Shower Cost Calculator

Who doesn't love taking long, hot showers? Hardly anyone, we'd guess. However, despite being a fantastic way to relax after (or ahead of) a long day, taking a long shower also means using up a huge amount of water and energy (to heat it up). We're not going to explore the environmental effects here, but they're certainly not very positive either.

According to statistics, showers are the third largest use of water in a household, after toilets and washing machines (and the latter sometimes get overtaken by showers, too). We believe the first step to limiting our water consumption is awareness, and this is exactly what this tool was designed to spread. We based the calculations on the most popular electricity-powered water heaters and ran the equations around our office. Most people were surprised by how much money they could be wasting this way. Will they limit their shower time or choose to shower less frequently? We should hope so.

Now, back to you. To give you the most accurate estimation, we will need several pieces of information from you. First of all, we need to know how many people live in your household, how many showers they take on average, and what's the average duration of each. Based on your location, we'll try to grab the latest prices of water and energy in your area and will use them to calculate the costs. The last thing to consider is the shower flow rate, or the amount of water that's pushed through your shower head every minute. We set a default value already but feel free to edit it depending on your shower head; it should be on the box. However, if you're not aware of this metric, you're probably good to go with what we set, unless you shower with some super-efficient or ancient technology.

Based on these numbers, the tool will tell you how much a single shower costs you, and how much you could be spending per month or year. Sounds like a lot of money? Feel free to play with the numbers: lower the duration by just a minute and see how it affects the results, research some water-saving shower heads and see how they would affect your spendings, or maybe consider limiting your washes to just one per day. There are countless options, and this tool will update automatically with every change.

On top of water and energy costs, you may also have to pay for sewage, and the exact amount will dependent on the total amount of water used. This tool doesn't take this factor into consideration because of the difficulty in calculating the costs around the world. Keep it in mind though, as it will make every minute of your shower even more expensive!

See our bath vs shower water usage calculator to learn how you can save water by choosing one over the other.