On this page
  1. Four power numbers, and one of them costs money
  2. What there is to work with instead
  3. From watts to money
  4. The machines with no motor
  5. Walking pads, where the hours do the work
  6. The table, with what is behind each row
  7. Where this estimate breaks
  8. Scope of the electricity figures

The question is easy to ask and awkward to answer. What does a home gym add to an electricity bill?

The awkwardness is not in the arithmetic, which is one multiplication. It is that the quantity the arithmetic needs is not published by the people who build the equipment. Four different power figures attach to a treadmill. Three of them appear on the machine, its packaging or its manual, and none of those three is the one that costs money. This page separates them, runs the arithmetic on the one that does, and shows every input, because the tariff underneath will differ from yours and the result has to be rebuildable.

Four power numbers, and one of them costs money

Motor horsepower. A rating of the motor’s mechanical output. Sole publishes 3.0 HP for the F63. At 745.7 W to the horsepower, that describes roughly 2,240 W of mechanical output at the motor’s rated point, which is neither the electrical input nor anything the machine sustains while a person walks on it. It is also the number printed largest.

The circuit requirement. A statement of what the supply must be able to deliver. Horizon specifies 120 V at 60 Hz on a dedicated 15 to 20 A circuit, with a grounded outlet and no surge protector or extension cord in the path. Peloton specifies 120 V, 60 Hz and a dedicated 15 A circuit for the Tread and Tread+, and for the Bike a standard outlet with a maximum draw of 3.25 A and no dedicated circuit required. A 15 A circuit at 120 V can deliver 1,800 VA. That is a ceiling the wiring has to clear, not an amount of energy anybody buys.

Rated motor power in watts. Where it is published at all it is a rating rather than a consumption figure. Citysports gives the ZX3 walking pad a 550 W motor at a speed range of 1 to 6 km/h. WalkingPad gives the A1 Pro a 3.75 HP brushless motor, on a machine with a net weight of 28.5 kg; converted, that is about 2,800 W of mechanical output attributed to something carried under one arm and plugged into a domestic socket. Both are best read as category markers.

Actual draw while somebody is using it. This is the figure a bill responds to, and none of the manufacturers checked publishes it. Sole’s product page carries no wattage at all, and neither does Sole’s own assembly and setup guide. The company does publish a separate article quoting an industry average of 600 to 700 W, without attaching that figure to any machine it sells.

What there is to work with instead

Secondary estimation, and it should be labelled as such. EnergySage puts a home treadmill at 600 to 700 W and models three hours a week to arrive at 101.4 kWh a year. That is the estimate this page uses, and it comes from an energy marketplace rather than from a specification sheet.

I would treat it as adequate for the question actually being asked. What is at stake is whether to budget for electricity at all, and an estimate with a plausible range settles that as firmly as a measurement would. It is not adequate for sizing a circuit or a battery, and it is not offered for that.

From watts to money

Two steps.

Energy in kWh = watts x hours / 1,000. Cost = kWh x the rate you pay per kWh.

The rate is the term that decides the answer, and it is the term the pages on this topic leave undated. The US average residential price was 18.34 cents per kWh in June 2026, per the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly. The same table puts Nebraska at 13.25 cents and Hawaii at 52.72. A national average is a placeholder, and the spread across it is close to a factor of four.

Calculation

Twenty hours a month, an hour a day across twenty days, at the US average of 18.34 cents per kWh.

Walking, at an assumed 650 W: 0.65 kW x 20 h = 13 kWh; 13 x $0.1834 = about $2.38 a month

Running with incline, at an assumed 1,200 W: 1.2 kW x 20 h = 24 kWh; 24 x $0.1834 = about $4.40 a month

Both wattages are assumed inputs rather than manufacturer figures. The 650 W sits inside the 600 to 700 W secondary estimate above. The 1,200 W is a judgment about a hard session, bounded above by the 1,800 VA a 15 A circuit can deliver rather than by anything published.

That same walking hour costs about $1.72 a month at the Nebraska rate and about $6.85 at the Hawaii rate, on one machine and one schedule. Which gives the first usable conclusion: a monthly figure quoted without a country and a date is a figure that will not survive contact with a bill. The estimate cited above is itself an example, since it converts its annual kWh at 14.19 cents and so lands about 23 percent below what the current published average produces.

The machines with no motor

Most of a home gym has no electrical path to its resistance at all.

