical use and a national average energy price rather than what you will pay. The page carries an August 2022 date. Checked September 20, 2026.

• FTC: EnergyGuide Labeling FAQs for Appliance Manufacturers

  Used only to corroborate that omission from the rule-facing side: the covered-product list and the annual reporting deadlines both include clothes washers and neither mentions dryers. The page carries a May 2013 date, so it is a second reading rather than current rule text; 16 CFR Part 305 was not read. Checked September 20, 2026.

• ENERGY STAR: Clothes Dryers Key Product Criteria

  Used for the Combined Energy Factor thresholds of 3.48 lbs/kWh for vented gas and 3.93 for standard electric, the 8.45-pound test load, the 80-minute maximum cycle and the ratio's definition. Only the electric threshold is converted into kilowatt-hours; the gas threshold is reported and deliberately not converted. The compact thresholds are not used. Checked September 20, 2026.

• ENERGY STAR: Clothes Dryers

  Used for the statement that heat pump dryers use around 70 percent less energy than a conventional clothes dryer, for the closed-loop description, and for the venting and drainage consequences. ENERGY STAR defines no particular efficiency figure as conventional, so applying the reduction to the threshold dryer is this guide's arithmetic. The lifetime savings figure and the model finder are not used. Checked September 20, 2026.

Read the appliance electricity cost methodology for the model assumptions and excluded costs.

Published September 23, 2026. Sources checked September 20, 2026. Editorial policy · Corrections