Enter your fridge's Energy Guide kWh/year rating (or estimate from wattage) and your rate to see the real annual cost.
The yellow Energy Guide label's kWh/year figure already accounts for real-world compressor duty cycling, so it's more accurate than estimating from nameplate wattage alone.
Unlike a space heater that runs continuously at one wattage, a refrigerator's compressor cycles on and off constantly, so its nameplate wattage alone would overstate actual usage. The yellow Energy Guide sticker's kWh/year number already bakes in real-world cycling, which is why this is the most accurate way to estimate cost — feed the same number into the electricity cost calculator if you only have wattage instead.
Check the yellow EnergyGuide label on the appliance itself, or search the model number on the manufacturer's site or the ENERGY STAR product database.
Refrigerators from the 1990s or earlier can use 2-3× the energy of a modern ENERGY STAR model — plugging both kWh/year ratings into this calculator makes the replacement math concrete.