Is Bitcoin Mining Still Worth It in Europe? Costs, Taxes and Rules in 2026

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For most people in Europe, bitcoin mining at home is not profitable in 2026. A current mining machine on a normal household electricity contract burns more money in power than it earns in bitcoin, and that is before you pay for the machine itself, the noise and the heat. Mining can still work for operators with very cheap electricity, a real use for the waste heat or industrial-scale equipment. That is a different business from plugging a box into a spare socket.

Below is a worked example with early-November 2026 figures, followed by the rules and taxes that apply if you decide to mine anyway.

How bitcoin mining earns money

Miners compete to add the next block to the Bitcoin blockchain. The winner receives the block reward (3.125 BTC since the April 2024 halving) plus the transaction fees in that block. A block is found roughly every ten minutes. About every two weeks the network adjusts the difficulty so that this pace holds, however many machines join.

That adjustment matters for anyone doing sums. More computing power on the network means a smaller slice of the rewards for each machine. In early November 2026 the network was running at roughly 1,040 exahashes per second, and difficulty had climbed about 12% in a single month. Your machine did not get any slower, but its share of the pie did.

Individual miners almost always join a mining pool, which combines the hashrate of many participants and pays out small, regular amounts in proportion to the work each one contributed, minus a pool fee.

If blocks and halvings are new to you, start with our guide to how Bitcoin works.

The three numbers that decide profitability

Mining economics come down to three figures:

1. Hashprice: what one unit of computing power earns per day, usually quoted in US dollars per petahash per second per day (PH/s/day). It moves with the bitcoin price, transaction fees and total network hashrate.
2. Efficiency of your machine: measured in joules per terahash (J/TH). Lower is better. A miner from five years ago can use two to three times as much electricity per unit of work as a current model.
3. Your electricity price: in euros per kWh, including network charges and taxes.

Cooling, pool fees, repairs and the purchase price of the hardware all come on top.

A worked example with November 2026 figures

These numbers are a snapshot, not a forecast. Hashprice changes every day, and it can move 15–20% in a month.

• Machine: Bitmain Antminer S21 XP, an air-cooled model rated by the manufacturer at about 270 TH/s and 3,645 W (13.5 J/TH).
• Energy use: 3.645 kW × 24 hours ≈ 87.5 kWh per day.
• Gross earnings: Hashrate Index put hashprice at about $33 per PH/s per day on 2 November 2026, down from about $40 on 1 October. At 0.27 PH/s that is roughly $8.90 a day, or about €7.90 at the ECB rate of 2 November, before pool fees.

Now set that against the electricity bill. The prices below are Eurostat’s averages for the first half of 2026, published at the end of October:

Electricity price	Daily power cost (87.5 kWh)	Earnings minus power, per day
EU household average, €0.283/kWh	about €24.80	about −€16.90
German household average, €0.362/kWh	about €31.70	about −€23.80
EU business average (medium users), €0.180/kWh	about €15.75	about −€7.85
Cheapest business rate in the EU (Finland), €0.093/kWh	about €8.10	about −€0.20

At the EU household average the machine loses close to €17 a day, which adds up to roughly €500 a month. Even at Finland’s business rate, the cheapest in the EU, it now runs at a small loss on electricity alone. A month earlier, with hashprice around $40, the same Finnish setup would have made about €1.50 a day before hardware costs. That is how thin the margin is.

The break-even electricity price at these figures is about 9 euro cents per kWh, and you would still have to earn back a machine that typically costs several thousand euros. That is why large operations cluster where power is very cheap, often next to surplus hydro, wind or stranded gas.

What about using the miner as a heater?

This is the most credible argument for a small home setup, so it is worth doing the sums. Almost every kWh a miner uses comes out as heat, so 87.5 kWh a day of mining is also 87.5 kWh of heat.

A hypothetical comparison at the EU household price of €0.283/kWh, for the same 87.5 kWh of heat per day:

Heat source	Cost per day
Electric resistance heater	about €24.80
Miner (power cost minus about €7.90 of mining income)	about €16.90
Heat pump with a seasonal efficiency of about 3.5	about €7.10

Compared with a plain electric heater, the miner wins. Compared with a decent heat pump, it costs more than twice as much, and it only makes sense in the months you actually need heat. In June, the same machine is just an expensive fan.

