Kitchen

Kitchen running costs, per meal and per cup

A kitchen is where the small repeated costs live. Nothing in here is expensive on its own, which is exactly why it goes unexamined. A kettle boiled four times a day costs more across a year than the kettle did. The point of these pages is not to tell you to stop making tea. It is to show which of these numbers are large enough to act on and which are rounding errors dressed up as advice.

Read

• Air fryer running cost vs oven, per meal22 August 2026We cost an air fryer against an electric fan oven per meal at the August 2026 UK price cap, and find the batch count where the oven wins.
• Cost per cup: pods, beans, instant and the shop22 August 2026What a cup of coffee costs at home in the UK: capsules, bean to cup, cafetiere and instant, against the price of buying one out.
• Cost per litre: tap, filter jug and bottled water22 August 2026What a litre of drinking water costs in the UK from the tap, through a filter jug, and out of a bottle. The gap is larger than almost anyone guesses.
• Cost per portion: meal kits, shopping and takeaway22 August 2026What a portion of dinner costs in the UK from a meal kit, a supermarket shop, a batch cook and a takeaway, with the cooking energy included.

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Everything we have priced in this room

Open the calculator to put your own tariff, your own purchase price and your own usage against any row above.

Worked through

The cheapest and the dearest of the things here that are measured in the same unit, with every term of the sum shown, so you can see which part of the number is the part that actually matters.

Coffee, instant, 10p per cup

Coffee, bought out, £3.60 per cup

Related

The same sum, applied in laundry, heating and damp and home office. Or open the calculator and put your own numbers through it.

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