Run a leaf blower for an hour and the electricity costs pennies. Corded or cordless, the power bill barely moves. So why do cordless blowers cost so much more to own?
Because the cost isn't in the outlet. It's in the battery.
The setup
We'll compare two blowers with round, hypothetical numbers. Swap in your own.
Corded. Tool price $70, expected life 500 hours. Rated 12 amps at 120 volts, which is 1,440 watts at full power. We assume an average draw of 1,000 watts, since few people run flat out all the time.
Cordless. Tool price $100 without a battery, life 500 hours. One 40V pack: 40 volts x 5 amp-hours = 200 Wh, priced at $150. We assume an average draw of 400 watts, and 400 charge cycles before the pack is spent. For scale, Battery University lists roughly 300 cycles to 70 percent capacity at full depth of discharge for NMC cells, and 300 to 500 when charged to 4.20 V per cell. Your maker's figure beats ours.
Electricity: 18.31 cents per kWh, the US residential average in July 2026 from the Energy Information Administration.
Corded cost per hour
- Tool: $70 / 500 hours = $0.14
- Electricity: 1.0 kW x $0.1831 = $0.18
Total: about $0.32 an hour.
Cordless cost per hour
First, runtime per charge: 200 Wh / 400 W = 0.5 hours, thirty minutes.
- Tool: $100 / 500 hours = $0.20
- Battery wear: $150 / (400 cycles x 0.5 hours) = $0.75
- Electricity: 0.4 kW x $0.1831 = $0.07
Total: about $1.02 an hour.
Where the gap lives
| Cost per hour | Corded | Cordless |
|---|---|---|
| Tool | $0.14 | $0.20 |
| Battery wear | none | $0.75 |
| Electricity | $0.18 | $0.07 |
| Total | $0.32 | $1.02 |
Notice the electricity line. The cordless blower uses less power per hour in this example, so it wins that row. Then battery wear takes three-quarters of its hourly cost. A gallon of gas isn't what costs money here; the pack is.
That's the pattern to remember: for cordless tools, the question is never "what does charging cost?" It's "what does the battery cost per hour of work?"
Do the stakes even matter?
Be honest about hours. Say you use a blower 20 hours a year. The corded one costs $6.46 of running and ownership over those hours, the cordless $20.46. A fourteen-dollar yearly difference buys no cord, no outlet hunt, no tripping on a wire across the lawn. For a small yard, we'd call that a fair price.
At 100 hours a year, the same gap is seventy dollars. That's where a corded model, or a second-hand pack, starts to look attractive. Would you rather save the money or save the cord?
How to make the cordless number better
- Pack price per watt-hour. $150 for 200 Wh is 75 cents per Wh. A larger pack at a lower price per Wh cuts wear per hour.
- Cycles. Don't run the pack to zero every time, and don't leave it fully charged for months. Our winter storage guide covers the second half.
- Average watts. The lower the speed setting, the longer the charge. Half power can nearly double the runtime on a pack, which cuts the wear per hour of work.
- Shared batteries. If your mower, trimmer and blower use the same pack system, the pack's cycles are spread across more tools.
What would change the answer
The cordless result leans hardest on two inputs we guessed. Move them and watch the total.
At 300 cycles instead of 400, battery wear rises to $150 / (300 x 0.5) = $1.00 an hour and the total to about $1.27. At 500 cycles it falls to $0.60 and the total to about $0.87. Halve the average draw to 200 watts, and one charge lasts a full hour, so wear drops to $0.375 an hour. Power setting matters as much as the pack.
A second pack doesn't change the cost per hour. It changes how long you can work before stopping. Each charge cycle still wears whichever pack you use.
Run your own version
Open the battery tab of our payback calculator and enter your numbers. It splits the hourly cost into tool, battery wear and electricity, so you can see which line dominates. Change the cycle count and watch the wear line move.
Put the example above into it and the cordless blower comes out at $1.02 an hour, which matches the hand calculation.
Reading a blower spec sheet
Two numbers dominate the box: air volume in cubic feet per minute, and air speed in miles per hour. Both describe how hard the machine pushes at its best. Neither tells you how long it keeps pushing, or what an hour of it costs. For that you need the pack's watt-hours and the average draw, which most makers don't print. If the sheet gives runtime only on the lowest speed, assume the strongest speed runs for a fraction of it, the same pattern we worked through for cordless vacuums. Ask yourself which speed you'll really use on wet leaves, then price that one.
Where cordless earns its premium is not in these numbers at all. It's the yard without an outlet, the cord that doesn't catch on a shrub, the five minutes you save not unspooling it. Those are real. Just don't tell yourself they're free.
Bottom line
Corded wins on cost per hour. Cordless wins on convenience. If you use the blower a few times each autumn, convenience is cheap. If you run it every weekend for a big property, do the math before you buy a second pack.