Costs people forget

• Noise. Air-cooled ASIC miners are loud, comparable to a vacuum cleaner running all day. They do not belong in a living room or against a shared wall.
• Heat in summer. The heat that helps in January has to be pushed out of the house in July.
• Wiring and safety. A machine drawing 3.6 kW around the clock needs a suitable circuit, usually a dedicated group. Check your fuse box and your home insurance conditions before you switch it on.
• Your energy contract. Some suppliers and landlords do not allow sustained high loads, and dynamic tariffs can swing a lot from hour to hour.
• Hardware wear and resale value. Machines lose value quickly as newer, more efficient models come out.
• Halvings. The block reward halves every 210,000 blocks. The next halving, at block 1,050,000, is expected around April 2028 and will cut the reward to 1.5625 BTC. Whether fees and the bitcoin price make up for it is something nobody can know in advance.

Is mining legal in Europe?

Yes. There is no EU-wide ban on mining, and the EU’s crypto regulation, MiCA, does not license miners. MiCA explicitly leaves crypto-assets that are created automatically as a reward for validating transactions outside its rules on public offers (Article 4(3)(b)).

Mining does run into other rules:

• Energy disclosure. Under MiCA, crypto-asset service providers must publish the energy use of the consensus mechanism behind each crypto-asset they offer. That puts Bitcoin’s energy footprint on the information page of every licensed exchange, but it places no obligation on you as a miner.
• Data-centre reporting. The EU Energy Efficiency Directive requires data centres with an installed IT power demand of at least 500 kW to report their energy performance each year. Home miners are far below that threshold. Larger mining sites are not.
• National measures. Some countries are openly hostile to energy-hungry mining. Norway, which is in the EEA, has required data centres above 0.5 MW to register since January 2025, including how much of their power goes to crypto mining. Its government is working on a temporary, narrowly drawn ban on new power-intensive crypto data centres, but as of autumn 2026 that measure had not been adopted, and ministers have said a general ban would be hard to square with EEA rules. Planning permission, noise rules and local grid limits apply everywhere.

How mining income is taxed

Tax treatment depends on your country and on how serious the activity is. A few examples:

• Netherlands. The Belastingdienst says that for private individuals the costs of mining will usually be so high that there is no real gain, so you do not have to report the mining proceeds as such. That changes once your proceeds exceed your costs: then it can count as income from other work or business profit in Box 1. Coins you hold on 1 January are part of your Box 3 assets either way. See our guide to Box 3 for crypto.
• Germany. According to the Federal Ministry of Finance’s guidance on crypto-assets of 6 March 2025, mining can be private asset management or a commercial activity, depending on the facts. Block rewards and transaction fees count as income in either case, so keep proper records from day one. Our guide to crypto taxes in Germany explains how the one-year rule works for coins you sell later.
• Elsewhere. Many tax offices treat mined coins as income when you receive them and look at the gain again when you sell. Talk to a local tax adviser before you buy hardware, especially if you want to deduct the machine and the electricity as business costs.

Whatever the rules, you need a record of every payout: date, amount and the euro value at that moment. Pools pay out small amounts, often daily, so a spreadsheet gets messy fast. Our comparison of crypto tax software explains which tools handle mining income.

Alternatives if you just want some bitcoin

If your real goal is to own some bitcoin rather than run a mining business, buying through an exchange with an EU licence is simpler and, at household power prices, cheaper than mining. Check the provider in the ESMA register first and move larger amounts to a wallet you control. The usual risk applies: the price can fall sharply and you can lose the money you put in.

Cloud-mining contracts, where you pay a company to mine on your behalf, deserve extra caution. Many are outright scams, and the honest ones still face the same electricity maths, with the provider’s margin on top.

The short version

• Profitability depends on hashprice, machine efficiency and electricity price. In Europe the last one usually decides the outcome.
• At early-November 2026 figures, a current-generation miner loses money on electricity at the average EU household or business tariff, and roughly breaks even at the cheapest business rate in the EU.
• As a heater it beats a plain electric radiator but costs more than twice as much as a heat pump.
• Mining is legal in the EU and not licensed under MiCA, but energy, planning and noise rules apply, and some countries are trying to restrict it.
• Mining income is taxable in most countries once there is a real gain. Keep a record of every payout.

Sources: Bitmain S21 XP specifications; Hashrate Index hashprice data and weekly roundup (2 November 2026); public network data for hashrate and difficulty (November 2026); ECB euro reference rate of 2 November 2026; Eurostat electricity price statistics (first half of 2026, nrg_pc_204 and nrg_pc_205); Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Articles 4 and 66; Directive (EU) 2023/1791 (Energy Efficiency Directive); Norwegian government answers to the Storting on crypto data centres (2026); Belastingdienst page on crypto-assets; German Federal Ministry of Finance letter of 6 March 2025. Information as of November 2026. Not tax or investment advice.