Bitcoin mining profitability is the first question every would-be miner asks: can I make money doing this? It depends on four things: your electricity price, how efficient your machine is, bitcoin’s price, and the network’s mining difficulty. With the right combination mining pays; with the wrong one you spend more on electricity than you earn. This lesson shows you how to run the numbers yourself, with figures you can look up in a minute.
Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable?
For some miners yes, for others no, at the same moment, because each pays a different price for electricity and runs different machines. In November 2026, operations paying a few cents per kWh with the newest machines still earn a margin, while an older machine on household electricity loses money every day. The April 2024 halving left little room for error, and bitcoin’s falling price in 2026 left less.
Today’s Numbers, and Where to Find Them
Every calculation below uses these figures from 6 November 2026, and the other lessons in this course use the same ones. They change daily, so look up fresh ones before you decide anything.
| Number | 6 November 2026 | Where to check it |
|---|---|---|
| Network hashrate | about 1,035 EH/s (just over 1 zettahash per second) | mempool.space hashrate chart |
| Difficulty | about 148 trillion | same chart; the next adjustment is shown on mempool.space’s home page |
| Bitcoin price | about $76,000 | any price page |
| Fees as a share of miner revenue | about 0.63% (last 1,008 blocks) | mempool.space mining dashboard |
| Hashprice | about $33 per PH/s per day ($0.033 per TH/s per day) | calculated below; Hashrate Index publishes it daily, in dollars per PH/s per day |
| Block subsidy | 3.125 BTC per block since April 2024; the next halving, at block 1,050,000, is expected around early-to-mid 2028 | the countdown on mempool.space |
| Bitcoins mined so far | about 20.1 million of the 21 million, after more than 970,000 blocks | the block height on mempool.space; until the next halving, coins mined are about 19,687,500 + 3.125 × (height − 840,000), following the schedule in the halving lesson |
The Mining Profitability Equation
Start with a picture. One Antminer S21 does 200 TH/s; the whole network does about 1,035,000,000 TH/s. So one S21 is about 1 in 5 million of all the guessing on the network, and on average it wins about 1 in 5 million of the rewards.
The network pays out about 450 BTC a day in new coins (144 blocks × 3.125 BTC; 144 because one block every 10 minutes means 6 an hour, 24 hours a day), plus fees, which are currently under 1% on top. So:
Daily revenue = (your hashrate ÷ network hashrate) × (450 BTC + fees) × BTC price × (1 − pool fee)
Daily profit = daily revenue − electricity − the machine’s cost spread over its life − other costs
“The machine’s cost spread over its life” is called amortization: if a machine will earn for two years, each day carries 1/730 of its price.
Hashprice: the shortcut miners use
Everything in the first part of that formula except your own hashrate is the same for every miner. Miners therefore combine it into one number, hashprice: what one unit of hashing power earns per day.
Hashprice = (450 BTC + fees) ÷ network hashrate × BTC price
On 6 November 2026: about 452.9 BTC a day ÷ 1,035,000,000 TH/s × $76,000 ≈ $0.033 per TH/s per day, or $33 per PH/s per day. Multiply by your hashrate and you have your gross daily revenue. Because almost all of the 452.9 BTC is subsidy, hashprice also falls by about half on the day of each halving, and stays there until bitcoin’s price rises or hashrate falls enough to make up for it.
One refinement: 144 blocks a day is the target, not a guarantee. Between difficulty adjustments, blocks come faster when hashrate has risen and slower when it has fallen, so strictly you divide by the hashrate the current difficulty is set for: difficulty × 232 ÷ 600 seconds, about 1,062,000,000 TH/s on 6 November 2026. Hashrate Index also computes hashprice from difficulty; on these numbers it comes to about $0.032, a few percent below the $0.033 this lesson uses, which changes none of its conclusions. When you redo the sum, convert the difficulty this way rather than taking the latest hashrate estimate, which can swing by 10% or more from one day to the next.
Worked example: one S21 in November 2026
An Antminer S21: 200 TH/s, 3,500 W, electricity at $0.05/kWh, a pool fee of 2.5%.
