How Much Energy Does AI Use? The Real 2026 Numbers
How much energy does AI use? A single normal text prompt uses roughly 0.24 watt-hours, Google’s official figure for a median Gemini prompt, to about 0.34 watt-hours for an average ChatGPT query. That is about what an oven uses in one second. The model you pick changes everything. For a chatbot built specifically around lighter, lower-energy models, see our GreenPT review. An independent 2025 benchmark put Claude Sonnet at roughly 2.8 Wh for a medium prompt, DeepSeek-V3 near 2 Wh for a medium prompt, and DeepSeek-R1 reasoning at about 29 Wh, the same heavyweight tier as GPT-5-class models. Credible per-prompt estimates span more than 65x. At scale the picture is […]