A magnetic bike or rower generates load through eddy currents induced in a spinning metal flywheel by permanent magnets, and the faster the flywheel turns the more it is opposed. An air bike or air rower does the same job with a fan, where the resistance is the air the fan has to move. Neither mechanism consumes mains electricity, because in both cases the energy resisting you is the energy you have just supplied. Free weights, kettlebells, bands, a suspension trainer and a pull-up bar have no mechanism at all.

What can draw power on these machines is the console, and on a basic unit that runs from a coin cell or a pair of AA batteries. From the wall, the figure is zero and stays zero. Where the money goes instead is covered in the fitness equipment worth buying first.

Studio bikes add one component that changes this, and only one: a screen.

Calculation

Peloton publishes a maximum of 3.25 A on a standard 120 V outlet for the Bike, which caps it near 390 VA, and states that the Bike needs no dedicated circuit. That is a maximum rating. A secondary estimate puts the screen’s typical draw near 50 W.

At 50 W over the same twenty hours: 0.05 kW x 20 h = 1 kWh; 1 x $0.1834 = about 18 cents a month

The distance between 390 VA and 50 W is the distance between what the outlet has to be able to supply and what the machine takes, which is the same distinction that makes a horsepower rating useless for this question.

Walking pads, where the hours do the work

Per hour, a walking pad is cheaper to run than a treadmill at running pace: the motor is smaller and the work is lighter. Per month that can reverse, because the two are typically used on very different schedules. Take a treadmill at thirty to forty-five minutes a few times a week against a pad running for most of a working day. Those patterns are the assumption doing the work in this section, and a reader whose habits differ should change them before changing anything else.

Calculation

A pad at an assumed 300 W, five hours a day, twenty days a month: 0.3 kW x 100 h = 30 kWh; 30 x $0.1834 = about $5.50 a month

The 300 W is an assumed input for a slow desk walk and sits below the 550 W the Citysports ZX3 publishes as its motor rating. The result exceeds the running treadmill above purely on hours: five times the usage at a quarter of the power.

So the per-hour comparison and the per-month comparison return opposite answers, and neither is wrong. Which applies is decided by a schedule rather than by a specification. The published dimensions and weights that decide whether either machine fits the room at all are in the dataset below.

Apartment-fit dataset: 31 models

Apartment-fit is a FitVilo composite of published folded size, footprint, top speed (as an impact proxy, not a noise measurement), and weight. It is not a test result. Specs compiled from published manufacturer pages, accessed June 2026.

Every row links its published source.

9 walking pads, 14 treadmills, 8 2-in-1 units. Tap a column heading to sort.

Source
WalkingPad (KingSmith) C2 Walking pad 13.6 144.5 x 51.8 - 6 100 100 folded height source
WalkingPad (KingSmith) A1 Pro Walking pad 12.7 143.2 x 54.6 - 6 136 100 folded height source
WalkingPad (KingSmith) P1 Walking pad 12.9 143.2 x 54.7 - 6 100 100 folded height source
WalkingPad (KingSmith) R2 Walking pad 16 145 x 71.9 - 12 110 66 top speed source
Urevo Foldi Mini Walking pad 13 121.9 x 59.9 22.6 10 120 90 top speed source
Urevo SpaceWalk 5L Walking pad - 124 x 51.6 23 6.4 181 99 top speed source
Urevo SpaceWalk 3S Walking pad - 131.1 x 56.1 25.7 6.4 120 99 top speed source
Urevo Strol U1 Walking pad - 148.6 x 55.1 24.9 6.4 120 98 top speed source
Egofit Walker Pro M1 Walking pad - 97.5 x 55.5 22 5 100 100 footprint source
Goplus 2-in-1 Folding Treadmill (2.25HP SuperFit) 2-in-1 12.7 124.5 x 68.6 31.5 12.9 120.2 80 top speed source
Urevo Strol 2E 2-in-1 2-in-1 11.7 121.9 x 57.4 21.4 10 120 90 top speed source
DeerRun A6 Plus 2-in-1 Folding Treadmill 2-in-1 13.2 135.3 x 55.3 28 12.1 136.1 85 top speed source
WalkingPad (KingSmith) X21 Double-Fold 2-in-1 22.5 141.9 x 71.1 37 12 110 59 top speed source
Citysports ZX3 2-in-1 Walking Pad 2-in-1 - 110.5 x 54.5 18.7 6 120 100 footprint source
Mobvoi Home Treadmill 2-in-1 11.2 123.5 x 68.5 34 12 120 82 top speed source
SupeRun CT06 Foldable 3-in-1 Treadmill 2-in-1 - - - 12.1 136.1 39 partial top speed source
Sperax 2-in-1 Folding Under Desk Treadmill 2-in-1 - - 23.4 10 127 78 partial top speed source
Sole F63 Treadmill 182.9 195.6 x 88.9 101.6 19.3 147.4 0 folded height source
Sole F65 Treadmill 182.9 209.6 x 96.5 121.1 19.3 147.4 0 folded height source
Sole F80 Treadmill 181.6 209.6 x 96.5 124.3 19.3 158.8 0 folded height source
Sole F85 Treadmill 181.6 209.6 x 96.5 133.4 19.3 170.1 0 folded height source
NordicTrack EXP 7i Treadmill - 179.8 x 88.6 - 16.1 136.1 0 partial footprint source
NordicTrack EXP 10i Treadmill - 179.8 x 88.6 - 16.1 136.1 0 partial footprint source
NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill - 196.3 x 94 - 19.3 181.4 0 partial footprint source
ProForm Carbon T7 Treadmill - 186.7 x 90.2 101.2 16.1 136.1 0 footprint source
ProForm Carbon Pro 9000 Treadmill - 185.9 x 87.9 113 19.3 158.8 0 footprint source
Horizon Fitness T101 Treadmill 154.9 179.1 x 85.1 81.6 16.1 136.1 3 folded height source
Horizon Fitness 7.0 AT Treadmill 172.7 193 x 88.9 125.6 19.3 147.4 0 folded height source
Echelon Stride-6 Treadmill - 163.2 x 81.3 82.7 20.1 136.1 12 top speed source
Xterra Fitness TR150 Treadmill 154.2 161 x 73 44 16 113 27 folded height source
Xterra Fitness TRX2500 Treadmill 157 183.5 x 90 94 16 136.1 0 folded height source

