Home espresso vs coffee shop: what a cup really costs

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Pick a machine from our check, enter what you pay for a drink at the counter, and the calculator puts both on one receipt: beans by the gram, milk by the ounce, electricity by the watt and the minute, then how many months the machine (plus a grinder if it has none) takes to pay for itself. Every price comes from a dated source; the café price is yours.

How the calculation works

1. Beans. Grams per drink divided by 453.6 (grams in a pound), times your price per pound. Two prices are offered: the median of 1,291 in-stock whole-bean bags (8 to 80 oz, no decaf, pods or subscriptions) listed by Seattle Coffee Gear, Clive Coffee, Espresso Outlet and Chris' Coffee on November 7, 2026, which is $26.65 per lb [calc]; and the Bureau of Labor Statistics average retail price of ground coffee, series APU0000717311, $9.33 per lb in September 2026.
2. Dose. 20 g, the "Coffee Dose" in Blue Bottle's espresso brew guide, which says its short pull uses "the same dose of coffee as a traditional shot". Super-automatics often grind less per cup; set your own.
3. Milk. Ounces per drink divided by 128, times the BLS average for whole milk per gallon, series APU0000709112 ($4.106 in September 2026).
4. Electricity. The machine's published power in watts, times the minutes its heater runs at full power each day, divided by the drinks you make, times your state's average residential price (EIA Electric Power Monthly, table 5.6.A, August 2026). By default the minutes are the published warm-up time plus one minute per drink; where no warm-up time is published we assume 10 minutes and say so. This overstates the bill: once hot, heaters cycle.
5. Payback. The machine at its lowest in-stock store price, plus the cheapest grinder in our check when the machine has none built in (or the grinder you pick, or none if you own one), divided by what you save per month: (café price minus home cost) times drinks a day times 30.44 days.

What a drink costs at home, machine by machine

Two drinks a day, 20 g of specialty beans at the median price, no milk, U.S. average electricity, against a $5.00 café drink (an example: use the calculator for yours). The grinder column adds the cheapest grinder in our check (Baratza Encore ESP, $199.95) to machines without one [calc].

How we compare: criteria, sources and dates

Where the beans come from

The median hides a wide spread. Per store, from the same count:

How we compare: criteria, sources and dates

Before you buy a machine, check the space it needs with will it fit under my cabinets, and compare every model and store price in the espresso machine comparison.