The yellow label on a new appliance carries a dollar figure for the year, and that figure is doing something narrower than most people assume.
The Federal Trade Commission is direct about it: the estimated yearly operating cost on the EnergyGuide label is an estimate, based on typical use and a national average price for energy, and your cost will depend on how you use the appliance and your local energy price.
Read that twice, because it contains both halves of the answer. The label is a genuinely good tool for comparing two new models on the same basis. It is not a prediction of your electricity bill, and it is not a statement about the appliance you already own.
What is actually on the label
The EnergyGuide label is required in the United States and appears on most major home appliances. FTC materials list the covered categories as including clothes washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, water heaters, room air conditioners, central air conditioners, furnaces, boilers, heat pumps, pool heaters and televisions.
For most covered products the label carries three things:
- The estimated annual operating cost.
- A comparability range, showing the highest and lowest energy consumption or efficiency for all similar models.
- The product's energy consumption or energy efficiency rating.
The comparability range is the underused part. It tells you where this specific model sits among models like it, which is a comparison the dollar figure alone does not give you, and which does not depend on the national average price the dollar figure was built from.
What the label is good for
Comparing two models in the same category, on the same day, in the same shop. Both figures were produced by the same test procedure and the same assumed energy price, so the difference between them is meaningful even though neither absolute number is your bill.
Seeing whether a model is at the efficient end of its class. That is what the comparability range is for.
Noticing when two models that look similar are not. A large gap in the range position between two units with the same capacity and features is a real difference.
What the label cannot do
It cannot tell you what your bill will be. FTC is explicit that the figure is an estimate based on typical use and a national average energy price, and that your cost depends on your usage and your local price. If your local energy price is well above or below the national average, the figure moves with it.
It cannot compare a new appliance to your old one. No EnergyGuide figure exists for a twelve-year-old machine in your kitchen, which means the "it will pay for itself" claim rests on a number nobody has for the appliance you are replacing.
It cannot account for how you use it. Half loads, hot settings, how often the door opens, how full a fridge is kept, and what the room temperature is all change consumption and none of them is in the test.
It cannot tell you whether replacing is the right decision. That question has four parts and only one of them is running cost: a written repair quote, whether the part is still available for your model, what has already failed and when, and the installed cost of a replacement.
The payback claim, and why this page will not do the sum
The claim goes: the new appliance costs more, saves this much a year, and pays for itself in a certain number of years.
Three of the four inputs to that sum are unavailable or unreliable.
The current appliance's consumption is not published for your model and your usage.
The energy price in the sum is a national average, per the FTC's own caveat, unless you substitute your own.
Your usage pattern is not the test's usage pattern.
Only the purchase price is solid.
So the honest position is that a payback figure produced from a label is an illustration rather than a forecast, and anyone printing you a specific number of years has filled in at least two of the three missing inputs with assumptions they did not show you.
What you can do instead, if the running cost genuinely matters to the decision: take your own energy price from your own bill, take the label's stated energy consumption rather than its dollar figure, and multiply. That gives you a figure built on one number you can verify rather than on a national average.
Where ENERGY STAR sits in this
ENERGY STAR is a certification mark rather than the EnergyGuide label, and the two do different jobs. The label is a disclosure with numbers on it. The mark is a threshold: a product either meets the program's criteria for its category or it does not.
Practically, that means the mark is a filter and the label is the comparison. The mark narrows the shortlist; the label ranks what is on it.
And the criteria change over time, which is why a mark on a model from several years ago and a mark on a current model are not necessarily the same bar. If that matters to you, the program publishes its criteria by category and by date, and that is the place to check rather than a summary.
The thing that changes running cost more than the model does
Maintenance and settings, on the appliance you already have.
Two examples from this site, both of which cut against common advice rather than for it.
Refrigerator coils. The near-universal advice to clean them on a schedule is not what the manufacturer says. Whirlpool's own product help states routine condenser coil cleaning is not typically needed in a normal home, and that some models cannot be owner-cleaned at all: how to clean refrigerator coils.
Dishwasher filters and rinse aid. A neglected filter changes how a dishwasher performs, and rinse aid is part of the drying design on some machines rather than an upsell: how to clean a dishwasher filter and do you need rinse aid.
Neither of those is an energy claim and this page is not going to make one, because we found no source quantifying the running-cost effect of either. What they are is the cheap end of the same decision.
FAQ
Is the yearly cost on the EnergyGuide label what I will pay? No. The FTC states that it is an estimate based on typical use and a national average price for energy, and that your cost will depend on how you use the appliance and your local energy price.
What is the most useful part of the label? The comparability range, showing the highest and lowest energy consumption or efficiency among similar models. It places the model within its class without depending on the assumed energy price.
Will a new appliance pay for itself in energy savings? Nobody can tell you that from a label, because there is no published figure for your existing appliance's consumption in your household. Any specific payback period you are shown has had at least two inputs assumed for you.
What is the difference between ENERGY STAR and the EnergyGuide label? The label is a required disclosure carrying numbers. ENERGY STAR is a certification mark indicating a product meets the program's criteria for its category. The mark filters the shortlist; the label compares what is on it.
Which appliances have to carry the label? FTC materials list categories including clothes washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, water heaters, room air conditioners, central air conditioners, furnaces, boilers, heat pumps, pool heaters and televisions.
How do I get a figure that means something for my house? Use the label's stated energy consumption rather than its dollar figure, and multiply by the price on your own energy bill. That replaces the one assumption you can actually check.
Sources: Federal Trade Commission consumer guidance on the EnergyGuide label and FTC business guidance on energy labeling, checked 2026-08-28, for the covered product categories, the three primary disclosures including the estimated annual operating cost and the comparability range, and the statement that the estimated yearly operating cost is an estimate based on typical use and a national average price for energy with the reader's cost depending on usage and local energy price. Our fetcher received an HTTP 403 from consumer.ftc.gov on that date, so this guidance is reported from the FTC's own indexed pages rather than from a page we opened directly, and is labeled as such; that is our retrieval failing rather than anything on the FTC's side, and a writer with working access should replace this note with a direct read.
No energy price, consumption figure, cost saving, payback period or purchase price appears anywhere on this page. The Whirlpool condenser coil statement is carried from this site's own refrigerator coils article, which records its source and date. Nothing on this page discusses smart, connected or automated appliance features, which are another site's ground.
