How Much Does a Security Camera Cost to Run? (2026)

A security camera is the cheapest always-on device most homeowners install. The electronics inside one are an image sensor, a small processor, a Wi-Fi or PoE radio, and an infrared LED ring for night vision. The total draw is in the same band as a phone charger that is actually charging a phone. A typical 5W indoor camera left on 24/7 uses 3.6 kWh a month, which costs $0.65 at the 2026 national average. Across 365 days that's $7.91 for the year.

The math is the same as for any other appliance: watts × hours ÷ 1,000 × your state rate. The DOE Energy Saver estimator uses the same formula. The April 2026 U.S. residential rate from the EIA Electric Power Monthly is 18.05¢/kWh. Plug in your camera's spec-sheet wattage and you have the answer.

Cameras cluster into five tiers, and the spread between them is narrow. These are nameplate-typical figures, not theoretical maximums. Manufacturer spec sheets and the ENERGY STAR program publish per-model power figures that confirm the operating ranges below.

Wireless indoor camera (4 to 8 watts). A Ring Indoor Cam draws about 4W. A Wyze Cam v3 draws about 5W. Plugged into the wall full-time, a 5W indoor camera costs $0.65 a month or $7.91 a year at the national average. Battery-powered models recharge over USB; a recharge cycle uses about 0.05 kWh, which is roughly one cent.

Wireless outdoor or doorbell camera (5 to 10 watts). A Ring Doorbell Pro 2 hardwired to the existing chime transformer pulls 5W to 8W. An Arlo Pro 5S in continuous-record mode pulls 7W to 10W. At 8W and 24/7, the cost is $1.04 a month or $12.65 a year.

PoE (Power over Ethernet) camera (8 to 12 watts). A Reolink RLC-820A pulls 9W. A Hikvision DS-2CD2143G2 pulls 10W. PoE cameras run a single Cat6 cable for both power and data, which is why they are the standard for fixed-position outdoor installations. At 10W and 24/7, the cost is $1.30 a month or $15.81 a year.

PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) camera (15 to 30 watts). The motors that move the camera and the larger zoom-lens stack are what push wattage up. A Reolink RLC-823A PTZ pulls about 18W. A Hikvision PTZ dome at the larger end pulls 25W to 30W. At 20W and 24/7, the cost is $2.60 a month or $31.62 a year. PTZ cameras are still inside the cheap-to-run band, just at the top of it.

Specialty thermal or LPR camera (20 to 40 watts). Niche use cases. License-plate-recognition cameras add an integrated illuminator that pulls 10W to 20W on top of the camera itself. At 30W and 24/7, the cost is $3.90 a month or $47.44 a year. Still less than a coffee pot used twice a day.

Cameras that store footage to a local recorder add a second device to the bill. The recorder is usually the larger draw, because it has a hard drive spinning around the clock and a small server-class processor running motion analytics.

Standalone NVR for PoE cameras (15 to 30 watts). A Reolink RLN8-410 NVR with one 3.5-inch hard drive pulls 18W to 22W. A Hikvision DS-7608 pulls 20W to 25W. At 20W and 24/7, the recorder alone costs $2.60 a month or $31.62 a year on top of the cameras.

Older DVR with multiple hard drives (30 to 60 watts). Legacy eight-channel DVRs with two hard drives can pull 40W to 60W continuous. At 50W and 24/7, the recorder costs $6.50 a month or $79.06 a year. The newer NVRs cut that figure roughly in half.

The cloud-storage alternative is a separate line item. Ring Protect Plus, Arlo Secure, and Nest Aware run $3 to $15 a month per household. That cost has nothing to do with electricity, but it is worth mentioning because for most consumer cameras the subscription costs more than the camera does to power.

The single-camera number is the smaller of the two questions. The one homeowners actually search is what the whole installed system costs to run.

Four-camera PoE system with NVR. Four 8W PoE cameras and a 15W NVR total 47W of continuous draw. Across a month that's 33.84 kWh, which costs $6.11 at the national average. Across a year, 411.7 kWh, or $74.31. This is the most common new-installation footprint in 2026: front door, back door, driveway, garage.

