Monero Mining Profitability in 2026: The Numbers Calculators Leave Out
A Monero mining calculator gives you one number and hides the one that decides whether you make money. The formula itself is simple arithmetic. Everything that makes mining profitable or pointless — your electricity price, your memory configuration, and whether the network hashrate you were quoted is even real — sits outside it.
Here is the arithmetic, the current network figures, and the honest answer to whether mining is a sensible way to get Monero.
Key points
- Network hashrate is ~6.1–6.2 GH/s (20 Sept 2026) — and it is down about 18% from January's all-time high of 7.54 GH/s. Difficulty does not only go up.
- Network hashrate is not measured. It is difficulty divided by 120 — a statistical inference that swings 10–25% day to day.
- RandomX ASICs exist — and they are competitively useless. Bitmain's Antminer X5 manages 6.37 J/kH; a Ryzen 9 9950X does 6.30 J/kH. ASIC resistance worked.
- Break-even electricity is $0.17–$0.24/kWh for typical CPUs. The US average sits inside that band. The EU average is above all of it.
- Pool centralisation is worse than the MineXMR era: the top three pools hold ~68%, one holds 33.5%. P2Pool is 6.3%.
The formula, and where calculators go wrong
Daily earnings are:
XMR/day = (your hashrate ÷ network hashrate) × 720 × block reward × (1 − pool fee)
720 is blocks per day at Monero's two-minute target. At current figures that works out to roughly 0.00007 XMR per kH/s per day. A 27 kH/s desktop earns about 0.69 XMR per year. We checked that against a major pool's own published device estimate and landed within 2%, so the arithmetic is sound.
The errors are all in the inputs, and they are not the ones people warn you about:
| Input | Real error size | Usually blamed? |
|---|---|---|
| Stale XMR price | Price moved ~8% in the 24h we researched this | No |
| Network hashrate noise | ±10–25% day to day | No |
| Power cost omitted | Flips the sign entirely | Rarely |
| Pool fee | 0.6–1% ≈ $2–4 a year | Constantly |
Pool fees are the thing every guide tells you to watch, and they are worth two to four dollars a year on a high-end desktop. Power cost and price volatility are fifty to a hundred times larger. Majoring in the minor is the defining feature of this genre.
One rare case where calculators understate: many hardcode the block reward at exactly 0.6 XMR. The tail emission is 0.6, but observed rewards run around 0.6086 XMR because transaction fees are included — about 1.4% more than the hardcoded figure.
We list 5 calculators in the mining category. None of them currently hold verified status, which is itself a comment on the category.
Current network numbers
| Metric | Value (20 Sept 2026) |
|---|---|
| Network hashrate | ~6.1–6.2 GH/s |
| Difficulty | ~734–748 billion |
| Block time / blocks per day | 120 s / 720 |
| Observed block reward | ~0.6086 XMR (0.6 tail + fees) |
| All-time-high hashrate | 7.54 GH/s, 16 January 2026 |
| Current vs peak | ~82% |
Two things here contradict the standard narrative.
Hashrate is down, not up. The reflexive warning that "difficulty always rises, so your real return is worse than the calculator shows" has been wrong for eight months. Difficulty is volatile and unforecastable in both directions. An ROI model that assumes today's difficulty for two years is unreliable either way.
Hashrate is not a measurement. It is derived from difficulty — literally difficulty ÷ 120. Both figures in the table check out exactly against that relationship. So a calculator quoting an instantaneous hashrate has error bars an order of magnitude wider than the pool fee it is warning you about.
What consumer hardware actually does
| Hardware | Hashrate | Power | Efficiency | Break-even $/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 9950X | 27.0 kH/s | 170 W | 6.30 J/kH | $0.244 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | 21.5 kH/s | 200 W | 9.30 J/kH | $0.165 |
| Ryzen 5 5600X (tuned) | 7.4 kH/s | 58 W | 7.84 J/kH | $0.196 |
| Antminer X5 (ASIC) | 212 kH/s | 1350 W | 6.37 J/kH | $0.241 |
The ASIC question, answered properly
Two claims circulate and both are wrong. "RandomX is ASIC-proof" is false — Bitmain shipped the Antminer X5 in September 2023. "ASICs have taken over Monero mining" is also false.
