Best home energy monitors in 2025: Which one is right for you?

The cost of electricity is rising across the country, which means that reducing your energy consumption now can save you more money than ever. If you're looking to reduce your electric bill as prices increase, it's worth considering a home energy monitor.

Home energy monitors allow you to easily see how much energy individual appliances are using in your home, providing you with valuable insight into when and where they could be wasting electricity. Installing an energy monitor can help you set and achieve both your clean energy and financial goals, because they offer personalized recommendations to optimize when and how your appliances are using power.

“Overall, the reasons to install an energy monitor can go far beyond behavior change, though it can certainly help with that. It gives insight into your home in a way that isn’t available any other way,” Joel Rosenberg, senior program manager for special projects at the advocacy nonprofit Rewiring America, told EnergySage.

Most models sell for $300 or less, which makes a home energy monitor a decent investment for any aspiring energy aficionado, if only for the opportunity to better understand your household energy usage and how to pare it down.

If you've ever looked closely at your electric bill, you know it doesn't provide you with all that much information. Your bill will tell you how much electricity you've used and how much it costs —unfortunately, that's about it.

Let's say you want to cut your energy use to save money or reduce your carbon footprint. You'll have to cut down on your electricity consumption, but how do you know which devices in your home are the heaviest users and when they cost the most money to run? Energy monitors help by eliminating this guessing game. 

Energy monitors are a gateway to the inner energy workings of your home. They connect to your electricity meter to show how much energy your home uses and provide information about how you can make your home more energy efficient. Energy monitors come with various features, from the ability to recognize the energy usage of individual appliances to generating personalized recommendations for energy efficiency overall. 

Depending on the monitor you choose, you may track your consumption at the appliance, circuit, or whole home level – all remotely from your mobile device. Your monitoring app will often provide you with additional insights, from how to increase your energy efficiency to when to use the most electricity to maximize your savings based on the cost of electricity at different times of the day.

Typically, energy monitors sit next to your electrical panel (aka breaker box). If you have a smart panel, like Span, it will have built-in monitoring capability, delivering energy monitoring and insights at the circuit level. However, if you have an add-on energy monitor, it probably comes with sensors. These sensors may clamp onto your service mains – the wires between your electric meter and your electrical panel – and "read" your home's electrical current. They can then provide an overview of how much electricity your home uses. More advanced systems may use machine learning to recognize the "electricity signatures" associated with your home's appliances to provide device-level monitoring. 

Instead of connecting to service mains, some sensors connect directly to individual circuits, providing circuit-level monitoring. Either way, your energy monitor will deliver its findings to your smartphone or computer as actionable insights. 

Why would you want a home energy monitor?

At the highest level, you'll be able to understand how much electricity your home consumes, but many monitors will provide you with even more detailed information, whether at the device or circuit level. Want to see if any phantom loads are consuming electricity, even when powered off? Your monitor could give you that insight so you can start unplugging devices using up energy even when you're not using them. Unsure if you closed the garage door? Your energy monitoring app could show you when you last operated it. 

Overall, the goal of purchasing an energy monitor is typically to cut your electricity usage and, as a result, to save you money.

Energy monitors are great devices for understanding your electricity usage – but they're most valuable when you take action based on the information they provide. If you don't think having these insights will change your behavior, an energy monitor might not be the right choice for you. 

“My honest opinion is that it’s a nice-to-have. I don’t think it’s essential,” Meg Howard, a program director for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, told EnergySage. “If you’re interested, it can help you understand your energy use and make smart decisions, but it’s certainly not something you need to have an electrified home.”

However, Howard said energy monitors can be particularly attractive if you live in an area with time-of-use (TOU) rates, meaning you pay more for electricity at certain times of the day when demand is higher. Some monitoring apps will even allow you to enter the TOU rates in your area, so they can suggest when to cut down your energy consumption accordingly. For example, it may cost less for you to do laundry or run your dishwasher during the day than at night: Your energy monitor can help you figure out the best time (or times) to run different appliances to streamline your energy consumption and maximize your savings. 

You may also consider purchasing an energy monitor if you have a solar or solar-plus-storage system. Some energy monitors will come with additional current sensors that clamp onto your solar wires, allowing you to track how much energy your solar panels generate and how much electricity you consume. With this information, you can increase your electricity usage during the day to pull less power from the grid – or your storage system – at night.

“This can be very helpful for figuring out when to run certain appliances to maximize solar use, especially as solar net metering rules change around the country,” said Rosenberg from Rewiring America.

For most homeowners, purchasing an energy monitor is a great decision – but your upfront costs and long-term savings will largely depend on your chosen product. Not all energy monitors are created equal, so we'll walk you through the factors you should consider to help you determine the best fit for your needs. 

Appliance recognition

Some energy monitors use built-in artificial intelligence to learn specific device signatures of your appliances. Each appliance has a unique way of using electricity. Over time, these energy monitors will determine which appliances are running based on how they use your electricity. This "machine learning" period can take weeks to months, which can be frustrating if you want to start monitoring at the appliance level immediately. Ultimately, an energy monitor equipped with appliance recognition will make quick judgments on the detected appliances and, via your monitoring app, report on specific information and actions you can take on those appliances. 