Eight-camera PoE system with NVR. Eight 8W cameras and a 25W NVR total 89W. That's 64.08 kWh a month, $11.57 at the national average. Annualized, $140.71. Doubling the camera count roughly doubles the cost, but doubling is still cheap in absolute terms.

Four-camera wireless system with cloud storage. Four 5W cameras drawing power from individual wall plugs total 20W. That's 14.4 kWh a month, $2.60 on the bill, plus whatever the cloud subscription costs separately. The cloud fee is the load-bearing line item, not the electricity.

The full per-appliance breakdown for security cameras and the rest of the always-on devices in a home is in the appliance wattage chart. Cameras sit at the bottom of that chart with phone chargers, smart speakers, and Wi-Fi routers. AC, water heating, and refrigeration sit at the top.

The numbers above use the U.S. national average. Your actual cost depends on where you live, and the spread is wider than most homeowners realize. The April 2026 EIA Electric Power Monthly puts Louisiana at 12.44¢/kWh and Hawaii at 39.79¢/kWh. Same camera, same hours, three times the cost.

A single 5W camera run 24/7 for a year:

Louisiana (12.44¢/kWh): $5.45. Texas (~14.8¢/kWh): $6.48. National average (18.05¢/kWh): $7.91. California (~31¢/kWh): $13.58. Hawaii (39.79¢/kWh): $17.43.

A four-camera PoE system with NVR (47W) run 24/7 for a year:

Louisiana: $51.22. National average: $74.31. California: $127.63. Hawaii: $163.81.

High-rate states are the only places where camera count has a meaningful annual dollar consequence. A Hawaii homeowner running an eight-camera system pays roughly $310 a year for it. The same setup in Louisiana costs $97. The electricity rates by state guide has the current 2026 number for every state.

The most useful frame is not the dollar number on its own. It is what that number looks like next to the other devices in a typical home that run continuously.

5W security camera: $7.91 a year. 3W smart speaker (always-listening): $9.49 a year. 10W Wi-Fi router: $15.81 a year. 40W cable DVR set-top box: $63.25 a year. Refrigerator (typical 125 kWh/month): $271 a year.

The cable DVR box is the comparison that tells the story. A four-camera PoE system with NVR ($74 a year) costs about the same as a single cable DVR box. An eight-camera system ($141) costs about twice the cable box. A laptop running 8 hours a day ($26 a year) costs less than half a four-camera system, which makes sense once you account for the laptop running 8 hours and the cameras running 168.

For the always-on comparison applied to home-office gear, the laptop electricity cost guide covers desktops, monitors, and routers in the same wattage detail. The full ranking of every appliance by yearly cost is in the most expensive appliances list.

Three observations from running the numbers:

1. Camera selection is a quality and feature decision, not an electricity decision. The yearly difference between a 5W indoor camera and a 30W full-feature PTZ at the national average is about $40. Buy the camera that fits the job, not the one with the lowest watt rating.

2. The NVR is a larger lever than the cameras. A modern 20W NVR replacing a legacy 50W DVR saves about $47 a year at the national average. If the security system is more than five years old and uses a DVR, that's the upgrade with the fastest electricity-side payback.

3. Cloud subscription costs almost always exceed electricity costs. A four-camera Ring Protect Plus or Arlo Secure subscription at $10 a month is $120 a year, against roughly $30 in electricity for the same four cameras. The cost of recording footage off-device is the bigger line item by a wide margin.

The security camera calculator runs the math at your state's actual rate, with wattage presets for wireless, PoE, and PTZ tiers. Plug in the wattage from your specific camera's spec sheet and your state, and you have the real number.

A typical 5W security camera running 24/7 costs $0.65 a month or $7.91 a year at the 2026 U.S. average rate. A four-camera PoE system with a network video recorder runs $6.11 a month or $74.31 a year. An eight-camera system runs $11.57 a month or $140.71 a year. All three sit firmly inside the cheap-to-run band of household electronics, well below appliances like refrigerators, water heaters, and air conditioners. Whatever you suspected the security system was adding to the bill, the actual answer is almost certainly less.

The security camera calculator handles the per-state and per-wattage math. The appliance wattage chart shows how a security camera compares to everything else plugged into the wall.