11 Best Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators for Max Gains

Cryptocurrency mining can be an exciting venture, but there are a lot of details you need to consider before jumping in. With a huge variety of innovative mining equipment on the market and several assets to mine, you need to make sure you’re choosing the most profitable options available. Crypto mining profitability calculators offer miners estimates based on several different factors, enabling them to make faster, more informed decisions. Use this guide to learn more about crypto mining profitability calculators and their uses.

What Is Crypto Mining?

Crypto mining is the process of validating transactions on a blockchain network in exchange for a reward. While mining can be completed on personal computers, you’ll need specialized equipment to maximize your profits.

Factors Affecting Crypto Mining Profitability

Mining is a lot more complex than it sounds, and there are several factors that affect overall profitability. While the biggest factor is the equipment you’re using, there are many other things to consider. A crypto mining profitability calculator will account for most of these factors.

Hash Rate

Hash rate is the amount of power your equipment is generating to complete a blockchain transaction. Hashes are measured per second. For most home computer mining setups, you’ll likely be generating KH/s or kilo (thousands), MH/s or mega (millions), or GH/s or giga (billions) of hashes per second. More specialized equipment will have a higher output and could generate TH/s or tera (trillions), PH/s or peta (quadrillions), or EH/s or exa (quintillions) of hashes per second.

Power Consumption

Power consumption is the amount of energy spent to run the mining equipment. This unit is measured in watts (W). Most calculators will pull general information from the equipment manufacturer’s website to calculate this. While the number may seem small, it quickly adds up!

Electricity Costs

It’s no secret that electricity isn’t cheap. While your exact cost will vary from location to location, you’ll need to find out how much you’re paying per watt in order for the calculator to provide you with an accurate profitability estimate. If you can’t find the price per watt on your electricity bill, check your provider’s website. If you’re hoping to set up a mining location outside of your home, you can conduct extensive research on average electricity prices for each of the areas you’re considering.

Crypto Value

The market value of cryptocurrency changes every second. While some cryptocurrencies hold value over time, there’s always the possibility that a value can rise or plummet. Even if you aren’t mining altcoins and are focused on Bitcoin, you’ll need to pay close attention to market trends and prices if you want to maximize profitability.

Pool Fee

In order to improve the odds that you’ll successfully mine a new block, you might consider joining a mining pool. Whenever a new block is mined by the pool, each participant receives a portion of the reward equal to their contribution. Crypto mining pools collect the power of multiple miners and are hosted by an admin. Joining a mining pool eliminates some of the technical work an individual needs to do in order to become profitable. In exchange for the service, miners will contribute up to 3% of their individual reward to the pool on average.

Network Difficulty

Network difficulty refers to how hard it is to mine a single block. Typically, the more people mining on a blockchain, the more difficult it becomes to mine a block. For example, in 2009, the reward for mining a block of Bitcoin was 50 BTC. As more people mine the cryptocurrency, reducing the available number of BTC, the number of BTC rewarded is cut in half (although BTC’s value has grown over time, partly compensating for the 50% reduction). Bitcoin has had several halving events lowering its reward for miners, and it’s estimated that the reward will be 3.125 BTC by 2024. On average, a new Bitcoin is mined every 10 minutes.

Mining Setup

As mentioned above, your mining setup will have a huge impact on profitability. While most home computers can run mining software, they aren’t the most effective way to make money. You’ll most likely need to invest in a rig and multiple graphics cards or a specialized device. As your setup expands, you’ll also need to consider cooling equipment to optimize performance. If you’re planning on running multiple devices out of your home, you may want to consider adding noise-canceling insulation to the area.

Block Reward

Block reward is the amount you receive whenever you successfully mine a new block. This amount varies greatly from network to network. The amount can also change on a moment’s notice. Many miners compare different blockchain rewards before deciding what to mine long-term. Others invest in a setup that allows them to quickly switch between multiple blockchain networks, enabling them to mine whatever is the most profitable.

How to Calculate Crypto Mining Profitability

Figuring out how profitable your crypto mining venture will be is done by adding up your estimated expenses and then subtracting those from your estimated profits. 

While this can sound simple, it’s important to understand that these are estimates, and can change within seconds. A crypto mining profitability calculator helps to eliminate some of the lengthier calculations, such as how many watts of electricity your setup will use in a day. Not only does this make life easier, but it’s also critical if you need to do fast comparisons to purchase new equipment or switch between blockchains.

What Are Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators?

Crypto mining profitability calculators are tools that estimate the average reward a miner will earn. The calculators use the hash rate the equipment can produce, the amount and cost of the energy it will consume, and other factors to determine an estimate.

Pros of Using Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators

There are several reasons why miners may use calculators to determine profitability. They’re often a necessity for those trying to maximize their gains. Here are a few good reasons to bookmark a reliable profitability calculator.

