Key findings
- The median portable power station costs $0.52 per watt-hour.
- Goal Zero costs 2.7 times more per watt-hour than Pecron — $1.00 against $0.37 at the median.
- 89% of the market has moved to LiFePO4. EcoFlow is the laggard at 60%.
- The badge tells you less than you would think: BLUETTI units range over 5.5× in cost per watt-hour, from $0.34 to $1.86.
- Value does not improve indefinitely with size — it peaks. The 1,200–2,600Wh class is the cheapest energy on the market at $0.44/Wh, against $0.89 below it and $0.63 above it.
Method, in short
Every self-contained portable power station in our catalogue with both a published price and a published capacity, as listed by the manufacturer. Expansion batteries are excluded because they do not work alone and would flatter any brand that sells them. Rows whose price is impossible against their stated capacity — below $0.08/Wh, which is well under any real cell cost — are excluded as data errors. Brands with fewer than three qualifying units are left out of every median rather than reported with a sample of one. That leaves 91 units across 8 brands.
Cost per watt-hour by brand
| Brand | Units | Median $/Wh | Cheapest | Dearest | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pecron | 6 | $0.369 | $0.317 | $0.560 | 1.8× |
| OUPES | 5 | $0.374 | $0.341 | $0.683 | 2.0× |
| ALLPOWERS | 7 | $0.378 | $0.343 | $0.549 | 1.6× |
| Anker SOLIX | 12 | $0.460 | $0.391 | $1.016 | 2.6× |
| BLUETTI | 16 | $0.512 | $0.338 | $1.859 | 5.5× |
| Jackery | 21 | $0.565 | $0.416 | $1.969 | 4.7× |
| EcoFlow | 15 | $0.800 | $0.350 | $1.212 | 3.5× |
| Goal Zero | 7 | $1.001 | $0.501 | $1.502 | 3.0× |
Median rather than mean, because a single flagship distorts an average badly at these sample sizes. The spread column is the point most buying guides miss: the gap inside a brand is routinely wider than the gap between brands, so “which brand” is a much weaker question than “which model”.
The LiFePO4 transition
| Brand | LiFePO4 | Share | Median cycles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pecron | 6 of 6 | 100% | 3,500 (n=6) |
| OUPES | 5 of 5 | 100% | 3,500 (n=4) |
| Anker SOLIX | 12 of 12 | 100% | 3,000 (n=10) |
| Goal Zero | 7 of 7 | 100% | 4,000 (n=3) |
| BLUETTI | 15 of 16 | 94% | 3,500 (n=15) |
| Jackery | 19 of 21 | 90% | 4,000 (n=16) |
| ALLPOWERS | 6 of 7 | 86% | 3,250 (n=2) |
| EcoFlow | 9 of 15 | 60% | — |
Lithium iron phosphate lasts roughly three to six times as many cycles as the NMC chemistry it replaced and tolerates sitting at full charge, at the cost of some energy per kilogram. At 89% adoption the argument is effectively over, which makes the remaining holdouts the interesting part of this table rather than the leaders. See our explainer for what the difference means in use.
Does buying bigger cost less per watt-hour?
| Capacity class | Units | Median $/Wh |
|---|---|---|
| Under 600Wh | 21 | $0.891 |
| 600–1,200Wh | 19 | $0.487 |
| 1,200–2,600Wh ← best value | 25 | $0.439 |
| 2,600–5,000Wh | 20 | $0.485 |
| 5,000Wh and up | 6 | $0.629 |
Up to a point, and then it reverses. Cost per watt-hour falls steeply out of the smallest class — $0.89/Wh is the price of making something light and small — bottoms out at $0.44/Wh in the 1,200–2,600Wh class, then climbs again to $0.63/Wh at the top. The largest units carry expandability, transfer switching and higher-current electronics that the middle of the market does not, and you pay for that whether or not you use it.
So the sizing advice that follows from this is narrower than the usual “buy bigger than you think”. Buy up to the 1,200–2,600Wh class if you can use it, because that energy is genuinely cheap. Past it, only buy what the job needs.
What this means if you are buying
- Compare on cost per watt-hour, not on headline price. Divide the price by the capacity in Wh; it takes five seconds and reorders most shortlists.
- Brand loyalty is worth less than it looks. With a 5.5× internal spread at BLUETTI, the model matters far more than the badge.
- Treat anything that is not LiFePO4 at this point as needing a specific reason — usually weight.
- The cheapest energy sits in the 1,200–2,600Wh class. Below it you pay a premium for portability; above it you pay for electronics most buyers never use. Size into that band if the job allows.
Answer five questions and we will score the catalogue against your own load, or compare every model side by side.
Cite this study
Free to quote or reproduce with attribution and a link. If you would like the underlying figures for a specific brand or class, ask and we will send them.
The Watt Guide, "The Power Station Price Index" (20 August 2026), 91 portable power stations analysed. https://thewattguide.com/articles/power-station-price-index/
Method and limitations
Prices are manufacturer list prices captured from each brand’s own listings, not street prices, and not adjusted for the discounting that runs through this category almost continuously — so read these as relative positions rather than as what you will pay this week. Capacities and chemistries are the manufacturers’ own published figures and are not independently measured; where a manufacturer publishes nothing, the unit is excluded from that measure rather than estimated. Cycle counts are quoted to differing standards between brands, usually to 80% of original capacity but not always, so the cycle column is the weakest in the study and is shown with its sample size for that reason. The catalogue covers the brands sold widely in the United States and is not a census of the world market.
This page is regenerated from the live catalogue rather than hand-written, so the figures move as prices and models do. The date at the top is the date of the run.