It's important to remember that only some monitors have this feature, and the technology doesn't always work perfectly for those that do. It's usually easy for the monitor to detect differences between a TV and a refrigerator, but devices that use electricity similarly (think heating devices, like a toaster and a curling iron) may be more challenging. 

Real-time cost tracking

Some, but not all, home energy monitors allow you to track the cost of your energy consumption in real time. Real-time cost tracking will let you watch as your electricity consumption and costs increase or decrease. You'll also be able to see and understand the effects of turning devices on and off – such as keeping your TV on in the background. This feature can be essential for maximizing cost savings. 

Mobile apps and notifications

Make sure that any energy monitor you choose has a mobile app component. This app should send you notifications about things such as which appliances are running, tips for further savings, and warnings on abnormal appliance behavior, which could help you proactively replace a malfunctioning appliance. If you want to receive notifications about a specific issue with your electricity use, confirm that your chosen product has that functionality. 

Solar-ready monitor options

As we've explained, one of the best times to purchase an energy monitor is if you have already or are planning to install solar. If you fall into one of these categories, you'll want to ensure that the monitor you choose is solar-ready, meaning it can monitor your solar electricity production. Energy monitors with this option allow you to see how much energy your solar panels generate, when they generate it, and how you use it.

Installation

Unless you're familiar with your electrical panel, we recommend consulting an electrician for your energy monitor installation. Many home energy monitors market themselves as do-it-yourself, but any project attaching a device to your electrical panel will have shock hazards. Bringing an electrician to your house for the installation will increase the total cost of the equipment, but once installed, the devices allow for significant savings. Hiring a certified electrician for installation can provide confidence in your system.

Many companies now offer energy monitors, with features that vary by model. In general, the more information the monitor provides, the more expensive it will be – but the more you can act on the insights and reduce your energy consumption. Right now, there are three main players on the market:

Home Energy Monitor by Sense

To get the most detailed level of insight on your home with the least amount of work,  consider Sense Home Energy. This product has staked its claim to popularity on its advanced programming to automatically identify appliances within your home, though not right away – it may take weeks or months and some users note that some of their smaller appliances were never properly identified. Still, that provides intel about energy usage on nearly a device by device basis across your home, with minimal work required on the user’s end. With the Sense mobile app, you can get immediate notifications and updates on every appliance in your home, see what devices might have been left on or running, and track your month-over-month energy statistics – including costs. It can also be integrated with some smart devices, including smart plugs, smart bulbs, and Alexa. Sense is among the more expensive options, running at about $300 on Amazon.

Home Energy Monitor by Schneider Electric

Formerly known as the Wiser energy monitor, Schneider’s product was developed in partnership with Sense and functions quite similarly, installing in your home's electrical panel and, over time, automatically identifying the appliances using energy in your home. Schneider was an early investor in Sense and its monitor was brought to market in partnership with the startup. Users were previously able to connect to Sense’s app to monitor energy usage. As of 2024, however, they have been shifted over to Schneider’s Wiser app. The app provides real-time energy usage, notifies you when devices turn on or off, helps you track energy savings, allows you to set energy goals, and gives recommended actions to reduce waste and save money. On the pricier side, Schneider’s monitors are listed at over $330 on Home Depot’s website.

Vue 3 Energy Monitor by Emporia

Emporia’s Vue monitor is a budget-friendly alternative to Sense and seems to be well-loved by its users. While the base model monitors your home’s main power breaker, offering only a general overview of your home’s energy use, you can add sensors that clamp onto individual circuits in your electrical panel for a much more detailed look. Users can label these circuits—“kitchen,” for example, or “dryer,” “EV charger,” or “heat pump”—to track energy use by area or appliance. You can get even more granular data for devices plugged into Emporia smart plugs. Vue integrates smoothly with other Emporia products, including its smart EV charger, which can be paired with the monitor to optimize charging—like syncing with time-of-use rates or drawing from excess solar power. The system also works with some third-party smart thermostats and appliances. Emporia’s app offers a wide range of charts, insights, and alerts for unusual energy use. Vue’s basic monitor is $100 on Amazon, while kits with eight and sixteen sensors cost about $150 and $200, respectively.

Other energy monitors

There are other products on the market, such as Eyedro’s home energy monitor, that may be a good, cost-effective solution for some users but have less functionality than the other options. Eyedro’s product, at $150, does not offer appliance-level information but integrates well with solar installations.

Do home energy monitors save households money?

Some studies have shown that home energy monitor users adjust their behavior to some extent. One study out of Canada, for example, found homes with energy monitors decreasing electricity usage by up to 15%, and by about 7% on average. Sense reports that its users reduce their bills by about 8%. 

Not only do energy monitors get people to recognize and change their consumption habits, they can also help users identify appliances that are using more energy than they should – alerting them to the need for a repair or replacement. And they can help users recognize and take action against so-called vampire power and phantom loads – those always-on, hardly noticeable uses of electricity from devices like televisions, which draw some power even when they’re off — which adds up over time.

As new models of energy monitors increasingly integrate with smart appliances and allow users to automate their energy usage, the better they become at helping reduce household energy use overall — and the more savings you as a homeowner will ultimately see.