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Over the past few years, the profitability of mining has seriously declined. There are several reasons for this – the general market decline, the growing complexity of mining cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and others, as well as constant rate hikes.
All this significantly complicates the calculation of future profits, especially for different levels of equipment – from a single mining card to ASIC miners. This is why special mining calculators were invented, allowing you to roughly calculate the income from this or that system.
In this article, we’ll break down what a mining calculator is, how to correctly calculate profit and what data is required for the calculation, and we’ll explain step by step how to use it.
What you need to know about mining calculators
The mining calculator is like an advisor that helps to determine whether to start mining some coin on a particular cryptocurrency algorithm, how profitable it is, and even over what period of time it will be possible to recoup the cost of buying the equipment.
It should be understood that the mining calculator can be used to calculate the actual income at the moment, but not for the future. That is, if you have purchased equipment, say, for mining Ethereum, and the rate of the coin has seriously depreciated, you can remain in the red.
In this case, the mining calculator itself is based on an algorithm that calculates profit on several parameters at once – the complexity of the network, the exchange rate and associated costs, such as electricity. Most services constantly update the data, calculating the efficiency of the equipment with different algorithms.
Usually services are divided into two types: in the first it is enough to select the name of the equipment and the calculation will be made automatically, and in the second you need to enter the hash rate, the amount of electricity consumed, electricity costs and only then will the calculation.
And if with ASIC all is clear, when you buy such equipment know in advance its capacity, then with video cards and processors a bit more complicated – not everyone knows what the hash rate provides the GPU or CPU.
Popular mining calculators
Since most of these services are in English, here are some definitions to help you understand the process faster:
- Pool Fees – Pool Fees;
- Hashing Power – video card power or hash rate;
- Cost ֪ – the cost of electricity;
- Power Usage (W) – power consumption;
- Difficulty for revenue – the difficulty of mining;
- Maintenance – equipment support;
- Hardware/Contract Costs – the cost of the equipment or contract in the pool.
WhatToMine
Probably one of the most popular services providing the widest functionality for calculating the profitability of equipment. The site has a simple and clear interface that even a beginner can understand.
This mining calculator refers to those that make automatic calculations, just specify a video card from the list and click on “Calculate”.
If we look at the process in more detail, the first thing to do is to select “GPU” in the top field of the screen. Of course, not all video cards are represented on WhatToMine, but they are for the most part well suited for mining in 2020.
After selecting a video card, and in the case of a farm you need to specify the number of video cards, below we select the algorithm on which we plan to mine. Let’s look at the Ethereum algorithm – Ethash as an example. If you know the cost of a kilowatt of electricity, you need to specify the price in cents in the “Cost” field. If the price is unknown, it is recommended to specify 0 and count the income from mining without taking that parameter into account.
Next, click “Calculate” and below you will see a table with the calculation of profitability of mining the most popular coins on the Ethash algorithm. If you are not sure about the calculations or want to know more about the income, then after selecting the algorithm in the table click on the desired cryptocurrency and you will be redirected to another page.
Based on the entered hardware data, WhatToMine will mark the algorithm and the coin that will actually bring profit. Thus, this service will help to sort cryptocurrencies by complexity, market capitalization, exchange volumes, hash rate, current income and long-term perspective.
NiceHash – detailed instructions for use
Unlike WhatToMine, the NiceHash mining calculator does not initially specialize in calculating the profitability of equipment, but the site provides quite a handy tool. Initially, this platform offers services for the purchase and sale of mining capacities.
In general, the process of calculating profit from mining with the calculator does not differ much from service to service. By going to the NiceHash calculator page, before choosing your equipment, you can read the table titled “Top 5 equipment that earns the most with NiceHash”.
In it you will find the most popular systems built on GPU, CPU and ASIC miners. To calculate the income in the calculator itself, just leave a check mark on the device – GPU, CPU or ASIC and select the device from the drop-down list. Also in the column you can specify the cost of electricity.
After you click the “Calculate” button, a table will appear below, from which you can understand if your equipment is profitable. Then, if you scroll down the page, you will see a table called “Mining Power for Each Algorithm”. It reflects how suitable the specified equipment is for any of the algorithms.