Look at the efficiency column. The purpose-built ASIC manages 6.37 J/kH. A consumer desktop CPU manages 6.30 J/kH. Their break-even electricity prices are within a third of a cent of each other. Bitmain built the chip and it cannot beat a CPU per watt. Its only real advantage is density — more hashes per rack, not per joule.
That is what ASIC resistance succeeding actually looks like, and it is the least-reported fact in this whole topic.
Memory channels matter more than almost anything
RandomX is memory-hard, and the official optimisation guidance is specific: DDR4 delivers roughly 4,000–6,000 H/s per memory channel, DDR3 only 1,500–2,000. That means single-channel versus dual-channel is close to a 2× difference in hashrate, which is the largest hardware variable after the CPU itself — and is essentially never mentioned. A laptop with one memory stick is crippled before it starts.
The algorithm also needs about 2 GB of dataset per NUMA node, plus 256 KB of L2 and 2 MB of L3 cache per mining thread. That cache requirement is why the miner refuses to use all your threads, which is the single most common "is it broken?" question.
On tuning, the real ranking is not what blogs claim:
- Regular huge pages: up to +50%. By far the biggest win, and the one to do first.
- 1 GB huge pages (Linux): a further +1–3%. Not the game-changer it is sold as.
- MSR tweaks: roughly +5% to +30%, heavily hardware-dependent — published results range from +6% on one chip to +28% on another.
Electricity decides everything
Break-even is simply: (XMR per day × price) ÷ (watts × 24 ÷ 1000). Run it for the hardware above and the picture is unambiguous.
| Hardware | Break-even | At US avg (~18.3¢) | At EU avg (~28.8¢) | At 5¢ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 9950X | $0.244 | +$91/yr | −$66/yr | +$288/yr |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $0.165 | −$31/yr | −$215/yr | +$201/yr |
| Ryzen 5 5600X | $0.196 | +$7/yr | −$47/yr | +$73/yr |
Typical CPUs land between $0.17 and $0.24/kWh break-even. The US residential average sits inside that band, so US home mining is roughly break-even and depends entirely on which chip you own. The EU average is above every break-even in the table — at typical European rates, every machine listed loses money.
And note what is excluded: hardware cost, cooling, the rest of the system's idle draw, and downtime. These are marginal-cost figures for a CPU you already own. Buying hardware specifically to mine does not pay back at these numbers.
Pools, P2Pool and solo
Centralisation is the live issue, and it is worse now than during the MineXMR era that everyone still writes about.
| Pool | Share of network | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| SupportXMR | 33.5% | 0.6% |
| Nanopool | 19.5% | 1% |
| Kryptex | 15.5% | 1% |
| HashVault | 8.9% | 0.9% |
| P2Pool (all chains) | 6.3% | 0% |
| MoneroOcean | 3.2% | 0% |
Top three centralised pools: about 68% of the network. MineXMR shut down voluntarily in August 2022 having reached roughly 48%, and explicitly told its miners to move to P2Pool. Four years later the concentration is higher and P2Pool sits at 6.3%.
There was also a serious scare in 2025, when the Qubic project went from under 2% to over 25% of hashrate in two months and claimed majority control, with a reported 18-block reorganisation in September 2025. The reorg is documented; the majority claim was disputed by independent researchers and was never verifiable from self-reported pool data. Treat it as a documented reorg plus a contested claim — an r/Monero thread from September 2025 asking how to "help against takeover with home PC" captures the moment.
P2Pool, and the sidechain nobody mentions
P2Pool has no operator and no fee. Payouts arrive directly in the coinbase transaction of any block the sidechain finds while your shares are in the window — no pool balance, no withdrawal, no custody. It needs your own synced daemon, which can be pruned.
Which sidechain you pick matters enormously, and this is where most guides are out of date:
| Chain | Hashrate needed for ~1 share in the window | Suited to |
|---|---|---|
| main | ~908 kH/s | Farms only |
| mini | ~12.2 kH/s | A good desktop |
| nano | ~1.9 kH/s | A laptop or old quad-core |
A single 27 kH/s desktop on the main chain averages about a day and a half per share — effectively useless. Most 2026 guides still say "use mini" and never mention that nano exists, added in P2Pool v4.7. If you are running one consumer CPU, nano is the answer.
Solo mining has identical expected value to pooled mining — same formula, same reward — only the variance differs. At 27 kH/s against 6.2 GH/s you would average one block roughly every 320 days.
We track 14 pools and the wider mining category of 34 services.
