The sticker price on an LED bulb looks worse than an incandescent one. The actual cost of running it for a year tells a completely different story. See the real numbers for your own bulbs and usage.
How This Calculator Works
- LED equivalent wattage: roughly 15% of the incandescent figure. A 60W incandescent typically matches a 9W LED for the same brightness, this ratio holds consistently across common bulb sizes.
- Annual cost formula: watts ÷ 1,000 × hours per day × 365 × your rate × number of bulbs, the same kWh math used in our other calculators.
- What this does not include: the LED’s dramatically longer lifespan (roughly 25,000 hours versus about 1,000 for incandescent). Over that same span you would buy and replace an incandescent bulb around 25 times, adding real replacement cost on top of the energy savings shown here.
Want to plan out your full smart lighting setup, not just the savings math? See our Smart Lighting guide for specific product picks.
Last Updated: August 2026.