- Gross revenue: 200 × $0.033 ≈ $6.65 a day (about 0.0000875 BTC, or 8,750 satoshis)
- After the pool fee: ≈ $6.49 a day
- Electricity: 3.5 kW × 24 hours × $0.05 = $4.20 a day
- Profit before the machine’s cost: ≈ $2.29 a day, about $70 a month
If nothing changed, every $1,000 you paid for the machine would take about 15 months to earn back. Things do change, as the difficulty section shows.
Your break-even electricity price
Turn the question around: at what electricity price does a machine just cover its power? A machine’s J/TH rating tells you its energy use per TH/s: at 17.5 J/TH, each TH/s draws 17.5 watts, which is 17.5 × 24 ÷ 1,000 = 0.42 kWh a day. So:
Break-even electricity price = hashprice ÷ (J/TH × 24 ÷ 1,000)
For the S21: $0.033 ÷ 0.42 ≈ $0.08 per kWh. For the S21 XP (13.5 J/TH) it is about $0.10; for the air-cooled S23 (11 J/TH), about $0.13; for the S23 Hydro (9.5 J/TH), about $0.15. Above those prices the machine loses money even if it was free.
Key Factors Affecting Bitcoin Mining Profitability
Electricity Cost: The #1 Factor
A miner runs 24 hours a day, so electricity is the largest running cost. Here is one S21 (3,500 W, about 2,520 kWh a month) against its revenue of about $195 a month after pool fees, at November 2026 numbers:
| Electricity Rate ($/kWh) | Monthly Electricity Cost | Monthly Result Before Hardware Cost |
|---|---|---|
| $0.02 | ~$50 | about +$145 |
| $0.04 | ~$100 | about +$95 |
| $0.06 | ~$150 | about +$45 |
| $0.08 | ~$200 | about break-even |
| $0.10 | ~$250 | about −$55 |
| $0.12 | ~$300 | about −$105 |
| $0.18 (near the 2026 US home average) | ~$455 | about −$260 |
That is why large miners chase cheap power: parts of Texas, Paraguay’s hydropower, Nordic hydro (and geothermal in Iceland), and stranded gas. Household electricity, typically well above $0.10/kWh, rarely works.
Hardware Efficiency (J/TH)
Efficiency is measured in joules per terahash (J/TH): the energy needed for a trillion guesses. Lower is better. The history of Bitmain’s flagship machines shows how fast it has fallen:
- 2016–2017 (Antminer S9): about 98 J/TH
- 2020 (Antminer S19): about 30–34 J/TH
- 2022 (Antminer S19 XP): about 21.5 J/TH
- 2024 (Antminer S21): 17.5 J/TH; S21 XP: 13.5 J/TH
- 2026 (Antminer S23): 11 J/TH air-cooled; 9.5 J/TH for the S23 Hydro; 8.9 J/TH for the S23 XP Hydro, sold for delivery from November 2026
By the break-even formula, an S9 today needs electricity under about 1.5 cents per kWh just to cover its power. That is why miners keep replacing hardware; the ASIC lesson compares current machines.
Mining Difficulty
Difficulty, which adjusts every 2,016 blocks to keep blocks about 10 minutes apart (explained in the mining lesson), decides how many machines you share the rewards with. When more hashrate joins, your machine earns fewer bitcoin each day, even though it hasn’t slowed down.
Over Bitcoin’s history difficulty has trended steeply upward, with drops after China’s 2021 ban and after some halvings and price crashes. The past year was different: from November 2025 to late October 2026, difficulty was roughly flat (about 3% lower), as bitcoin’s price fell from its October 2025 high. Nobody knows which way it goes next, so model several cases.
A worked scenario. Take the S21 example above ($0.05/kWh, $2.29 a day today) and suppose difficulty rises 3% a month for two years while bitcoin’s price stays the same:
- After 12 months, revenue is about 70% of today’s; after 24 months, about half from difficulty alone, and about a quarter once the 2028 halving is counted.
- After about 15 months, revenue no longer covers the electricity, so you would switch the machine off.
- Total profit over the two years: about $500, before the cost of the machine.