Quickly See the Most Profitable Blockchain Networks

If you’ve invested in a setup that allows you to quickly switch between networks, you won’t be mining the same thing every day. That’s because the value of each cryptocurrency can change rapidly. Some networks also issue higher block rewards than others. Sometimes, new altcoins are the most profitable to mine. At other times, Bitcoin mining is your best bet. When you develop your mining strategy, you need to be able to see your estimated profits for multiple networks in order to determine where you’re going to focus your efforts.

Identify Changes That Impact Crypto Mining Profitability

Advanced calculators will often display factors such as network difficulty and reward amount. This information is automatically generated for you. Some calculators, such as the specialized ones at CryptoRival, even link you to the latest crypto news. This helps you to gain a better understanding of what affects profitability, and can help you decide if you need to change your strategies.

Calculators Save Time When Buying New Equipment

Thinking of purchasing a new graphics card for your rig? Wondering how much more profitable your venture would be if you invested in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware? While a calculator can only use information from the manufacturer’s website, it can still provide you with an estimate of how the new equipment will affect the profitability of your setup. This is incredibly useful, as technology is constantly advancing and many miners are constantly looking for ways to improve their profitability.

Cons of Using Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators

Of course, crypto mining profitability calculators aren’t perfect. While they are a useful tool, there are several downsides to becoming too reliant on them.

It’s Impossible to Account for Everything

There are several factors that calculators consider when providing an estimate. Unfortunately, they cannot account for things like equipment wear and tear. The calculators are also reliant on manufacturer-provided information to provide an estimate. 

If you’re relying on profitability calculators to make estimates for anything longer than a day, you’ll also need to consider possibilities such as internet connectivity issues, power outages and security breaches – all of which will affect your bottom line.

Some Calculators Make Assumptions

No one truly knows the exact future price of Bitcoin. While mining calculators can provide you with detailed profitability estimates, they typically can’t account for changes in price. This means that it’s impossible to reach 100% accuracy in comparing estimates to see how long it will take you to achieve profitability. The calculator assumes the price of an asset will be the same an hour, day, month or year from now.

The Learning Curve

While every calculator provides a wealth of information, they aren’t all “new-user friendly.” Only a few calculators offer straightforward information, such as NiceHash’s Bitcoin mining profitability calculator or BTC.com’s Mini Mining Profit Calculator. Others present you with a slew of information — and you’ll need to learn how to use it to your advantage if you want to truly maximize your profits.

Best Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators

If you search for crypto mining profitability calculators, you may be surprised by the number of results you see. While many calculators use the same formulas, they all have different interfaces and features. Some miners even find that they use different profitability calculators for different goals. Following are some of the best crypto mining profitability calculators available.

NiceHash

NiceHash is among the most trusted crypto mining profitability calculators. The platform is designed to be very user-friendly, and is geared toward individual investors. New miners wanting to start mining using their personal computers can use the auto detection feature to determine how profitable their CPU and GPU would be for mining. A manual selection option allows users to easily compare devices.

The biggest limitation of NiceHash is that it only displays information in BTC. NiceHash is designed to encourage users to mine Bitcoin with their user-friendly services. You won’t be able to compare your options if you’re planning on switching between Bitcoin and altcoins.

CryptoCompare

CryptoCompare is among the easiest calculators to use if you already know your average hashing power. Simply select the cryptocurrency you’re planning on mining. You can choose from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero, Zcash, Dash or Litecoin. Then enter in your hashing power, power consumption, electricity costs and pool fee percentages. The calculator will display your estimated profits by day, week, month and year.

The biggest downside of using CryptoCompare is that you need to already have a good understanding of your equipment before you can use it. It’s designed for miners who already know how much power they’re using, as well as their average hash rate. While this is great for established miners wanting to quickly switch between cryptocurrencies, it’s less helpful for people looking to invest in new devices.

CoinSmart

CoinSmart, a Canadian publicly traded company, offers a very simple and straightforward Bitcoin mining profitability calculator which accounts for current estimated difficulty and block rewards.t Users then enter their hash rate, BTC/CAD exchange rate, pool fees, hardware costs, power consumption, and costs in CAD. The calculator will then provide a profit estimation by day, week, month and year.

Like CryptoCompare, the CoinSmart calculator is good for providing miners with a general estimate of profitability. The biggest downside is that it’s limited to Bitcoin — and you need to have a lot of information handy in order to make the most out of the calculator. If you’re looking for a Bitcoin mining profitability calculator that’s simple to use and displays results in CAD rather than USD, CryptoCompare is a good choice.

CryptoRival

One of CryptoRival’s greatest features is that they have over 100 different calculators on their website to use. If you’re quickly switching between mining ventures, you can use their calculators to compare profitability. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Monero, Ravencoin, Dash and several other specialized calculators are available. Use the Search function in the left column to find the exact calculator you need.

Like other advanced crypto mining profitability calculators, you’ll need to know your hashing power, pool fees, power usage and other costs to get an accurate profitability estimate. CryptoRival will provide the mining difficulty and block reward information.