Once you have selected the appropriate one, click on it, and you will be redirected to the page with statistics. Here you can see the hash rate on the selected algorithm for the specified device and a lot of other useful information.
Rubin Mining Profitability Calculator
This calculator is located on the 2cryptocalc website, and it is somewhat different from the above services. But it is not inferior to others in terms of functionality.
There are two buttons at the top of the page – “Calculator” and “Coins”. Going to the first one, you can calculate income on 11 popular algorithms, and on the second one you can calculate profit by selecting a specific cryptocurrency.
The main convenience of Rubin Calculator is the ability to calculate the approximate number of days it will take to mine a block by solo mining. As you can see from the screenshot, mining Ethereum on average hardware producing 302 Mh/s will take 85 days and 16 hours.
Calculation of income from mining a specific cryptocurrency // Source: 2cryptocalc.com
In addition, you can find the most popular pools for the selected cryptocurrency in the “Pools List” table below. The main disadvantage of Rubin Calculator is the need to know the hash rate of your equipment in advance.
CryptoCompare
Also quite a handy calculator to calculate the profit from mining. However, as in the case of Rubin Calculator, in this service calculator does not determine the power in advance, all data must be entered manually.
In this case, unlike the above calculators, CryptoCompare offers a calculation for mining only a few cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero, Zcash, DASH and Litecoin.
In general, this service offers the easiest interface and functionality of all. To calculate, all you have to do is enter the power of the equipment, the energy consumed, the price of electricity, and the percentage of the mining pool, if any.
However, on the site itself you can enter the model of your video card in the search bar and, going to the appropriate page, see all the necessary data. After entering the data the service offers to immediately display the characteristics of the GPU on this or that algorithm.
CoinWarz
Also quite a simple mining calculator, which has a good and user-friendly interface. And if CryptoCompare allows you to determine the profitability of only 7 cryptocurrencies, here the choice is much more. CoinWarz offers calculations for more than 190 different coins.
Once on the site, go to the Mining Calculators section. Then, for convenience, you can choose any of the presented cryptocurrencies by typing the name into the search box. After that, you will be redirected to the calculator page of this coin.
Unfortunately, CoinWarz does not automatically detect parameters of different video cards, so you will have to search for your system’s hash rate by yourself. This service, like Rubin Calculator, shows the number of days to find a block when solo mining.
At the bottom of the screen, as usual, there is a table in which the yield is calculated by day, month, week, and so on.
CoinDuck
Quite a handy way to calculate the yield is the mining calculator built into the CoinDuck information site. By clicking on the appropriate tab, the user has a choice – “Video cards (GPU)”, “Asics (ASIC)” and “All coins”.
The section with video cards contains the most popular models from Nvidia and AMD manufacturers. Here you can also select the number of GPUs required for the calculation.
After selecting the model, the second item will automatically calculate the hash rate for each of the 23 algorithms. In the third point, you need to specify the cost of electricity and click on the “Calculate profitability” button. After that, the table from point 4 will be updated and you can see the profitability of mining different cryptocurrencies.
In case you need to calculate the profit of ASIC miners, you need to know the hash rate in advance – you can’t choose a certain model here. Then everything happens according to the usual scenario.
We also suggest watching the useful video below, which details how to use the mining calculators and how to calculate the yield:
Which mining calculator to choose
There is no definite answer to this question. Cryptocurrency mining calculators calculate the estimated income based on statistical information using the entered values.
In this case, the program cannot take into account important indicators such as the volatility of the exchange rate, the efficiency of the pool, the exchange ratios, and so on. Accordingly, the income will be completely different already on the choice of solo-mining or in the pool for mining. In the second case, it also depends on the total capacity of the pool.
Due to market instability, cryptocurrency mining has partially lost its profitability. This applies to the lack of any regulation, as well as the cost of electricity, equipment maintenance and many other factors.
Despite all this, cryptocurrency calculators give a good opportunity to calculate the approximate profitability of mining in 2020, as well as to choose a suitable algorithm and cryptocurrency.
But it is important not to rely solely on mining calculators – that is simply not enough. In order to get into the process of mining, it is necessary to study the whole process from beginning to end, to be aware of the latest events on the market, which can easily affect your income in a negative way. And in order not to miss important cryptocurrency news, we advise you to regularly read this column on our website.
