Estimate what an ASIC actually earns. Enter your hash rate, power draw, electricity price and pool fee to see BTC mined per day, gross revenue, power cost, net profit, break-even BTC price, break-even power cost and hardware payback — based on the current 3.125 BTC block subsidy and 144 blocks per day.
The network hash rate field is user-editable on purpose: Bitcoin difficulty retargets roughly every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks), so any fixed network assumption only holds for that window. Set host fee to 0 if you pay power directly and no colocation fee.
| Model | Hash Rate | Power | Efficiency | Est. Daily Revenue | Profit @ $0.06/kWh | Profit @ $0.10/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antminer S21 Pro | 234 TH/s | 3,510 W | ~15 J/TH | $10.53 | +$5.48 | +$2.11 |
| Antminer S19 XP | 140 TH/s | 3,010 W | ~21.5 J/TH | $6.30 | +$1.97 | −$0.92 |
| Antminer S19j Pro | 104 TH/s | 3,068 W | ~29.5 J/TH | $4.68 | +$0.26 | −$2.68 |
Revenue per TH/s per day = (450 BTC issued per day ÷ 900,000,000 TH network) × $90,000 ≈ $0.045 per TH/s. Multiply by hash rate for gross daily revenue, then subtract power. Older 29.5 J/TH hardware is underwater above roughly $0.065/kWh.
Setup: 234 TH/s, 3,510 W (15 J/TH), 900 EH/s network, 2% pool fee, BTC $90,000, $0.08/kWh.
Math: share = 234 ÷ 900,000,000 TH = 0.00000026. BTC/day = 0.00000026 × 144 × 3.125 = 0.000117 BTC (~$10.53). Power = 3.51 kW × 24 h = 84.24 kWh × $0.08 = $6.74. Pool fee = $0.21.
Setup: identical hardware, but electricity at a typical residential rate of $0.15/kWh.
Math: 84.24 kWh × $0.15 = $12.64/day in power, versus $10.53/day of gross revenue before pool fees.
Setup: S21 Pro at $0.08/kWh, BTC still $90,000, but the block subsidy halves to 1.5625 BTC in 2028 — revenue roughly halves while power cost is unchanged.
Math: Gross revenue falls to ~$5.27/day; power stays $6.74/day.
Setup: 104 TH/s, 3,068 W (29.5 J/TH), industrial hosting at $0.06/kWh, 2% pool fee, BTC $90,000.
Math: Gross $4.68/day; power = 73.63 kWh × $0.06 = $4.42/day; pool fee $0.09.
144 = average blocks found per day (one every ~10 minutes).
3.125 BTC = block subsidy since the April 2024 halving; the network issues ~450 BTC/day.
Pool fee = typically 1–3% of gross revenue, taken before payout.
Host fee = optional $/kW-month colocation charge, converted to a daily figure.
| Factor | Typical Change | Effect on your daily result |
|---|---|---|
| Difficulty retarget | ±0–10% every ~2 weeks | Higher difficulty cuts your BTC/day proportionally — the same rig earns less for the same power. |
| Halving (next in 2028) | Subsidy drops 3.125 → 1.5625 BTC | Roughly halves revenue overnight unless price doubles to compensate. |
| Industrial hosting power | $0.05–$0.08/kWh | The band where most modern ASICs stay profitable. |
| Residential power | $0.15+/kWh | Unprofitable for most hardware; power cost usually exceeds gross revenue. |
| Transaction fees | Low single-digit % of revenue | Adds to block rewards outside congestion spikes, but is not reliable income. |
Efficiency is the whole game. Moving from 29.5 J/TH to 15 J/TH nearly halves power cost per terahash, which is usually worth more than a higher sticker hashrate.
Industrial hosting at $0.05–$0.08/kWh is the difference between profit and loss. Residential rates of $0.15+/kWh rarely work for air-cooled ASICs.
Some hosts pay you to switch off during grid peaks. Curtailment revenue can offset fixed costs and improve effective $/kWh during high-price hours.
At $3.58/day net on a $4,500 rig, payback is over 1,200 days. Hardware is often obsolete before then, so model post-halving revenue too.
Mining revenue is not "your machine's speed" — it is your share of the network multiplied by the coins the network issues. Bitcoin finds roughly 144 blocks per day (one every ten minutes), and each block currently pays a 3.125 BTC subsidy since the April 2024 halving. That means the whole network mints about 450 BTC per day. If your ASIC contributes 234 TH/s to a network running at 900 EH/s (900,000,000 TH/s), your share is roughly 0.00000026, so you earn 0.00000026 × 144 × 3.125 ≈ 0.000117 BTC/day — about $10.53 at $90,000 per coin. The formula is brutal in its simplicity: hashrate share × blocks × reward. Everything else is a cost problem.
Difficulty matters because it is the network's self-correcting brake. Every 2,016 blocks — about two weeks — Bitcoin retargets difficulty so that blocks keep arriving every ten minutes regardless of how much hardware joins or leaves. When more hashrate comes online, difficulty rises and your slice of the 450 daily BTC shrinks; when miners switch off, it falls. This is why a fixed "900 EH/s" assumption in the calculator only holds for the current epoch. Any payback estimate spanning months or years should be re-run after each retarget.
Hardware revenue is largely fixed by the network; your electricity price is the one variable you can actually negotiate. The number that ties the two together is efficiency, measured in joules per terahash (J/TH). A modern Antminer S21 Pro runs near 15 J/TH (234 TH/s at 3,510 W), a S19 XP near 21.5 J/TH, and an older S19j Pro near 29.5 J/TH. At an identical power price the 29.5 J/TH machine spends roughly twice as much electricity per unit of revenue as the 15 J/TH machine — which is exactly why legacy fleets are the first to shut down when difficulty climbs.
Payback days drift for two reasons. First, difficulty keeps retargeting upward as miners deploy capital, so the same rig earns fewer BTC each epoch. Second, and far more brutally, the block subsidy halves roughly every four years. It fell to 3.125 BTC in April 2024 and is expected to drop to 1.5625 BTC in 2028. Unless the BTC price roughly doubles by then, revenue per terahash is cut in half while power cost stays exactly the same. That is why a payback calculated on today's numbers can quietly become a permanent loss — the stress-test example above turns a $3.58/day profit into a $1.58/day loss with no change in hardware or electricity price.
Taxes work against you differently from trading. Under IRS Notice 2014-21, mined coins are treated as ordinary income at fair market value on the day you receive them — you owe income tax on the dollar value of the BTC, even if you never sell it. Your basis in those coins then resets to that same fair-market value, so any later sale produces a separate capital gain or loss. The practical result: you can owe tax on coins you are still holding while the price falls, so track the daily FMV of every payout. Mining is a business for many operators, which also opens up deductions for power, hosting and depreciation — but it requires real records.
⚠️ Disclaimer: Mining profitability changes daily with network difficulty and the BTC price, and both can move sharply within a single difficulty epoch. The 900 EH/s network hash rate, 3.125 BTC subsidy and $90,000 BTC price used here are illustrative reference values, not live market data — replace them with current figures before making any decision. Payback estimates assume hardware stays online continuously and ignore downtime, cooling, pool variance, and future halvings. This calculator is provided for educational and estimation purposes only and is not investment, tax or financial advice.