Is a heat-pump tumble dryer worth it?

A heat-pump tumble dryer dries clothes in a drum, like a condenser dryer, but it passes the warm damp air over a heat exchanger and sends the heat back into the drum. The machine still uses electricity. It uses less of it than a dryer that heats a fresh stream of air and dumps the warmth outside or into a condenser that throws more of that heat away. That is the mechanism. It is not, by itself, a promise about one model’s label.

Whether the machine is “worth it” depends on a purchase price this site has not verified, and on how many loads you actually dry. This page separates those two things. It costs the electricity. It does not invent a payback month.

A cycle at the two rates

The homepage laundry comparison uses 1.4 kWh for a heat-pump cycle and 3.1 kWh for a condenser cycle.

• Heat pump, off-peak: 1.4 × 7.6p = 10.6p a cycle.
• Heat pump, cap rate: 1.4 × 26.32p = 36.8p a cycle.
• Condenser, off-peak: 3.1 × 7.6p = 23.6p a cycle.
• Condenser, cap rate: 3.1 × 26.32p = 81.6p a cycle.

On those assumptions, five cycles a week for 52 weeks is 364 cycles. The heat-pump total is 364 × 1.4 = 509.6 kWh. At 7.6p that is £38.73. At 26.32p it is £134.13. The condenser assumption is 364 × 3.1 = 1,128.4 kWh: £85.76 off-peak, or £297.00 at the cap. The gap between the two machines at the cap is about £163 a year on this illustration. At 7.6p the same gap shrinks to about £47, because both machines are cheap to run overnight and the standing charge is unchanged.

That is why an off-peak tariff changes the “is it worth buying” question. If almost every cycle already sits inside 23:30–05:30, the annual electricity gap is smaller, so a higher purchase price takes longer to cover. If you mostly dry at the cap rate, the same assumed gap is larger. This site is not quoting a shop price, so it stops there.

What Which? publishes

Which? costs the dryers it tracks at three cotton loads a week and the October 2026 cap of 26.32p/kWh. Its running-cost article gives a heat-pump average of £54.32 a year, a lowest of £33.49 and a highest of £93.73. Condenser and vented machines on Which?’s wider dryer guide sit higher: Which? describes vented dryers it has tested at around £140 a year and condenser dryers at around £139, against about £54 for the heat-pump models on that page. Those are Which?’s testing averages, and they are not an off-peak calculation.

Three loads a week is 156 cycles a year. £54.32 ÷ 156 is about 35p a cycle at 26.32p, which implies roughly 1.3 kWh if you reverse the arithmetic. That is close to this site’s 1.4 kWh assumption and is shown only so the two sources can be compared. It is not Which? stating a kilowatt-hour figure for every heat-pump dryer.

Timing the cycle

Intelligent Octopus Go gives the whole home 7.6p/kWh from 23:30 to 05:30. A dryer with a delay-start or “finish at” control can be set so the heating part of the cycle falls in that window. If the programme is longer than the time left before 05:30, some of the cycle will be at the day rate. Check the length on your own machine. A smart plug is a poor way to start a tumble dryer: many dryers draw more than a 13A plug is meant to switch, and cutting power mid-cycle is not how the appliance is designed to stop. Use the dryer’s own timer.

The standing charge does not fall because you bought a more efficient dryer. Ofgem’s 54.83p/day electricity standing charge is about £200 a year and sits on the bill either way. Compare unit costs, then decide if the unpriced difference in shop price is one you want to pay for fewer kilowatt-hours and for not having airers in the room.

Open the laundry tab on the calculator and move the loads slider. The bars use the 0.8 / 1.4 / 3.1 kWh assumptions above, at whatever day and off-peak rates you type in.

Sources

• Ofgem, price cap 1 October–31 December 2026
• Ofgem, unit rates and standing charges
• Octopus Energy, Intelligent Octopus Go
• Which?, tumble dryer running costs
• Which?, heat pump tumble dryers

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