How Much Power Does an Industrial Robot Use? A 95x Spread
Across 75 robots that publish a power figure, draw runs from 100W to 9,500W, a 95x spread. The median cobot costs about $121 a year to run; a heavy palletizer closer to $3,300. The breakdown by type, with real specs.
An industrial robot’s electricity bill is almost never the number that decides a project, but buyers consistently guess it wrong in both directions. Some assume a robot is a power hog; others forget it draws anything at all. Across the 75 robots in the Industrial Robotics Hub database that publish a power-consumption figure, draw runs from 100W to 9,500W. That is a 95x spread, and it tracks robot type so cleanly that you can budget energy from the type alone before you ever see a model number.
The short answer: a typical cobot costs roughly the same to run as a desktop computer. A heavy palletizer costs as much as a small household.
How much electricity does an industrial robot use?
Power consumption sorts almost perfectly by robot type, because it is driven by mass and motor size, not by brand. Here is the median nameplate draw for each type in our database, alongside what that costs per year.
Median nameplate power draw by robot type. Source: analysis of 75 robots in the Industrial Robotics Hub database that publish a power-consumption figure. Delta (n=2) sample is too small to rank.
The cobot median of 350W is genuinely small. To put it in everyday terms, Universal Robots states its UR3e draws 100W on average (“the same amount of energy as an average desktop computer”), the UR5e about 200W (“the newest generation of gaming consoles”), and the UR10e and UR16e about 350W (“a basic household blender”). Those manufacturer figures match our database records for the same models exactly, which is a good sign the published numbers are honest.
What does it cost per year to run?
Multiply power by operating hours by the electricity rate. For a defensible benchmark, use the 2025 US average industrial retail price of 8.62 cents per kWh from the US Energy Information Administration and a two-shift year of roughly 4,000 operating hours. Here is the annual energy cost for a spread of real models in our database.
| Robot | Type | Payload | Power | Energy cost/yr (2-shift) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universal Robots UR3e | Cobot | 3 kg | 100 W | $34 |
| Universal Robots UR5e | Cobot | 5 kg | 200 W | $69 |
| ABB GoFa CRB 15000-10 | Cobot | 10 kg | 285 W | $98 |
| Universal Robots UR10e | Cobot | 12.5 kg | 350 W | $121 |
| Yaskawa Motoman GP50 | Articulated | 50 kg | 4,500 W | $1,552 |
| FANUC M-410iB/700 | Palletizer | 700 kg | 6,000 W | $2,069 |
| FANUC M-2000iA/1700L | Articulated | 1,700 kg | 8,500 W | $2,931 |
| Yaskawa Motoman PL320 | Palletizer | 320 kg | 9,500 W | $3,276 |
Annual energy cost = nameplate watts x 4,000 hours x $0.0862/kWh. Source: power figures from the Industrial Robotics Hub database; electricity price from EIA 2025 US industrial average. Figures use nameplate (peak) power, so real averages are typically lower.
One caveat matters: these are nameplate figures, the manufacturer’s rated draw, not a measured average. A robot rarely sits at peak power. It spends much of a cycle decelerating, waiting on upstream parts, or holding position, all of which draw less. Treat the table as a ceiling for budgeting, not a meter reading. RoboDK notes that smarter trajectories, lower acceleration where cycle time allows, and idle/sleep modes can pull real consumption well below nameplate.
Why cobots sip and heavy arms gulp
The gap is not waste, it is physics. A cobot spends most of its energy holding its own lightweight arm up against gravity, not moving a load. There is little mass to accelerate, the motors are small, and many designs add sleep modes, low-friction joints, and passive cooling. In our data, 22 of the 38 cobots with a published figure (58%) draw 500W or less. German manufacturer fruitcore robotics frames it the same way: small arms run on a quarter to half a kilowatt, in the range of household appliances.
A heavy palletizer is the opposite case. It swings hundreds of kilograms of payload plus its own multi-hundred-kilogram structure through fast, repeated arcs, and that mass has to be accelerated and braked every cycle. The five palletizers with published figures sit at a 6,000W median, and the two Yaskawa Motoman PL-series units hit 9,500W. The articulated arms land in between, at a 2,000W median, climbing with payload toward the heavy end.
This is why the cobot-versus-industrial choice has a small energy dimension on top of the usual ones. As covered in our cobot-vs-industrial buyer guide, cobots win on flexibility and floor space; they also happen to win decisively on raw power draw. But raw watts are a trap if you stop there. A 350W cobot that outputs half as many parts per hour as a 2,000W arm is not five times cheaper to run per part. Energy per unit of useful output, not energy per hour, is the figure that actually matters, and a slow low-wattage arm can lose that comparison.
Where energy fits in total cost of ownership
For the vast majority of cells, robot electricity is a rounding error. Hardware, integration, end-of-arm tooling, safety, and the labor the robot offsets dominate the true cost of an industrial robot by orders of magnitude. A cobot costing $121 a year in power next to a six-figure installed cell is not a number anyone optimizes.
Energy earns a line in the business case in exactly one situation: heavy robots running at high duty cycle. A 6,000 to 9,500W palletizer on a three-shift, near-continuous schedule can cross several thousand dollars a year, and over a ten-year service life that is real money worth comparing across candidate models. If your application is continuous heavy palletizing or high-payload material handling, pull the power spec into the shortlist. If it is a cobot doing machine tending two shifts a day, do not bother; the difference between the most and least efficient cobot in our database is about $90 a year.
The practical frame: filter on the specs that decide the project first, payload-at-reach, repeatability, reach, IP rating, then sanity-check energy only at the heavy end. Power consumption is a published spec on every robot in our database that reports it, so when it matters, it is one click away on the cobot and palletizer type pages and on each model’s spec sheet.
Know which end of the 95x spread you are buying. For most buyers, that single fact is the entire energy conversation.
Analysis based on the 75 of 263 robots in the Industrial Robotics Hub database that publish a power-consumption specification. Annual costs use nameplate power and a 4,000-hour two-shift year at the 2025 US industrial average of $0.0862/kWh; your actual figure scales with your local rate and duty cycle.
Frequently asked questions
How much electricity does an industrial robot use? +
It depends almost entirely on size. Across the 75 robots in the Industrial Robotics Hub database that publish a power figure, draw runs from 100W (a UR3e cobot) to 9,500W (a Yaskawa PL190/PL320 palletizer), a 95x spread. The median cobot draws about 350W, comparable to a desktop PC; the median articulated arm 2,000W; heavy palletizers 6,000W and up.
How much does it cost to run an industrial robot per year? +
At the 2025 US average industrial electricity price of 8.62 cents per kWh (EIA) and a two-shift year of roughly 4,000 operating hours, the median cobot at 350W costs about $121 a year. A 2,000W articulated arm costs about $690, and a 6,000W palletizer about $2,069. These use nameplate power, so real averages are usually lower because robots rarely draw peak continuously.
Do cobots use less power than industrial robots? +
Yes, by a wide margin. 22 of the 38 cobots with a published figure draw 500W or less. A cobot spends most of its energy holding its own arm up against gravity rather than moving a heavy load, and many add sleep modes and low-friction joints. The trade-off is throughput: a low-wattage cobot that outputs fewer parts per hour is not automatically cheaper per part.
Is robot energy cost a big part of total cost of ownership? +
For most cells, no. Energy is a minor line next to hardware, integration, and labor, which dominate robot TCO. It becomes material only for heavy, high-duty-cycle robots running continuously, where a 6,000-9,500W palletizer can cost several thousand dollars a year and the figure belongs in the business case.
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