In addition to offering profitability estimates, CryptoRival offers real-time price information, news updates, exchange information and more. This can help you better understand the crypto that  you’re mining in order to make a more informed decision about your investment.

CoinWarz

CoinWarz offers several great calculators for miners who want to understand all their options. Like other advanced calculators on this list, you can customize a lot of the values to get a fairly accurate estimate.

The hash rate mining calculator found on their website can have a bit of a learning curve to it but allows miners to quickly compare the profitability of Bitcoin and several altcoins. In addition to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Litecoin, CoinWarz displays information for altcoins like Verge, Peercoin, Ravencoin and Horizen.

WhatToMine

WhatToMine is among the most popular free crypto mining calculators available. This detailed calculator supports several assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Horizen and Dash. Miners can use both GPU and ASIC calculators for a strong overview of which assets are the most profitable. They can also compare mining difficulty, estimated rewards and more.

If you’re new to mining cryptocurrency, the WhatToMine calculator can be a bit overwhelming. Creating an account will allow you to customize the calculator a bit more so you can quickly find the information you need to make decisions. If you want to compare GPU and miner equipment, WhatToMine also offers a top profitability ranking list for each. This can help you quickly explore new devices but doesn’t provide you with as many details on equipment as other calculators do.

Minerstat

Minerstat is another calculator designed to help miners choose between equipment. The tool quickly displays the most profitable devices based on the algorithm and electricity costs set by the user. With a subscription, users can also set up alerts, join mining pools, and find information on Bitcoin and trending altcoins before entering a pool.

BTC.com

BTC.com is another pool service that offers easy-to-use crypto mining profitability calculators. One thing that sets their calculator apart from others is the ability to add multiple miners into the equation. Simply enter the price of each miner, the number of miners you’re purchasing, estimated hash rate, power use and electricity costs. The price of Bitcoin, starting difficulty, difficulty increase and profit ratio should fill in automatically.

Miners who want a more simplified overview can utilize the BTC.com Mini Mining Profit Calculator, which calculates 24-hour earnings in BTC and BCH based on hash rate, current prices and pool fee rates. This is a great tool if you want something quick and easy to use.

Braiins Mining Insights

Braiins Mining Insights, previously known as Slush Pool, offers a very simple Bitcoin mining calculator with a few more advanced options, making it a worthy addition to this list. In addition to clearly displaying a custom estimate for up to 60 months at a time, you can input your initial capital expenses, fixed monthly expenses, hardware appreciation and depreciation over time, the amount of profit you intend to hold over time, and other advanced factors.

2CryptoCalc

2CryptoCalc is a simple-to-use crypto mining profitability calculator with several different options. The platform can be used with 26 cryptocurrencies, making it easy for miners to discover profitable altcoins to mine. After inputting the NVIDIA or AMD models you’re using, you’ll have the option to see the most profitable altcoins currently or within the last 24 hours.

In addition to providing updated calculations, 2CryptoCalc also tracks a list of the most profitable GPUs on the market. It tracks the average price of the GPU using data from Amazon, eBay and other sources to determine how quickly a new device would pay for itself.

SimpleMining.net

SimpleMining.net offers a simplified GPU mining calculator for Ether using data gathered from WhatToMine. Simply select the number of devices you have from the list of 70 popular GPU models and adjust your power costs. The total profit per day and month will automatically update, allowing you to quickly see how changes to your setup will affect profitability. While this calculator is very straightforward and easy to use, it’s limited to Ether. The list of GPU models is also limited, so some users may not find their equipment on the list.

Should You Use Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators?

When it comes to making money with cryptocurrency, time is of the essence. Crypto mining profitability calculators can provide you with the general information you need to quickly build or change your strategy. Even after your initial mining investment, you’ll need to be adaptable if you want to ensure long-term profitability. This means constantly comparing new equipment and assets. Learning how to use at least one of the calculators mentioned above will help save you time researching later.

Are Crypto Mining Profitability Calculators Accurate?

There are several factors that influence the overall profitability of a device. If you’re using a calculator to help you choose between GPUs and mining hardware, these estimates are provided using manufacturer information. Factors such as wear and tear, cooling and internet connection can affect the overall hash rate at which your equipment produces. If you’re mining using a personal computer, multi-tasking of any kind can affect your average hash rate.

Errors are also common on crypto mining profitability calculators. This could be due to user error when inputting hash rate, or the service fetching a slightly outdated asset price. That’s why it’s important to remember that the calculators provide estimates, not definitive answers. You’ll still need to conduct research on your own before developing a successful mining strategy.

The Bottom Line

Crypto mining profitability calculators are a great tool for new and established miners looking to develop reliable strategies and maximize their gains. While some calculators can be complex and have a learning curve, they can quickly provide you with a wealth of information, saving you time in the long run. If you’re planning on changing your mining strategy or investing in new equipment, utilizing at least one calculator to estimate your profitability is a wise choice.