Buy or rent a Bitcoin miner? The honest numbers for the UK
Bitaxe Gamma, NerdQAxe++ and Avalon Mini 3 compared: purchase price, UK electricity at 26.11p/kWh, and what the same hashrate costs to rent on solar at WildWatts.
Same hashrate, same odds, same expected coins. The only question is what it costs you to run that hashrate, and for how long. Here are the numbers for three popular miners using The Solo Mining Co' shop prices and the Ofgem UK price cap figure of 26.11p per kWh. Change the inputs on the home page calculator for your own tariff.
The running cost most people forget
A miner runs 24 hours a day. Electricity per day is watts ÷ 1000 × 24 × price per kWh:
| Miner | Hashrate | Power | kWh / day | Electricity / day | Electricity / 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitaxe Gamma | 1.2 TH/s | 25 W | 0.6 | £0.16 | £4.70 |
| NerdQAxe++ | 4.8 TH/s | 90 W | 2.2 | £0.56 | £16.92 |
| Avalon Mini 3 | 37.5 TH/s | 800 W | 19.2 | £5.01 | £150.40 |
| Avalon Q | 90 TH/s | 1,600 W | 38.4 | £10.03 | £300.80 |
Buying
Shop prices at the time of writing: Bitaxe Gamma from about £130 (bare unit) to £160 (edition builds), NerdQAxe++ Black Edition £399.99 with PSU and stand, Avalon Mini 3 £999.99. Add the electricity above, somewhere to put it, the noise and heat of the larger units, and the resale risk when the next generation of chips arrives.
Renting on solar
| Miner | 1 day | 7 days | 14 days | 30 days | Electricity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitaxe Gamma | £1 | £6 | £10 | £15 | £0, solar |
| NerdQAxe++ | £2 | £12 | £20 | £30 | £0, solar |
| Avalon Mini 3 | £7.50 | £45 | £75 | — | £0, solar |
| Avalon Q | £10 | £60 | £100 | — | £0, solar |
Where the lines cross
Bitaxe Gamma. Renting costs £15 a month; owning costs about £4.70 a month in electricity after a £130 to £160 purchase. Buying wins after roughly 13 to 15 months if you keep it running the whole time. For a week or a month of curiosity, rent.
NerdQAxe++. Renting is £30 a month; owning is £16.92 a month plus £399.99 up front. The purchase pays back against rental after about 30 months of continuous running, and a 14-day session here is £20 against £8 of electricity plus the £400 outlay.
Avalon Mini 3. This is where solar changes the answer. A month of electricity at home is £150, which is the same as two 14-day rentals here, before you have found £999.99 for the unit, a place to put 800 W of heat, and neighbours who tolerate it. For anything short of permanent full-time mining, renting wins outright.
Avalon Q. £300 a month in electricity alone at home. A fortnight here is £100, all in.
What this does not tell you
Costs only. Rewards depend on how you mine (solo is a lottery, pooled pays small steady amounts) and on network difficulty, and neither route guarantees that rewards cover the cost. The honest case for renting is that you pay a known amount for a known period, with monitoring, replacement and the power bill included, and you can stop whenever the session ends. The honest case for buying is that after enough months of continuous running the hardware is yours. If you want the hardware, The Solo Mining Co' sells it; if you want the hashrate for a while, rent it here.