What a dehumidifier actually costs to run in Ireland
Quick answer: At Ireland’s domestic day rate of about €0.38/kWh, the dehumidifiers we track cost between €0.04 and €0.13 per hour at full power — €9.21 to €30.10 a month if you run one for 8 hours a day. On a smart-meter night rate of about €0.18/kWh the same run costs roughly half. These are ceilings: the humidistat switches the compressor off once the room reaches its target humidity, so a real bill lands below them.
Almost every dehumidifier page online tells you which one to buy and none of them tell you what it costs to keep switched on. This page is the other half: every dehumidifier we track, its rated power, and what that works out to per hour, per month and per litre of water removed at Irish electricity prices — with the arithmetic shown so you can redo it with your own unit rate.
Running cost of every dehumidifier we track
| Model | Rated power | Per hour (day) | Per hour (night) | Per month at 8 h/day | Rated extraction | Per litre removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MeacoDry Arete One 6L Dehumidifier & Air Purifier | 101 W | €0.04 | €0.02 | €9.21 | 6 L/day | €0.15 |
| MeacoDry Arete Two 12L Dehumidifier & Air Purifier | 136 W | €0.05 | €0.02 | €12.40 | 12 L/day | €0.10 |
| Meaco MeacoDry ABC 12L (Ultra-Quiet) | 165 W | €0.06 | €0.03 | €15.05 | 12 L/day | €0.13 |
| HOMCOM 12L/Day Quiet Dehumidifier (2000ml Tank) | 180 W | €0.07 | €0.03 | €16.42 | 12 L/day | €0.14 |
| Masterplug 3-in-1 Smart Dehumidifier 12L | 185 W | €0.07 | €0.03 | €16.87 | 12 L/day | €0.14 |
| Nyxi 20L/Day Dehumidifier | 320 W | €0.12 | €0.06 | €29.18 | 20 L/day | €0.15 |
| Meaco DD8L Junior Desiccant Dehumidifier | 330 W | €0.13 | €0.06 | €30.10 | 8 L/day | €0.38 |
Tariff source: €0.38/kWh day rate and €0.18/kWh night rate, cross-checked against SEAI energy price statistics and published supplier standard rates, July 2026. Rated power and rated extraction are the manufacturers’ own published figures.
The 10 models where we could not calculate a cost
These dehumidifiers are in our guides, but the manufacturer does not publish a rated power figure for them, so there is no honest way to work out a cost per hour. We would rather show the gap than fill it with an estimate and present it as a measurement.
| Model | Rated extraction | Rated power |
|---|---|---|
| EasyAcc 2000ml Dehumidifier Pro | Up to 650 ml/day | Not published by the manufacturer |
| HOMCOM 12L/Day Dehumidifier (Continuous Drainage) | 12 L/day | Not published by the manufacturer |
| Morphy Richards PureFresh Compact Dehumidifier | — | Not published by the manufacturer |
| Belaco 1000ml Portable Dehumidifier | ~300 ml/day | Not published by the manufacturer |
| UniBond AERO 360 Moisture Absorber | — | Not published by the manufacturer |
| ROMMQB 3L Ultra-Quiet Portable Dehumidifier | — | Not published by the manufacturer |
| HUMILABS 12L/Day Low Energy Dehumidifier | 12 L/day | Not published by the manufacturer |
| Devology 12L/Day Digital Dehumidifier (2.5L Tank) | 12 L/day | Not published by the manufacturer |
| Pro Breeze OmniDry 12L/Day Dehumidifier | 12 L/day | Not published by the manufacturer |
| De'Longhi Tasciugo AriaDry Dehumidifier | — | Not published by the manufacturer |
How these numbers are worked out
The whole calculation is three numbers and one multiplication, and we would rather you checked it than trusted it.
- Rated power — the wattage the manufacturer publishes for that exact model. Not a category average, not a guess from a similar unit. 7 of the 17 dehumidifiers in our guides publish one; the other 10 are listed separately, with no figure at all.
- Tariff — €0.38 per kWh for the day rate and €0.18 per kWh for a typical smart-meter night rate, cross-checked against SEAI energy price statistics and published supplier standard rates, July 2026. Your own unit rate is on your bill and may differ; the arithmetic below is easy to redo with it.
- Cost per hour = rated watts ÷ 1,000 × the unit rate. A 101 W unit is 0.101 kW, so 0.101 × 0.38 = €0.04 an hour.
- Cost per month = cost per hour × 8 hours × 30 days. 8 hours a day is our assumption, not a measurement — scale it to how you actually run yours.
- Cost per litre of water removed = a full 24 hours at rated power, divided by the rated daily extraction. It is the fairest way to compare a thirsty 20 L machine against a frugal 6 L one, because the cheaper machine per hour is not automatically the cheaper machine per litre.
Three things these numbers are not
They are not your bill. Every figure here is a ceiling: rated draw at full power, multiplied out. A compressor dehumidifier with a humidistat switches the compressor off once the room hits the target humidity, so it spends a good part of every hour drawing almost nothing. Desiccant models are the exception worth knowing about: they heat a rotor rather than run a compressor, so they sit much closer to their rated draw the whole time they are on — the Meaco DD8L in the table above is one of these, and its figure is nearer to a real hourly cost than the others. Either way, treat the table as the worst case.
The extraction figures are lab figures. Manufacturers rate extraction at around 30 °C and 80% relative humidity. An Irish bedroom in November is nowhere near that, so a unit rated at 12 L/day will pull out considerably less, and the real cost per litre will be higher than the column above. We show the rated figure because it is the one the manufacturer publishes and the one you can verify — not because we think you will get it.
They do not include standing charges or VAT changes. The unit rate is the marginal cost of running the appliance. Your standing charge is there whether the dehumidifier is plugged in or not.
Using this table
Free to quote, cite or reproduce with a link back to this page. If you are writing about damp, heating or energy costs in Ireland and want the underlying figures, everything is on this page — the rated wattages, the tariff, and the arithmetic — so the numbers can be checked rather than taken on trust. Spot an error or a wattage we have wrong? Tell us and we will correct it.