What a vacuum actually costs over five years

The consumables are the line people leave out

A robot eats three things on a schedule: filters, side brushes and a brush roll. At an example $9 for a filter twice a year, $3.50 for a side brush twice a year and $26 for a brush roll every 2 years, that is $9 plus $7 plus $13, or $29 a year. Over 5 years it is $145, which is roughly a third of the example machine price again.

A cordless stick is cheaper to feed, because the filter is usually the only scheduled part: at an example $15 a year, 5 years costs $75. A bagged corded upright runs on bags and a motor filter: 6 bags a year at $2.50 is $15, and a $12 filter every 2 years is $6, so $21 a year and $105 over 5 years.

None of these items is optional in the way they look. A clogged filter makes a motor work harder and a worn brush roll stops agitating carpet, so a machine run on original consumables for 5 years is not the same machine the specification describes. The sensible move is to price a year of parts before buying, because availability and price vary far more between models than the machines themselves do.

• Robot, example parts: 2 filters a year at $9, 2 side brushes at $3.50, a brush roll every 2 years at $26 — about $29 a year
• Cordless stick, example parts: one filter a year at $15 — about $15 a year
• Bagged corded upright, example parts: 6 bags a year at $2.50 and a $12 motor filter every 2 years — about $21 a year
• Self-emptying robot base: add dust bags, which this example does not include
• Before buying, confirm the parts are listed for sale on the manufacturer's own support pages

Electricity is real and small

The Energy Information Administration's Electric Power Monthly puts the average retail price of electricity to US residential customers at 18.16 cents per kilowatt-hour for August 2026. That rate is the one used in every cell below, and your own bill is a better number still, because residential rates differ substantially by state and by plan.

A robot run 5 times a week, with a dock drawing a couple of watts the rest of the time, comes to roughly 30 kWh a year, or about $5.45. A 1,200 W corded upright used for 30 minutes a week is 0.6 kWh a week, 31 kWh a year, about $5.63. A cordless stick used 20 minutes a week and charged from empty lands near 10 kWh a year, about $1.82.

There is no efficiency label to compare, because ENERGY STAR certifies dishwashers, clothes washers, refrigerators and electric cooking products but has no category for vacuums or robot vacuums. That absence is the reason this arithmetic has to be done from rated power rather than read off a sticker.

The battery is the one mid-life cost that decides the total

Every cordless machine has a consumable you cannot see on the spec sheet. A lithium-ion pack loses usable capacity with cycles, and on a machine run most days the practical point at which a run no longer covers the floor tends to arrive before year 5. The example here budgets one pack: $45 for a robot in year 3, $60 for a stick in year 3.

Whether that is a $45 line or a new machine depends entirely on whether the pack is sold separately and can be reached without destroying the housing. The CPSC lists the voluntary standards that apply to battery-powered appliances, including UL 2595, and its battery guidance is explicit that a replacement pack should be one the device manufacturer has confirmed is suitable for that device. A model with no listed pack is a model with a 3 year life, whatever its warranty says.

A corded upright has no equivalent line at all, which is the single reason it wins the five-year total below despite being the least convenient of the three.

What changes the answer

Keeping the machine longer is the biggest single lever, because the purchase price divides by more years while the consumables stay flat. The $180 upright kept 8 years instead of 5 costs $180 plus $168 of parts plus $45 of electricity, which is $393 over 8 years, or about $49 a year rather than $63.

The second lever is the number of machines. A household that buys a robot for the downstairs and a stick for the stairs is running two of the rows above at once, which on these figures is about $232 a year. That is a defensible outcome when it replaces an hour of floor time a week, and an expensive one when the robot runs in a house that was already clean.

The third is the part supply. A model whose filters and brush rolls are only sold as a bundled kit at twice the unit price moves the consumables line more than any difference in motor specification does, and that is visible before you buy on the manufacturer's own parts listing.

Before you buy

• Open the manufacturer's parts page and price a filter, a brush roll and a battery before you order the machine
• Multiply that annual parts figure by 5 and add it to the purchase price
• Read your own electricity rate off your bill instead of using the national average
• Check whether the battery pack is sold separately and whether the maker confirms it for your model
• Decide how many years you expect to keep it, and divide the purchase price by that number
• If you are buying two machines, add both rows together before deciding either is affordable
• Exclude sales tax from the comparison, then add it once at the end for your own state and locality

Questions readers ask

Why is the robot the most expensive of the three?

Because it carries all four costs at once: the highest purchase price, the largest parts list, a battery in year 3 and a dock that draws power around the clock. The trade is that it runs without you. On these example figures that convenience costs about $34 a year more than the cordless stick, and the stick in turn costs about $36 a year more than the corded upright.

Should I include the time saved in the comparison?

It is the only honest way to read the table. A robot covering one level 5 times a week replaces roughly 2 hours of floor time a month. At the example $133 a year that is about $11 a month for those 2 hours, which is the comparison worth making rather than machine against machine.

Does a bagless machine save the bag cost?

It removes the $15 a year of bags in the example above and replaces it with more frequent filter changes and a bin you empty by hand into a bag anyway. On these figures the saving is smaller than the difference between two filter pricing schemes, so bagless is better treated as a preference about emptying than as a cost decision.

How long should a vacuum actually last?

Long enough for the purchase price to stop mattering, which the arithmetic above puts at around 8 years for a corded machine. What sets the limit is whether the wear parts are sold: a machine with listed gaskets, belts, filters and a brush roll reaches that, and a sealed unit with no parts supply does not, whatever it cost.

Sources

1. U.S. Energy Information Administration — Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, average retail price of electricity to residential customers — checked 2026-11-03
2. ENERGY STAR — certified product categories (confirms no vacuum or robot vacuum category exists) — checked 2026-11-03
3. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission — voluntary standards for batteries, including UL 2595 for battery-powered appliances — checked 2026-11-03