Electricity is the small half of the money question. The calculator for the large half, capital cost set against years of membership fees, is on the tools page.

The table, with what is behind each row

MachinePower figure usedWhere that figure comes fromHours modelledkWhAt 18.34 c/kWh
Treadmill, walking650 Wassumed, inside a 600-700 W secondary estimate2013about $2.38
Treadmill, running with incline1,200 Wassumed, bounded by a 1,800 VA circuit2024about $4.40
Walking pad, desk use300 Wassumed, below a published 550 W motor rating10030about $5.50
Studio bike, screen only50 Wsecondary estimate; the maker publishes only a 3.25 A maximum201about $0.18
Magnetic or air bike or rower0 Wno mains path to the resistanceany0$0
Dumbbells, kettlebells, bands0 Wno mechanismany0$0

Every entry in the third column is an assumption or a secondary estimate. None of them is a manufacturer’s consumption specification, because no manufacturer checked publishes one.

Where this estimate breaks

Four places, in descending order of how far they move the result.

The tariff. A factor of close to four across US states and wider across countries. Substituting a rate from a recent bill changes every figure above proportionally, and it is the single edit that makes this page apply to a particular household.

The load on the motor. Speed and incline together are the largest physical term, and the user’s weight sits inside the same term, since the motor is driving a belt under a mass. A flat walk and a steep run on one machine are not the same appliance.

Belt condition. A dry or worn belt raises friction and the motor compensates, which lifts the draw above the estimate by an amount nobody has published. That makes it a maintenance argument rather than a number.

Standby. A lit console draws a trickle continuously, and continuously covers far more hours than any session does. A switched power strip removes it.

None of these can be resolved into a figure for a specific machine. The position this page takes is that the arithmetic is sound, the inputs are estimates, and the output is an order of magnitude rather than a bill.

Scope of the electricity figures

It claims that the arithmetic is correct and that every input is on the page. It claims that at the US average rate and the schedules modelled here, the whole gym lands in single-digit dollars a month, and that the resistance equipment lands at zero at any rate at all. At the highest US state rate the two heaviest cases, a daily incline run and a full working day on a pad, rise into the low-to-mid teens rather than staying under ten.

It does not claim that any wattage here came from a manufacturer, because none did. It does not claim to predict a bill.

And it does not claim that electricity belongs in the purchase decision, because the figures above are the argument that it does not. The choice between a bike and a treadmill, or between a walking pad and a treadmill, turns on impact into the floor, footprint, storage and what will actually get used. The money question that does repay the arithmetic is capital cost set against years of membership fees, and that one is worked through in home gym versus gym membership.

Sources