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WattWhich: which appliance to replace first, with a payback number
Which appliance to replace first, answered with a payback number and your own bill.
WattWhich works out which appliance to replace first in your house, using your own electricity price and your own installed quotes. The tool ranks candidates by yearly saving, payback in years, and what each swap is worth over the time you plan to stay.
Waitlist Not built yet Updated 5 September 2026
What problem does WattWhich solve?
A bill goes up and the advice you find is a list of habits: shorter showers, colder washes, a smart plug for the television. None of it answers the question you actually have, which is whether the money should go to the fridge that hums all night, the water heater in the garage, or the resistance heaters in the back bedroom. The decision usually gets made twice, and badly both times. First when something dies in February and you buy whatever the shop can deliver on Thursday, which is rarely the efficient model and never the one you had researched. Second when someone at the door offers a whole-house upgrade with a monthly payment, and the payment is the only figure on the paperwork. Meanwhile the machine that might be costing the most is the boring one nobody has measured: a chest freezer in the garage with a perished door seal, or a second refrigerator kept for drinks and forgotten for a decade.
Appliance payback calculator
Compare up to three appliances by yearly kWh, replacement cost, and your rate to see which one to replace first.
Free to use. No account. Nothing you type here is stored.
What would WattWhich do?
WattWhich would ask for the things only you know. What your utility charges per kilowatt hour, how long you expect to stay in the house, and an installed price for each replacement you are weighing up. For yearly consumption it would take the figure from the yellow EnergyGuide label, a plug-in meter reading, or your own estimate, and it would record which of those you used. The output is a ranked table rather than a score: saving per year, payback in years, and the net position across your horizon, with the arithmetic printed beneath it. Anything that never pays back on energy alone would be labeled that way, because a quieter dishwasher is a fair reason to buy and a poor reason to pretend. Rebate lookups and gas appliances would come after the electric case works.
How would it work?
- 1Enter your electricity price from the bill and the number of years you expect to stay.
- 2List up to three candidates with their current yearly kilowatt hours and an installed replacement price.
- 3Read the ranked table of yearly saving, payback in years, and the net across your horizon.
- 4Change one figure and watch the order move, so you can test a quote before you accept it.
Who is it for?
- Homeowners looking at a bill that jumped, with no idea which box caused it.
- People with one dying appliance and a budget for exactly one replacement this year.
- Landlords choosing between the cheap unit today and the cheaper one to run for years.
How do you tell whether it is worth replacing an old refrigerator without a calculator?
Start with your own price per kilowatt hour, because the running cost printed on a yellow label was not worked out with your utility's rate. Take a recent bill, add every charge on it including the fixed monthly ones, and divide by the kilowatt hours you used that month. That all-in figure is what another unit of electricity really costs you, and it sits above the supply rate once the standing charges are shared out. Next, get the replacement's number. The yellow EnergyGuide label on a new fridge, freezer, dishwasher, or washer prints an estimated yearly electricity use in kilowatt hours, alongside a cost estimate and a range showing where that model sits against comparable ones. Ignore the dollar estimate on the label and keep the kilowatt hour figure, then multiply it by your own rate. Getting the old machine's number takes a week and a plug-in energy monitor, which costs less than a takeaway and can be borrowed from some libraries. Run the fridge through it for a full week so you catch the defrost cycles and a normal amount of door opening, then multiply the weekly reading by fifty-two. Do not use the nameplate wattage on the back. A compressor cycles on and off, so the plate describes peak draw and says nothing about a year. Now the arithmetic is small. Old yearly kilowatt hours minus new yearly kilowatt hours, times your rate, is the saving per year. Installed price divided by that saving is the payback in years. Weigh that against how long the old machine will plausibly keep going and how long you intend to stay. A payback longer than either is not an upgrade, it is a purchase, which is fine as long as you know which one you are making.
What do people use today?
| Option | Good at | The gap |
|---|---|---|
| Utility website tools and home energy audits | A whole-house view from people who can see your usage history, sometimes free from the utility. | Ends in a page of recommendations with no installed price you have actually been quoted, so ranking stays guesswork. |
| Smart plugs and whole-home energy monitors | Measured consumption per outlet or per circuit, which beats every estimate on the market. | Reports what you use, not what to buy, so the payback sum against a real quote is still yours. |
| Retailer and manufacturer efficiency comparisons | Kilowatt hour figures side by side for models actually on sale, taken straight from the label. | Compares new against new, when the question in front of you is new against the machine in the kitchen. |
| Household carbon and energy dashboards | A tidy picture of consumption over time and a prompt to look at the house as a whole. | Scores rather than ranks, and rarely puts installed cost, payback, and your years in the house in one row. |
What would it cost?
Free
$0
- The payback calculator on this page
- One ranking of up to three appliances
- Every formula shown beneath the result
Home
$29/yr
- Unlimited appliances and saved scenarios
- Rebate and incentive lookup for your area
- A prompt to rerun the ranking when your rate changes
- Printable summary for a contractor conversation
Prices are proposed. Founding members lock in the lowest price if we build WattWhich.
Questions people ask
What is the best way to work out which appliance to replace first?
Ranking by payback is the practical method. For each candidate, take the yearly kilowatt hours it uses now, subtract what a replacement would use, multiply by your own electricity price, then divide the installed cost by that saving. The shortest payback goes first, unless something is visibly about to fail.
Where do I find how much my old appliance uses?
A plug-in energy monitor left in place for a week is the only honest source for an old machine. Nameplate wattage describes peak draw, not yearly consumption, and a compressor spends much of the day switched off. Published figures for a machine that old rarely survive.
Does WattWhich include rebates and incentives?
Rebates are planned, not first. Programs differ by utility, state, and year, so any list has to be dated and sourced rather than baked into the maths. The calculator on this page deliberately leaves them out, which keeps the arithmetic checkable.
What about gas appliances and heat pumps?
Fuel switching puts therms and kilowatt hours in the same sum and needs a climate zone, so the first calculator stays electric to electric. A heat pump comparison sits high on the list, because that is the question most likely to arrive with a very large quote.
Should I replace something that still works?
Sometimes, and the number tells you which. A machine with a short payback and years of life left is a good trade. A machine whose payback outlasts your time in the house may still be worth buying for noise or space, but that is not an energy decision.
Do manufacturers pay to be ranked higher?
No ranking would ever be for sale. Any rebate or retailer link that earns a commission would be labeled where it appears, and the order would be computed from your figures before any link is shown. Selling the ordering would destroy the only thing being offered.
Does any of this help renters?
Renters get a smaller version of the same sum. A plug-in monitor, a spare fridge that can be unplugged, and a window unit that can be scheduled are all within reach. Replacing the water heater is not your call, but knowing what the garage freezer costs still is.
When will WattWhich launch?
No date. WattWhich gets built if enough homeowners join this list and say a ranked answer is worth paying for. The payback calculator here stays free regardless, and it never asks who you are.
Where does this stand?
WattWhich is a proposal, not a product. This page collects demand from search and answer engines. Askwright builds it only if enough people join the waitlist and say they would pay. Read how this works.