Bitcoin Miner ROI Calculator
Calculate payback period, break-even BTC price, and break-even network difficulty for any Bitcoin ASIC. Live price and difficulty. Override any input to model custom scenarios.
Sensitivity table — payback period in days
How payback period changes as BTC price and network difficulty move. Read down for price scenarios, across for difficulty. Green = shorter payback; red = longer. Cells show days (or never if the miner loses money).
| ↓ price / difficulty → | −20% | −10% | Current | +10% | +20% |
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How Bitcoin miner ROI is calculated
Every mining ROI calculator uses the same basic formulas. Here's exactly what this tool does under the hood.
1. Daily BTC mined
Your miner earns a fraction of each block reward proportional to its share of the global network hashrate. Across 144 blocks per day:
Daily BTC = (your hashrate ÷ network hashrate) × 144 × block reward × uptime × (1 − pool fee)
Network hashrate is derived from difficulty: network hashrate (H/s) = difficulty × 2³² ÷ 600
2. Daily revenue, costs, and profit
Revenue is daily BTC mined × BTC price. Costs are your electricity: power (kW) × 24h × $/kWh. Profit is revenue minus cost. Hosting fees? Factor them into your kWh rate.
3. Payback period
payback = hardware cost ÷ daily profit. If daily profit is zero or negative, the miner will never pay for itself at those assumptions — which is exactly why the sensitivity table is more useful than a single number.
4. Break-even BTC price and difficulty
The break-even BTC price is where daily revenue exactly equals daily electricity cost. Below it, you're losing money on power before hardware is even considered. The break-even difficulty is the same concept in reverse.
5. Why the sensitivity table matters
BTC price and network difficulty are the two most volatile inputs — and they're correlated. In a bull market both typically rise together. The table shows payback across a range of joint scenarios, not just today's spot numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the live BTC price come from?
CoinGecko's public price API, with a fallback to Coinbase. If both are unavailable the calculator still works — just enter a BTC price manually in the inputs above.
Where does the live difficulty come from?
blockchain.info's public getdifficulty endpoint, which reports the current block difficulty. Updated approximately every 10 minutes as new blocks are found.
Is the block reward still 6.25 BTC?
No. The April 2024 halving reduced the block reward to 3.125 BTC, which is the value used here. The next halving is expected around 2028 and will reduce it to 1.5625 BTC.
Why does my payback look different from WhatToMine?
Most calculators assume 100% uptime and 0% pool fees. Real-world mining runs at 95–99% uptime (reboots, heat, firmware updates) and pays 0.5–2% pool fees. This tool exposes both as inputs so you can model reality instead of best-case assumptions.
Does this account for rising network difficulty?
The base calculation uses current difficulty. The sensitivity table shows what happens at ±10% and ±20% — roughly one or two retargets worth of movement. Historically Bitcoin difficulty has trended up over multi-year windows, so a conservative projection should assume difficulty will be higher than today by the end of your payback period.
What about hardware depreciation and resale value?
This calculator treats hardware cost as a full sunk cost, which is the conservative approach. For a more optimistic view, estimate a resale value at the end of your holding period and subtract it from hardware cost before entering it in the tool.
About this tool
Built by Chris Johnson at Faith Mining LLC — an IT specialist documenting the real numbers behind small-scale Bitcoin mining and crypto side income. Everything here is built the way I'd want it as a miner: no login, no ads (yet), no fluff.
Follow the journey on YouTube (@FaithMiningLabs) for weekly videos on mining ROI, ASIC reviews, and tools like this one. Found a bug? Drop a comment on the latest video.