If difficulty instead stayed flat, the machine would make about $1,200: $2.29 a day until the halving expected in spring 2028, about 17 months in, which halves its revenue to below the electricity cost. A machine that cost more than that loses money in both cases unless bitcoin’s price rises. This is what “model several scenarios” means in practice.
Bitcoin Price
A higher price means more revenue, but it also makes more machines worth running, so hashrate and difficulty follow and your share shrinks. Over time this pushes the typical miner toward break-even: the most efficient earn a margin, the least efficient hover around zero.
Transaction Fees
Fees are part of revenue, but today a very small part: about 0.63% of what miners earned in the last 1,008 blocks before 6 November 2026. They can spike briefly when many people want block space at once. Don’t build a business plan on fee spikes. Why the fee share matters for Bitcoin’s long-term security is the subject of the lesson on transaction fees and Bitcoin’s security budget.
Mining Profitability Calculators
Free tools that run this calculation with live data:
- Hashrate Index: publishes hashprice daily and has a profitability calculator
- Braiins Insights: profitability calculator from a mining pool and firmware company
- ASIC Miner Value: ranks specific machines by estimated daily profit
- WhatToMine: long-running calculator with live difficulty and price data
Enter your machine’s rated TH/s and watts, your all-in electricity price per kWh (including delivery charges) and your pool fee. Calculators show a snapshot of today; they don’t predict difficulty or price, so use them with the scenario method above.
Home Mining: Is It Worth It?
An honest assessment:
Pros of Home Mining
- Bitcoin with less paperwork: mined coins don’t come from an exchange, so they aren’t tied to your identity by an exchange’s records. That benefit has limits: some pools and many hardware sellers ask for identity, and pool payouts are visible on the blockchain, so receive them carefully (see mining as a way to acquire non-KYC bitcoin and managing mined coins privately).
- Heat your home: a 3,500 W miner gives off as much heat as a large space heater. If you would otherwise heat that space with an electric heater, the miner’s heat offsets part of its electricity cost. A heat pump heats more cheaply still; the home mining lesson runs the numbers.
- Learn by doing: running a miner teaches proof of work, networking and hardware in a way reading can’t.
- Support decentralization: independent miners spread hashrate across more people and places, especially if they choose pools that let them build their own block templates and so pick their own transactions.
Cons of Home Mining
- Noise: full-size air-cooled machines run at around 75 dB, about as loud as a vacuum cleaner, around the clock. That rules out apartments and most living spaces.
- Electricity price: the US residential average is forecast at about 18 cents per kWh for 2026, and EU households paid on average about €0.28 per kWh in the first half of 2026. Both are well above an S21’s break-even price of about $0.08.
- Summer heat: the heat that helps in winter must be vented or the machine switched off in summer, which hurts the economics.
- Upfront cost: a current full-size machine costs thousands of dollars, plus a 240 V circuit if you don’t have one.
- Falling output: if difficulty rises, the machine earns less each month, and newer models make it obsolete within a few years.
Home mining makes the most sense in a cold climate, with cheap electricity, where you use the heat. Treat it as a hobby that earns some bitcoin, not as a business. The lesson on home mining, solo lotteries and mining scams covers the practical side, including small home units and the offers to avoid.
Industrial Mining Operations
Large operations win on cost:
Scale and Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
Buying thousands of machines brings lower prices and early access to new models.
A PPA is a long-term contract to buy electricity at a fixed price, often a few cents per kWh for large miners. Some sit right next to power plants and use curtailed energy: power from wind, solar, hydro or gas plants that the grid can’t take at that moment and that would otherwise be wasted.
Location Advantages
- Texas: a deregulated market and demand-response programs, which pay large users such as miners to switch off when the grid is stressed
- Nordic countries: cheap hydro (and geothermal in Iceland), and cold air for cooling
- Paraguay: very cheap hydroelectric power
- Argentina: gas from oil fields that would otherwise be flared or left unused
- Middle East: gas that would otherwise be flared, and low energy costs
- Ethiopia: grew quickly on cheap hydro, but in August 2025 its state utility stopped signing new power deals with miners
Operational Efficiency
Large operations have staff for maintenance and firmware tuning, often use immersion cooling (machines submerged in non-conductive oil) to run harder and longer, and adjust each machine’s power to the electricity price hour by hour. They can stay profitable after a price drop or halving that forces home miners and older fleets to switch off, an event called miner capitulation.