Laptops, malware and "cloud mining"
Laptops are the worst possible platform, on every axis at once. Documented behaviour shows sustained RandomX pushing a mobile chip from 3.5 GHz down to 2.4 GHz with the CPU sitting at 85–95°C — heat, not compute, is the binding constraint. Combine that with the single-memory-channel problem above and you have low hashrate, poor efficiency, and shortened hardware life.
Your antivirus flags the miner for a real reason. Roughly 89% of cryptojacking malware is built on XMRig, because RandomX runs well on any CPU. That is why the detection exists — and why you should only ever use official releases and verify hashes. Mining on hardware you do not own is abuse, full stop.
Cloud and hosted mining contracts do not work arithmetically. Forget the scam statistics for a moment and look at the numbers above: the entire network runs at 6.2 GH/s and break-even is around $0.24/kWh. Anyone selling you guaranteed returns on rented XMR hashrate is promising a margin that does not exist. Guaranteed returns, locked withdrawals, and demands for an upfront payment to release funds are the standard markers — and this sector has produced prosecutions running into hundreds of millions of dollars.
So should you mine, or just buy?
The right measure is effective acquisition cost — annual power spend divided by XMR mined, for hardware you already own:
| Electricity | Ryzen 9 9950X | Ryzen 5 5600X | vs buying |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5¢/kWh | ~$107/XMR | ~$133/XMR | 75–80% discount |
| 10¢/kWh | ~$214/XMR | ~$267/XMR | 49–59% discount |
| US avg 18.3¢ | ~$392/XMR | ~$488/XMR | 7–25% discount |
| EU avg 28.8¢ | ~$618/XMR | ~$769/XMR | 18–47% worse than buying |
Below about 10¢/kWh, mining genuinely acquires XMR at a steep discount. At the US average the discount is thin and comes with a year of price and difficulty risk. At typical European rates you pay more than spot — mining to acquire Monero in most of Europe is strictly worse than buying it.
There is also a throughput reality check: a high-end desktop mines about 0.69 XMR per year. If your goal is to hold a few coins, mining is not a path.
The honest argument for mining is not economic. P2Pool pays directly into a block's coinbase transaction, straight to your address — no exchange, no KYC, no counterparty, no custodial balance. That is a genuinely different acquisition channel, and at European electricity prices you are paying a premium for provenance rather than saving money. Worth being clear-eyed about which one you are doing. (Coinbase outputs are identifiable as mined and carry a 60-block lock, so "no KYC" is not the same as "invisible".)
If buying is the better route for you, see how to buy Monero without KYC and where to swap Monero. If you want the setup side, our mining beginners guide covers getting started.
FAQ
How much can I earn mining Monero?
At current network figures, roughly 0.00007 XMR per kH/s per day. A high-end desktop at 27 kH/s earns about 0.69 XMR per year before electricity. Whether that is profit depends almost entirely on your power price: break-even for typical CPUs is $0.17–$0.24/kWh.
Is a Monero mining calculator accurate?
The arithmetic is, the inputs usually are not. The three real error sources are a cached XMR price, a network hashrate figure that is statistically noisy by ±10–25%, and power cost being omitted entirely. Pool fees, which calculators warn about most, are worth $2–4 a year.
Can you mine Monero with a GPU or ASIC?
RandomX is built for CPUs. GPUs are not competitive. ASICs do exist — Bitmain's Antminer X5 — but at 6.37 J/kH it is no more efficient than a consumer Ryzen at 6.30 J/kH, so it offers density rather than an economic edge. That is ASIC resistance working as designed.
Which Monero pool should I use?
If you care about network health, P2Pool — it has no operator, no fee, and pays directly into the block. Use the nano sidechain if you are running a single CPU (about 1.9 kH/s to earn shares), mini from around 12 kH/s. The top three centralised pools currently hold about 68% of network hashrate between them, which is a genuine concern.
Is Monero mining still profitable in 2026?
On hardware you already own, at electricity below about 18¢/kWh, marginally yes. Below 10¢, clearly yes. At the European average of ~29¢, no — every mainstream CPU loses money. Buying hardware specifically to mine does not pay back at any of these rates.
Is mining a good way to get Monero privately?
It is a genuinely different channel — P2Pool pays into the coinbase transaction with no exchange or counterparty involved. But it is slow (under one XMR per year on a strong desktop) and, at European electricity prices, costs 18–47% more than simply buying. Treat it as paying for provenance, not as a savings strategy.