Key Takeaways
- Mining profitability depends on four variables: electricity price, hardware efficiency, bitcoin’s price and mining difficulty.
- Hashprice sums up the last two: about $33 per PH/s per day on 6 November 2026.
- Break-even electricity price = hashprice ÷ (J/TH × 24 ÷ 1,000). For an S21 that was about $0.08/kWh, before the machine’s cost.
- Fees were under 1% of miner revenue in late 2026; nearly all income comes from the subsidy, which halves again around 2028.
- Difficulty was roughly flat over the past year but has risen steeply over Bitcoin’s history. Model flat and rising cases before buying.
- Home mining can make sense with cheap power and a use for the heat; treat it as a hobby, not a business.
Frequently Asked Questions About Bitcoin Mining Profitability
How much does it cost to mine one bitcoin?
At November 2026 difficulty, an S21 needs about 960,000 kWh of electricity to mine one bitcoin (it earns about 0.0000875 BTC a day while using 84 kWh). At $0.04/kWh that is about $38,000 of electricity; with an S21 XP, about $30,000. At $0.12/kWh, an S21 spends about $115,000 of electricity per bitcoin, far more than a bitcoin was worth. These figures leave out hardware, cooling and maintenance, and they move with difficulty.
What’s the cheapest way to start mining bitcoin?
Mining is not a cheap way to get bitcoin. The lowest entry is a single machine connected to a mining pool: a small home unit that runs from an ordinary household outlet, or a full-size ASIC on its own dedicated circuit (240 V in North America), plus ventilation and an internet connection. Before buying, work out your break-even electricity price. If your power costs more than that, the machine will not pay for itself at today’s hashprice; only a higher bitcoin price or a lower difficulty would change that. Avoid “cloud mining” contracts and mining apps that promise a return; the mining scams lesson explains why.
Does mining difficulty ever go down?
Yes. It fell about 28% after China’s 2021 ban, has dipped after some halvings and price crashes, and drifted slightly lower over the year to October 2026. Over Bitcoin’s history, though, the trend has been strongly upward, and so far every multi-year period has ended with higher difficulty than it started.
Is it better to mine bitcoin or just buy it?
For most people, buying is simpler and costs less per bitcoin. Mining makes financial sense only with very cheap electricity, a willingness to manage hardware, and a plan for the heat. It does give coins that don’t come from an exchange, and some people value that. If you buy, dollar cost averaging is a simple, systematic way to do it.
How long does a mining ASIC last before it becomes obsolete?
The hardware can run for five years or more with good maintenance. Economically, most machines stop paying for their electricity within about two to five years, depending on the electricity price, as newer machines arrive and difficulty rises. Some miners stretch the life of old machines by moving them to the cheapest power they can find.
Check Your Understanding
1. Hashprice falls from $0.033 to $0.025 per TH/s per day. What happens to the S21’s break-even electricity price?
Answer
It falls from about $0.08 to about $0.06 per kWh: $0.025 ÷ 0.42 kWh ≈ $0.060. Anyone paying between 6 and 8 cents per kWh goes from roughly breaking even to losing money on electricity alone.
2. Why does a miner who changes nothing earn less bitcoin when other people add machines?
Answer
Rewards are shared in proportion to hashing power. When total hashrate rises, difficulty rises at the next adjustment and each machine’s share of the roughly 450 BTC issued per day shrinks. The machine is just as fast; it is competing against more guessing.
3. A seller says his machine will “pay for itself in 15 months.” What two assumptions should you check?
Answer
That difficulty stays flat and that bitcoin’s price stays the same (or rises). If difficulty rises 3% a month, revenue falls to about 70% after a year and half after two, and the payback may never come. Also check the electricity price and pool fee he used, and the halving around 2028, which cuts the subsidy in half.